a chorus of approval, so that their
orator went on, much inspired.

"People in Gallatin offered a thousand dollars for one man catched
putting matches in a threshing machine. Other ranchers was willing to
give a thousand if they found out what made their hay get a-fire! Hah!
They don't know how we set a bomb so the sun'll start it! They don't
think that the very fellers running the threshing machine is the ones
that drops the matches in! They don't think that the man running the
mowing machine is the one that fixes the sickle bar! They don't think
that the man in charge of this here road gang is the one that's
a-doctoring trees!

"They're still eating all sorts of things for bread now," he resumed.
"Folks in the cities pays more and more. Wheat'll go to four dollars
before we're through. We're the farmer's friends, huh? Hay'll be
worth fifty dollars a ton in this valley before we're through--but
there won't be no horses left to haul it to town! There's thousands of
right boes all across the country now. If fourteen thousand iron and
steel people was out at one time in Cleveland, what couldn't we do, if
we once got a good strike started all across the country, now the war
is done? We've made 'em raise wages time and again, haven't we? I
tell you, freedom's coming to its own."

Cleveland! Mary Warren pricked up her ears. She had reason; for now
the voice went on, mentioning a name which Annie Squires had made
familiar--Dorenwald, Charlie Dorenwald, the foreman in the rolling
rooms!

"Charlie Dorenwald's the head of that bunch. He's a good man. You
know what he pulled in Youngstown."

"Well, I don't know," said one voice, "they lynched a man in Illinois.
America's getting lawless! Think about lynching people! It ain't
right!"

"There's nothing they won't do," said Big Aleck's voice, virtuously.
"They ask us we shall have respect for a Government that lets people
lynch folks!"

"You didn't see any one when you was down in the road, Aleck?" asked
some one again, uneasily.

"I told you, no. Well, we got to get to work."

Mary Warren heard them rising from their places. Footfalls passed here
and there, shuffling. The woman could not repress her shuddering.
This was Force--unrestrained, ignorant, unleashed, brute Force, that
same aftermath Force which was rending apart the world back of the
new-dried battlefields of Europe! Order and law, comfort, love,
affection, trust--all these things were