This was “some” beginning and when the Chairman went on in the racy style in which all public meetings delight, to give his opinion of the U. P. and the inevitable result of government by newspaper, the first fruits of which the country had already reaped, his words fell as seed on a prepared soil. John Endor’s speech was in a different key. His platform manner had not the breadth, the force, the abounding humor of the Mayor’s, but it did not lack “punch.” There was a quality of voice, bearing and gesture which lent to a deliberate, almost leisurely choice of phrase, a moral conviction that drove every word home. The eye of the seer and the fervor of the prophet when under the discipline of the will seldom fail in their impact upon an audience of average people which often has a flair for just those qualities in which it knows itself to be lacking. John Endor’s first meeting produced a mighty reverberation. It was heard all over the City. But it was a mere prelude to the fight. And what a fight! The “graft” that Sir Munt had feared came powerfully into play. That amazing organization, the U. P., had its unseen tentacles fixed very firmly in the vitals of the nation. It was the biggest Trust in the world’s history, beginning with the Government itself and filtering down through every department of commerce and public life to the smallest retail dealer and the humblest newsboy. For their interest and good will it had something substantial to barter. The Universal Press was very popular. In the art of saying the direct opposite of what it did it had little to learn. It hurled the thunders of Jove against high prices, the Capitalist Ring, the extravagance of Government departments and oppressive taxation, but all its private acts, under the rose, were directed to the fostering of the very things it denounced in language so fiery. Behind everything was its fixed aim that the many should bleed for the few. Lip service to democracy was a profitable and delightfully simple game; the many, of its very nature, is easy to gull. Not having learned to think for itself, the word of its newspapers is taken for gospel. And should trouble arise, a dole from the pocket of somebody else can be relied on as a rule to repair the mischief. So great was the power of “the machine,” when it came into play, that to the people of most experience it was very doubtful indeed whether it was humanly possible to defeat “the Ring.” The U. P. propaganda was subtle and it was all-pervading. Its subscribers were reckoned by the million, and, in return for countless benefits, for the most part quite illusory, a modified code of trade-union regulations was imposed upon its members. Some genius of Universe Building had devised a Roll of Good Citizenship. A certificate on vellum was granted to all the world and his wife, to whom in return for divers pledges, “the due observance of which could not fail to be of immense value to the State,” divers privileges were offered.