Wilson had not exaggerated the matter. The white plague gained on undernourished men, their lungs rotted with underground damp and dust; on anemic wives and mothers; on starved shadows of children and feebly crying babies. Each death piled higher their sullen hatred of the company. The overcoated deputies boasted of their huge feeding, and treated with growing insolence the wives and daughters of the men. Powder was being laid for another explosion, in spite of Dawson's frantic efforts to keep the strikers steady. A worried meeting of the directors of the companies was called to consider the continuing deadlock. "That man Dawson is the trouble," Paul announced briefly to the chairman. "Get rid of him, and the backbone of the strike is permanently dislocated. He's a born mischief-stirrer." "Pity he can't be hung...." "... Or tarred and feathered." Judge Florence reminisced from the head of the table: "In '68 we knew what to do with such riff-raff." "It can be handled," Dudley Randolph inserted blandly. "He isn't popular with many of the men, as it is. The local unions despise him. Let me have the matter ... investigated. He won't trouble us long." "Good." "Your son is a bit troublesome too, Mr. Judson," confessed Henry Tuttle. "Too bad he should be tangled up in it. This thing's got to be settled; with these new English orders, it's suicide for us to withhold any force that can stop this criminal strike." Kane looked sideways at Paul Judson, who kept his eyes on the table. The satellite spoke up uncertainly. "I'll tell you something--privately--about him, that can stop his talking ... if we must use it." Tuttle nodded, after a glance at the inscrutable downcast gaze of the vice-president. "Is there anyone else?" said the chairman. "That lawyer, Spence?" "No," said Tuttle, decidedly. "He's a lawyer; a lawyer thinks as his clients do," and he smiled acidly. "Bivens, of the _Voice of Labor_, Bowden, Pooley, employ him. He won't risk losing his livelihood ... or go further than they will." "It's time, Henry," Paul addressed the corporation counsel, "to go ahead with our scheme. We've won the election; minor matters can be--er, investigated, or otherwise handled. But as long as the strike lasts, we are losing; our profit sheets show it. First your move, then ... the militia. I advised it long ago, you remember." The meeting closed with the uncomfortable, and frequent, impression that, as usual, Paul Judson's sight alone had visioned correctly future troubles--and their remedies. The last week of November saw the playing of the withheld card. Hurrying clerks of Tuttle and Mabry served on each houseowner the final notice of eviction, granted suddenly by County Judge Little.