that to whatever Nevins may propose I am willing to lend my
support, provided the ends he seeks to obtain are honorable and the
means reasonable.

"As I am talking I cannot keep out of my mind the home which the Iron
Masters destroyed. I had a wife and two children who loved me and were
the idols of my heart. I saw this home destroyed. I saw my children
turned adrift and their mother forced to work to support them; for
during the first three years after the strike I could get nothing to do.

"With these memories which had as a climax the deaths of two nearest and
dearest to me, I have nothing left to live for but the fulfillment of my
resolve to break the power of the Monopolists who have control of this
country."

"This meeting will be protracted to the middle of next week if we all
take a half hour or more to tell our tale of woe," observes one of the
committee who cannot foresee the end of the discussion.

The chairman asks if the members wish to limit the time of the speakers
to five minutes, and this proposition meets with the approval of all.

So the remaining stories are told in short intensive sentences which
describe the heart-breaking history of men who have been trodden down
under the heel of monopoly.

There are examples of every type that can be imagined. Men who have been
defrauded of their ideas and patents; others who have been the victims
of unjust legislation, the dupes of the speculator, the betrayed friends
of men who have ridden to fortune on the backs of those who gave them
their first start.

Under the new ruling, the first man to be recognized is Herman
Nettinger, a man known to all the assemblage as an anarchist. He had
been admitted to the councils on the supposition that the best way to
pacify and placate the Anarchistic element was to offer them full
representation in the work of regenerating the government.

Nettinger had been one of the few men who succeeded in eluding the
police during the days of the reign of anarchy in Chicago in 1885.

He is a man of gigantic build, and of imperturbable placidity. When a
soldier in the German army had provoked him to the point where he had to
fight, this modern Titan had seized his tormenter and without apparent
effort had dashed the man's brains out by butting him against the wall
of the barracks. For this episode Nettinger had been compelled to serve
eleven years in the military prison.

During these years he had familiarized himself with t