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the rest of the world, they failed to recognise the fact that money
was a mere counter in wealth and not wealth itself. To a large extent,
thrift was abandoned and while deposits in the savings banks grew in
volume, the depositors failed to recognise the fact that the value of
the dollar had decreased fifty per cent. Already the reaction from all
this had begun to set in. Nervousness paralysed the great financial
institutions. The fiat went forth "No more money for industrial
enterprises. No more advances on wholesale stocks." The order was issued
"Retrench. Take your losses, unload your stocks." This men were slow to
do, and while all agreed upon the soundness of the policy, each waited
for the other to begin.

Through the month of April anxiety, fear and discontent began to haunt
the minds of business men. In the labour world the High Command was
quick to sense the approach of a crisis and began to make preparations
for the coming storm. The whole industrial and commercial world
gradually crystallised into its two opposing classes. A subsidised press
began earnestly to demand lower cost in productions retrenchment in
expenditure, a cut in labour costs, a general and united effort to meet
the inevitable burden of deflation.

On the other hand, an inspired press began to raise an outcry against
the increasing cost of living, to point out the effect of the house
famine upon the income of the working man, and to sound a warning as to
the danger and folly of any sudden reduction in the wage scale.

Increased activity in the ranks of organised labour began to be
apparent. Everywhere the wild and radical element was gaining in
influence and in numbers, and the spirit of faction and internecine
strife became rampant.

It was due to the dominating forcefulness of McNish, the leader of
the moderates, that the two factions in the allied unions had been
consolidated, and a single policy agreed upon. His whole past had been
a preparation for just a crisis as the present. His wide reading, his
shrewd practical judgment, his large experience in labour movements in
the Old Land, gave him a position of commanding influence which enabled
him to dominate the executives and direct their activities. His sudden
and unexplained acceptance of the more radical program won for him an
enthusiastic following of the element which had hitherto recognised the
leadership of Brother Simmons. Day and night, with a zeal that never
tired, he labo