higher place in the economic scale than they
now have. If I can amalgamate them, if I can weld them into a
consistent, coherent labor mass--the Irish, the Slav, the Jews, the
Italians, the Poles, the French, the Dutch, the Letts, and the
Mexicans--put to some purpose the love of the poor for the poor, so that
it will count industrially, you can't stop the revolution." He was
wagging his head, waving his stump of an arm and his face showed the
temperamental excitement that was in him.

"Go ahead, Grant," said Perry. "Play out all your line--show us your
game."

"Well, then--here's my game. For five years we've been collecting a
district strike fund--all our own, that doesn't belong to any other
organization or federation anywhere. It's ours here in the Wahoo. It's
independent of any state or national control. I've collected it. It's
been paid because these men here in the Valley have faith in me. We have
practically never spent a penny of it. There are about ten thousand
workers in the Valley--some, like the glassblowers, are the aristocracy
of labor; others, like the breaker boys, are at the bottom of the scale.
But we've kept wages up, kept conditions as high as they are anywhere in
the country--and we've done it without strikes. They have faith in me.
So we've assessed them according to their wages, and we have on hand,
with assessments and interest, over a third of a million dollars."

He looked at Perry, and nodded his head at the Doctor. "You fellows
think I'm a cream-puff reformer. I'm not. Now, then--I've talked it over
with our board--we are going to invest that money in land up and down
the Valley--put the women and children and old men on it--in
tents--during the growing season, and cultivate that land in three-acre
tracts intensively. Our Belgian glassblowers and smelter men have sent
for their gardeners to teach us. Now it's merely a question of getting
the land and doing the preliminary organization. We want to get as much
land as we can. Now, there's my game. With that kind of a layout we can
win any strike we call. And we can prove to the world that labor has the
cohesive cooperating faculty required to manage the factories--to take a
larger share of the income of industry, if you please. That's my
revolution, gentlemen. And it's going to begin right here in the Wahoo
Valley."

"Well," returned Nate Perry, "your revolution looks interesting. It's
got some new gears, at least."

"Go it while you're y