principles of liberty,
equality and fraternity."

With these words he closes his address.

There is no means for measuring the exact effect of his words. The
plaudits of an audience are an uncertain criterion.

In the final vote that is taken, after three other delegates have
spoken, a resolution is adopted calling for the appointment of a
standing committee of three to continue the investigation of the Trust
question until another year.

This result is not satisfactory to the radicals, yet they make no open
objection. To Trueman it is a source of gratification to know that the
heretical proposals of some of the delegates have been voted down.

The conference is on the point of closing when Delegate William Nevins
moves that the chairman of the special committee be empowered to
increase the number of the committee to forty at his own discretion.
This motion is adopted.

The conference ends. It has exemplified the old adage of the convention
of the mice to discuss the advisability of putting a bell on the cat.
All agreed that it would be for the good of micedom; yet no mouse had a
feasible method to advance for affixing the bell. The papers in every
city tell of the failure of the Anti-Trust conference to agree upon a
plan of action.

The millions of toilers bend lower under their burdens; the Magnates
tighten their grasp on the throat of labor.

In all the United States there is but one man who holds a solution of
the problem of emancipating mankind from commercial servitude. This man
has been a delegate. He has spoken but a few words; he has been present
as an auditor.

His hour for action is soon to come.

CHAPTER VIII.

A STARTLING PROPOSAL.

The special committee has been directed to hold meetings at intervals of
a month and to have a report ready by the first of the following
January. Thirty-seven of the most intelligent and earnest of the
Anti-Trust members have been placed on this committee by its chairman.
The meetings are now secret.

The first meeting is held in the hall that had been used for the big
meetings of the conference. After this the meetings are clandestine.

The comment that was provoked by the conference of the radical leaders
of the Trust opposition died out in the usual way, and then the interest
in the efforts of the special committee was confined to the few people
who realized the earnestness of the men who had decided to take the
Trust problem up and bring it to a