Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; City and town life -- Fiction; Coal mines and mining -- Pennsylvania -- Fiction; Labor leaders -- Fiction
On the day of the great demonstration, when McGregor's power over the
minds and the bodies of the men of labour sent hundreds of thousands
marching and singing in the streets, there was one man who was untouched
by the song of labour expressed in the threshing of feet. David Ormsby
had in his quiet way thought things out. He expected that the new
impetus given to solidity in the ranks of labour would make trouble for
him and his kind, that it would express itself finally in strikes and
in wide-spread industrial disturbance. He was not worried. In the end
he thought that the silent patient power of money would bring his people
the victory. On that day he did not go to his office but in the morning
stayed in his own room thinking of McGregor and of his daughter. Laura
Ormsby was out of the city but Margaret was at home. David believed
he had measured accurately the power of McGregor over her mind but
occasional doubts came to him. “Well the time has come to have it out
with her,” he decided. “I must reassert my ascendency over her mind.
The thing that is going on here is really a struggle of minds. McGregor
differs from other leaders of labour as I differ from most leaders of
the forces of money. He has brains. Very well. I shall meet him on that
level. Then, when I have made Margaret think as I think, she will return
to me.”
* * * * *
When he was still a small manufacturer in the Wisconsin town David
had been in the habit of driving out in the evening with his daughter.
During the drives he had been almost a lover in his attentions to the
child and now when he thought of the forces at work within her he was
convinced that she was still a child. Early in the afternoon he had a
carriage brought to the door and drove off with her to the city. “She
will want to see the man in the height of his power. If I am right in
thinking that she is still under the influence of his personality there
will be a romantic desire for that.
“I will give her the chance,” he thought proudly. “In this struggle I
ask no quarter from him and shall not make the common mistake of parents
in such cases. She is fascinated by the figure he has made of himself.
Showy men who stand out from the crowd have that power. She is still
under his influence. Why else her constant distraction and her want of
interest in other things? Now I will be with her when the man is most
powerful, when he shows to the greatest advantage, and then I will make
my fight for her. I will point out to her another road, the road along
which the real victors in life must learn to travel.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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