urtailed, would pave the way for revolution.

Old Anthony had had a drastic remedy for strikes.

"Let all the storekeepers, the country over, refuse credit to the
strikers, and we'd have an end to this mess," he said.

"We'd have an end to the storekeepers, too," Howard had replied, grimly.

One good thing had come out of the bomb outrages. They had had a
salutary effect on the honest labor element. These had no sympathy with
such methods and said so. But a certain element, both native and foreign
born, secretly gloated and waited.

One thing surprised and irritated Howard. Public sentiment was not so
much with the strikers, as against the mill owners. The strike worked
a hardship to the stores and small businesses dependent on the
great mills; they forgot the years when the Cardews had brought them
prosperity, had indeed made them possible, and they felt now only
bitter resentment at the loss of trade. In his anger Howard saw them as
parasites, fattening on the conceptions and strength of those who had
made the city. They were men who built nothing, originated nothing. Men
who hated the ladder by which they had climbed, who cared little how
shaky its foundation, so long as it stood.

In September, lured by a false security, the governor ordered the
demobilization of the state troops, save for two companies. The men at
the Baxter and Friendship plants, owned by the Cardews, had voted to
remain out, but their leaders appeared to have them well in hand, and
no trouble was anticipated. The agents of the Department of Justice,
however, were still suspicious. The foreigners had plenty of money.
Given as they were to hoarding their savings in their homes, the local
banks were unable to say if they were drawing on their reserves or were
being financed from the outside.

Shortly before the mayoralty election trouble broke out in the western
end of the state, and in the north, in the steel towns. There were ugly
riotings, bombs were sent through the mails, the old tactics of night
shootings and destruction of property began. In the threatening chaos
Baxter and Friendship, and the city nearby, stood out by contrast for
their very orderliness. The state constabulary remained in diminished
numbers, a still magnificent body of men but far too few for any real
emergency, and the Federal agents, suspicious but puzzled, were removed
to more turbulent fields.

The men constituting the Vigilance Committee began to feel a sense
o