e, then at
another.

"Comrades," said he, "we should not sleep, tonight. We should get out
all our plans and data, all the dispatches that have come to us here,
all the information at hand about our organization, whether open or
subterranean. We should make this room and this time, in fact, the place
and the hour for the planning of the last great blow on which hangs the
fate of the world. If it succeed, the human race goes free again. If it
fail--and God forbid!--then the whole world will lie in the grip of
Flint and Waldron! With our other centers broken up and under espionage,
our press forced into impotence--save our underground press--and
political action now rendered farcical as ever it was in Mexico, when
Diaz ruled, we have but one recourse!"

"And that is?" asked Catherine. "The general strike?"

"A final, general, paralyzing strike; and with it, the actual, physical
destruction of the colossal crime of crimes, the Air Trust works at
Niagara!"

A little silence followed. They all drew round the reading-table, now,
near the fireplace. Mrs. Grantham brought a lamp; and Brevard, opening a
chest near the book-case, fetched a portfolio of papers, dispatches,
plans, reports and data of all kinds.

"Gabriel's right," said he. "The time is ripe, now, or will be in a week
or so. Nothing can be gained by delaying any longer. Every day adds to
their power and may weaken ours. Our organization, for the strike and
the attack on the works, is as complete as we can make it. We must come
to extreme measures, at once, or world-strangulation will set in, and we
shall be eternally too late!"

"Extreme measures, yes," said Gabriel, while Brevard spread the papers
out and sorted them, and Craig drew contemplatively at his pipe. "The
masters would have it so. Our one-time academic discussion about ways
and means has become absurd, in the face of plutocratic savagery. We're
up against facts, now, not theories. God knows it's against the dictates
of my heart to do what must be done; but it's that or stand back and see
the world be murdered, together with our own selves! And in a case of
self-defense, no measures are unjustifiable.

"Whatever happens our hands are clean. The plutocrats are the attacking
force. They have chosen, and must take the consequences; they have sown,
and must reap. One by one, they have limited and withdrawn every
political right. They have taken away free speech and free assemblage,
free press and uni