's honest," said he heartily. "That's some thing to build on."

"And I'm going to build!" cried she. "You'll help me--won't you? I
know, it's a great deal to ask. Why should you take the time and the
trouble to bother with one single unimportant person."

"That's the way I spend my life--in adding one man or one woman to our
party--one at a time. It's slow building, but it's the only kind that
endures. There are twelve hundred of us now--twelve hundred voters, I
mean. Ten years ago there were only three hundred. We'd expand much
more rapidly if it weren't for the constant shifts of population. Our
men are forced to go elsewhere as the pressure of capitalism gets too
strong. And in place of them come raw emigrants, ignorant, full of
dreams of becoming capitalists and exploiters of their fellow men and
idlers. Ambition they call it. Ambition!" He laughed. "What a
vulgar, what a cruel notion of rising in the world! To cease to be
useful, to become a burden to others! ... Did you ever think how many
poor creatures have to toil longer hours, how many children have to go
to the factory instead of to school, in order that there may be two
hundred and seven automobiles privately kept in this town and
seventy-four chauffeurs doing nothing but wait upon their masters?
Money doesn't grow on bushes, you know. Every cent of it has to be
earned by somebody--and earned by MANUAL labor."

"I must think about that," she said--for the first time as much
interested in what he was saying as in the man himself. No small
triumph for Victor over the mind of a woman dominated, as was Jane
Hastings, by the sex instinct that determines the thoughts and actions
of practically the entire female sex.

"Yes--think about it," he urged. "You will never see it--or
anything--until you see it for yourself."

"That's the way your party is built--isn't it?" inquired she. "Of those
who see it for themselves."

"Only those," replied he. "We want no others."

"Not even their votes?" said she shrewdly.

"Not even their votes," he answered. "We've no desire to get the
offices until we get them to keep. And when we shall have conquered
the city, we'll move on to the conquest of the county--then of the
district--then of the state. Our kind of movement is building in every
city now, and in most of the towns and many of the villages. The old
parties are falling to pieces because they stand for the old politics
of the two factions of