And on that evening of many adventures another element was introduced into the already disturbed life of the community. At the corner of Main and McKinley Streets and just beyond the place where three old buildings were being torn down to make room for the building of a new hotel, appeared a man who climbed upon a box and attacked, not the piece work prices at the corn-cutting machine plant, but the whole system that built and maintained factories where the wage scale of the workmen could be fixed by the whim or necessity of one man or a group of men. As the man on the box talked, the workmen in the crowd who were of American birth began to shake their heads. They went to one side and gathering in groups discussed the stranger's words. “I tell you what,” said a little old workman, pulling nervously at his graying mustache, “I'm on strike and I'm for sticking out until Steve Hunter and Tom Butterworth fire Ed Hall, but I don't like this kind of talk. I'll tell you what that man's doing. He's attacking our Government, that's what he's doing.” The workmen went off to their homes grumbling. The Government was to them a sacred thing, and they did not fancy having their demands for a better wage scale confused by the talk of anarchists and socialists. Many of the laborers of Bidwell were sons and grandsons of pioneers who had opened up the country where the great sprawling towns were now growing into cities. They or their fathers had fought in the great Civil War. During boyhood they had breathed a reverence for government out of the very air of the towns. The great men of whom the school-books talked had all been connected with the Government. In Ohio there had been Garfield, Sherman, McPherson the fighter and others. From Illinois had come Lincoln and Grant. For a time the very ground of the mid-American country had seemed to spurt forth great men as now it was spurting forth gas and oil. Government had justified itself in the men it had produced. And now there had come among them men who had no reverence for government. What a speaker for the first time dared say openly on the streets of Bidwell, had already been talked in the shops. The new men, the foreigners coming from many lands, had brought with them strange doctrines. They began to make acquaintances among the American workmen. “Well,” they said, “you've had great men here; no doubt you have; but you're getting a new kind of great men now. These new men are not born out of people. They're being born out of capital. What is a great man? He's one who has the power. Isn't that a fact? Well, you fellows here have got to find out that nowadays power comes with the possession of money. Who are the big men of this town?--not some lawyer or politician who can make a good speech, but the men who own the factories where you have to work. Your Steve Hunter and Tom Butterworth are the great men of this town.”