rs were to get rid of
so much every trip!"

Montague's jaw had fallen. "What could Major Thorne do against such a
combination?" he asked.

"I don't know," said the Major, shrugging his shoulders. "It's a case
to take to a lawyer--one who knows the ropes. Hawkins over there would
know what to tell you. I should imagine the thing he'd advise would be
to call a strike of the men who handle the coal, and tie up the
companies and bring them to terms."

"You're joking now!" exclaimed the other.

"Not at all," said the Major, laughing again. "It's done all the time.
There's a building trust in this city, and the way it put all its
rivals out of business was by having strikes called on their jobs."

"But how could it do that?"

"Easiest thing in the world. A labour leader is a man with a great deal
of power, and a very small salary to live on. And even if he won't sell
out--there are other ways. I could introduce you to a man right in this
room who had a big strike on at an inconvenient time, and he had the
president of the union trapped in a hotel with a woman, and the poor
fellow gave in and called off the strike."'

"I should think the strikers might sometimes get out of hand," said
Montague.

"Sometimes they do," smiled the other. "There is a regular procedure
for that case. Then you hire detectives and start violence, and call
out the militia and put the strike leaders into jail."

Montague could think of nothing to say to that. The programme seemed to
be complete.

"You see," the Major continued, earnestly, "I'm advising you as a
friend, and I'm taking the point of view of a man who has money in his
pocket. I've had some there always, but I've had to work hard to keep
it there. All my life I've been surrounded by people who wanted to do
me good; and the way they wanted to do it was to exchange my real money
for pieces of paper which they'd had printed with fancy scroll-work and
eagles and flags. Of course, if you want to look at the thing from the
other side, why, then the invention is most ingenious, and trade is
booming just now, and this is a great country, and merit is all you
need in it--and everything else is just as it ought to be. It makes all
the difference in the world, you know, whether a man is buying a horse
or selling him!"

Montague had observed with perplexity that such incendiary talk as this
was one of the characteristics of people in these lofty altitudes. It
was one of the liberties acco