council
of fellow-delegates, and this council may send representatives to a
still more powerful body. But however high their titles, or their
salaries, these dignitaries have power only to suggest action, except in
a very limited variety of cases. There must always be a reference back
to the rank and file. The real decision lies with them.

That is the theory. The laborers on Calumet K, with some others at work
in the neighborhood, had organized into a lodge and had affiliated with
the American Federation of Labor. Grady, who had appeared out of
nowhere, who had urged upon them the need of combining against the
forces of oppression, and had induced them to organize, had been,
without dissent, elected delegate. He was nothing more in theory than
this: simply their concentrated voice. And this theory had the fond
support of the laborers. "He's not our boss; he's our servant," was a
sentiment they never tired of uttering when the delegate was out of
earshot.

They met every Friday night, debated, passed portentous resolutions, and
listened to Grady's oratory. After the meeting was over they liked to
hear their delegate, their servant, talk mysteriously of the doings of
the council, and so well did Grady manage this air of mystery that each
man thought it assumed because of the presence of others, but that he
himself was of the inner circle. They would not have dreamed of
questioning his acts in meeting or after, as they stood about the dingy,
reeking hall over Barry's saloon. It was only as they went to their
lodgings in groups of two and three that they told how much better they
could manage things themselves.

Bannon enjoyed his last conversation with Grady, though it left him a
good deal to think out afterward. He had acted quite deliberately, had
said nothing that afterward he wished unsaid; but as yet he had not
decided what to do next. After he heard the door slam behind the little
delegate, he walked back into his room, paced the length of it two or
three times, then put on his ulster and went out. He started off
aimlessly, paying no attention to whither he was going, and consequently
he walked straight to the elevator. He picked his way across the C. & S.
C. tracks, out to the wharf, and seated himself upon an empty nail keg
not far from the end of the spouting house.

He sat there for a long while, heedless of all that was doing about him,
turning the situation over and over in his mind. Like a good strategis