In the fifth week of the struggle a new element entered into the situation. Hitherto the management of the strike had been in the hands of labor union officials. They had held their men well in check, there had been little disorder and no rioting. But, from the inception of the trouble, organizers and leaders of the radical wing of the workers had labored among the idle men, quietly, insidiously, persistently, successfully. Now, having gained a firm foothold, they assumed management of the strike, and dictated to the company their own terms for reëmployment regardless of the demands made by union officials. Not only at the Barriscale works, but throughout the city, they made proselytes, and trouble. The discontented, the unthinking, the reckless, the foreign-born and unnaturalized, gathered under their leadership. Their logic was convincing, their philosophy alluring, their promises glittering; indeed, if they were to be believed, the day of labor’s redemption in Fairweather was at hand. The workers had only to persist in their demands and to block all resumption of work by any one until those demands were met, and victory was sure to rest on their banners. Into this new, more aggressive, more bitter campaign, Hugo Donatello plunged with all of his accustomed vigor and enthusiasm. He believed in his cause. He did not see the ugly side of his propaganda. He was not at heart a criminal, he was a dreamer. And he dreamed that if the principle of the solidarity of labor, the international brotherhood of all who toiled, the distribution of all wealth to those who earned it by their toil, could once be established in this inland city of America, the benefit and glory of it would spread from this as a center, across the continent, across the ocean to bring peace to war-torn Europe; and the name of Hugo Donatello as chief propagandist of the new-old philosophy would be acclaimed throughout the civilized world. He had not yet made a complete convert of Halpert McCormack. For while the young lieutenant sympathized deeply with his humanitarian motives, and, in a general way, with his philosophy of economics, he was not yet ready to approve of the methods by which the economic millennium was to be ushered in. Complete disarmament, confiscation of private property, abolition of restraining laws, sabotage and violence, these things were not to Hal’s liking; in his view the end did not quite justify the means. But, under the eloquence of Donatello’s logic, under the power of his persuasion, under the magic force of his enthusiasm, this young dreamer and reformer was drifting ever and ever nearer to the rocks and shoals of that radicalism upon which, if finally and completely stranded, he was sure to be wrecked.