“Cornell’s talking of letting full professors vote for a third of its board of trustees,” said a professor of engineering. “Wouldn’t it be better,” said Vida, “if you put yourselves in a position to compel such an elementary right as self-government, instead of waiting to have a third of it bestowed—perhaps?” “Certainly,” said the engineer. “The right is only secure if based on our own power to get and hold it.” “We ought to have got together last year when Brooks and Gleason were fired,” said Hastings. “Better late than never,” muttered Sanders. “We might save the next man.” “Yes,” said Searles of the French section, “but what some of us want to know is why we have not heard of this militant union. It’s all right in the right hands. But who’s responsible for the idea? When and where did it start? Whom can one write to about it? Why isn’t it represented in our own faculty?” Vida set her lips and looked at Clark and Guthrie. The iron was hot. Clark struck. “It started in this faculty last night,” he said. The attention of the group, which included two newspaper men, centred upon him. “I was one of those present.” There was a little thrill at the courage of his declaration. Vida loved him for it. “I was another,” said Professor Guthrie. Mrs. Guthrie caught his arm. “John!” she exclaimed beseechingly. The word filled the group with a sense of drama and danger. “As senior in that discussion,” said Guthrie, unshaken, “I regard it as my duty now to invite others who feel possibilities in a movement for freer government to meet and consider plans.” “When?” asked Searles promptly. “And where?” Two or three spoke at once. Mrs. Guthrie turned away despairingly and sank down in a theatre seat. The thing was going. “I suggest my rooms now,” said Clark. “I will join you there as soon as I have taken Mrs. Guthrie home,” said Guthrie. The footsteps of the pair echoed in the emptied auditorium as they went out. The college teachers asked Vida Martin to give them the benefit of her organizing experience, and nine of them went to Clark’s rooms. There two of them, one a specialist on the American revolution, cautiously declined to commit themselves to any action at that time, but the revolutionists increased their number from two to seven. They threshed their way through a lot of instinctive, irrational objections to formal organization, and planned to dragnet the faculty for members. In a few days, as things were going, they could make their position impregnable. That the organization they sought was essentially a union of their craft became so clear that a scorn of disguising names like league, association, and federation prevailed even against the statistician’s sarcastic suggestion that they dub themselves “Brain Workers, No. 1.”