Governor Tennant--his pet name among friends and enemies alike was "Whiskey-barrel Tennant"--dismissed the committee with a few curt platitudes about law and order. When they reached Adamsville, they found the shack colony sacked, the strikers and their dependents either jailed or scattered. The militia had done a thorough job. Wearily Pelham dragged himself to the meeting at Arlington Hall. Jack Bowden, of the local miners' organization, who always came like a bird of carrion at evil news, secured the floor, and moved that the strike committee be discharged and the strike settled on whatever terms could be secured. "They've bashed in our heads," he said vigorously. "Do we want 'em to cut our throats as well?" There was no John Dawson to reply to him. From many groups of the strikers came discouraged support for the motion. Most of the old tried unionists saw nothing to be gained in wasting energy on a dead struggle. "Makes mighty little difference now," Pelham whispered hopelessly to Serrano, seated in explosive agitation beside him. "_You'll_ never quit!" "Not quit.... But start a newer fight, with some chance of winning it." One violent industrial unionist demanded the floor, and pounded out that the strike must continue, with a general tie-up of every trade, organized and unorganized, in Adamsville. "One big union!" he continued to shout, even after the ready ushers had pushed him into his seat. "That's the sort of fool advice," Jack Bowden said, "that's lost this strike. For it is lost; and I'll tell you who's lost it. Not the company, nor Paul Judson's money, not his murdering gunmen; but----" and his lean arm pointed straight to Pelham, "but crazy radicals in and out of the union movement; lounge Socialists, lemonade trade-unionists, men who claim to be with us, but were born with scab hearts. It's them and their kind have led to this smash-up. And the sooner we reckernize it, the better!" There was a tossing roar of applause at this. The crowd, Pelham grasped at once, was ready to quit, and only wanted someone to blame for the failure.