most reputable, the "Sentinel,"
could be silenced at practically any moment by those cognizant of the
method, and in a position to command the price, of manipulation. As a
whited sepulchre it was a conspicuous success, being irreproachably
scholarly, dignified, and didactic in tone, and wholly destitute of
principle.

Michael McGrath, demagogue though he was, knew his public as the
physician knows the pulse he feels. It was a feature of the strike at
the Rathbawne Mills that no attempt was made to justify the cause of the
strikers in the eye of the disinterested public of Kenton City. McGrath
himself was fully alive to the slenderness of his pretext, and alive, as
well, to the strength of Peter Rathbawne's case, if it should come to a
discussion of the rights and wrongs involved, wherein his business
probity and his justice to, and consideration for, his employees, would
furnish arguments well-nigh unanswerable. He contented himself,
therefore, with standing upon a simple declaration of the will of the
Union, which was, in effect, his own; and, strong in his reliance, if
not upon the support, at least upon the non-interference of the state
authorities, devoted his attention to holding the press in check, by
methods long since found effectual, and confidently left the public to
think and act as it saw fit.

There could have been no more contemptuous comment upon the moral and
intellectual status of the community than this insolent assumption of
its indifference to the commonest principles of justice, but for a time
his confidence had the appearance of being amply justified. The strike
went its way, characterized by an infinity of petty outrages and a
constant and consistent vilification of Peter Rathbawne, while--with the
exception of that first and promptly quashed protest on the part of the
press--no voice was raised in opposition.

Reduced to its lowest terms, the struggle was one between Rathbawne and
McGrath, and that, not as representatives the one of a great industrial,
the other of a great socialistic organization, but as individuals. The
source of the stream which had thus reached its rapids, and was plunging
on toward its annihilating cataract, lay far back in the early days of
Rathbawne's commercial career. McGrath was a man who practiced neither
the vice of forgetfulness nor the virtue of forgiveness. As plain as the
event of a yesterday lay upon his memory his contemptuous dismissal from
Rathbawne's empl