John D. Rockefeller owns Standard Oil stock worth between
four and five hundred millions at the market quotations. He
has a hundred millions in the steel trust, almost as much in
a single western railway system, half as much in a second,
and so on and on and on until the mind wearies of the
cataloguing. His income last year was about $100,000,000--
it is doubtful if the incomes of all the Rothschilds
together make a greater sum. And it is going up by leaps
and bounds."

Little discussion took place after this, and the dinner soon broke
up. All were quiet and subdued, and leave-taking was done with low
voices. It seemed almost that they were scared by the vision of
the times they had seen.

"The situation is, indeed, serious," Mr. Calvin said to Ernest. "I
have little quarrel with the way you have depicted it. Only I
disagree with you about the doom of the middle class. We shall
survive, and we shall overthrow the trusts."

"And return to the ways of your fathers," Ernest finished for him.

"Even so," Mr. Calvin answered gravely. "I know it's a sort of
machine-breaking, and that it is absurd. But then life seems
absurd to-day, what of the machinations of the Plutocracy. And at
any rate, our sort of machine-breaking is at least practical and
possible, which your dream is not. Your socialistic dream is . . .
well, a dream. We cannot follow you."

"I only wish you fellows knew a little something about evolution
and sociology," Ernest said wistfully, as they shook hands. "We
would be saved so much trouble if you did."

CHAPTER X

THE VORTEX

Following like thunder claps upon the Business Men's dinner, occurred
event after event of terrifying moment; and I, little I, who had lived
so placidly all my days in the quiet university town, found myself and
my personal affairs drawn into the vortex of the great world-affairs.
Whether it was my love for Ernest, or the clear sight he had given me of
the society in which I lived, that made me a revolutionist, I know not;
but a revolutionist I became, and I was plunged into a whirl of
happenings that would have been inconceivable three short months before.

The crisis in my own fortunes came simultaneously with great crises in
society. First of all, father was discharged from the university. Oh,
he was not technically discharg