Memories of a wife and three babies at home, dependent for bread upon his own earnings at the forge, flashing upon the mind of Colonel Harris, sweetened his spirit and softened his voice, so that he spoke briefly and kindly to the committee, repeating, however, what his manager had told the committee at ten o'clock, viz., "that the present bad condition of the steel market would not permit the company to grant the advance of wages they asked." The committee, aware of the large profits of former years, sullenly retired, and after the company's decision had been communicated to the anxious thousands below, the employees of the Harrisville Iron & Steel Co. slowly returned to their homes. The mayor ordered his chief of police to dispatch immediately in patrol wagons fifty men to the steel works, to guard the property and keep the peace. After the committee retired, the mayor said, "Well, Colonel Harris, what will be the outcome?" "Mr. Mayor, we cannot foretell anything. You never know what workingmen in their lodges will do. There, as a rule, the 'Walking delegate' and a few agitators rule with despotic power. If a workman, whose large family forces him to take conservative views, dares in his lodge to suggest peaceful measures, an agitator rises at once in indignation and demands that traitors to the cause of labor be expelled. This throttles freedom of action in many labor unions, so that often what appears on the surface to be the unanimous action of the members of workingmen's leagues, is but the exercise of despotic power by a few men who have nothing to lose, and whose salary is paid from the slim purses of honest labor. "Usually those who talk much and loudly think little and unwisely, and the opposite to their advice is safest to follow. The greatest need to-day in most of our labor organizations is wise leadership, and this will result when the best element in the labor lodges asserts itself. "The despotism of ill-advised labor is to be dreaded by civilization more than the reign of intelligent capital. This is especially true in the United States, where under wise laws, wealth cannot be entailed, and where most large fortunes soon disappear among the heirs. "A simple pair of shears illustrates perfectly the relationship that capital and labor should sustain each to the other. Capital is one blade of the shears, and labor is the other blade; either blade without the other is useless, and the two blades are useless unless the rivet is in place. Confidence is to capital and labor what the rivet is to the two blades. The desideratum to-day in the business world is full and abiding confidence between capital and labor." Thus speaking Colonel Harris and his friends left the mayor and returned to their homes. * * * * *