smanaged,
that you have mismanaged, my masters, that you have criminally and
selfishly mismanaged. And on this count you cannot answer me here
to-night, face to face, any more than can your whole class answer the
million and a half of revolutionists in the United States. You cannot
answer. I challenge you to answer. And furthermore, I dare to say to
you now that when I have finished you will not answer. On that point
you will be tongue-tied, though you will talk wordily enough about other
things.

"You have failed in your management. You have made a shambles of
civilization. You have been blind and greedy. You have risen up (as you
to-day rise up), shamelessly, in our legislative halls, and declared
that profits were impossible without the toil of children and babes.
Don't take my word for it. It is all in the records against you. You
have lulled your conscience to sleep with prattle of sweet ideals and
dear moralities. You are fat with power and possession, drunken with
success; and you have no more hope against us than have the drones,
clustered about the honey-vats, when the worker-bees spring upon them
to end their rotund existence. You have failed in your management of
society, and your management is to be taken away from you. A million and
a half of the men of the working class say that they are going to get
the rest of the working class to join with them and take the management
away from you. This is the revolution, my masters. Stop it if you can."

For an appreciable lapse of time Ernest's voice continued to ring
through the great room. Then arose the throaty rumble I had heard
before, and a dozen men were on their feet clamoring for recognition
from Colonel Van Gilbert. I noticed Miss Brentwood's shoulders moving
convulsively, and for the moment I was angry, for I thought that she was
laughing at Ernest. And then I discovered that it was not laughter,
but hysteria. She was appalled by what she had done in bringing this
firebrand before her blessed Philomath Club.

Colonel Van Gilbert did not notice the dozen men, with passion-wrought
faces, who strove to get permission from him to speak. His own face
was passion-wrought. He sprang to his feet, waving his arms, and for a
moment could utter only incoherent sounds. Then speech poured from him.
But it was not the speech of a one-hundred-thousand-dollar lawyer, nor
was the rhetoric old-fashioned.

"Fallacy upon fallacy!" he cried. "Never in all my life have I he