Market Square in Remsen City was on the edge of the power quarter, was surrounded by cheap hotels, boarding houses and saloons.A few years before, the most notable citizens, market basket on arm, could have been seen three mornings in the week, making the rounds of the stalls and stands, both those in the open and those within the Market House.But customs had rapidly changed in Remsen City, and with the exception of a few old fogies only the poorer classes went to market.The masters of houses were becoming gentlemen, and the housewives were elevating into ladies--and it goes without saying that no gentleman and no lady would descend to a menial task even in private, much less in public.
Market Square had even become too common for any but the inferior meetings of the two leading political parties.Only the Workingmen's League held to the old tradition that a political meeting of the first rank could be properly held nowhere but in the natural assembling place of the people--their market.So, their first great rally of the campaign was billed for Market Square.And at eight o'clock, headed by a large and vigorous drum corps, the Victor Dorn cohorts at their full strength marched into the centre of the Square, where one of the stands had been transformed with flags, bunting and torches into a speaker's platform.A crowd of many thousands accompanied and followed the procession.Workingmen's League meetings were popular, even among those who believed their interests lay elsewhere.At League meetings one heard the plain truth, sometimes extremely startling plain truth.The League had no favors to ask of anybody, had nothing to conceal, was strongly opposed to any and all political concealments.Thus, its speakers enjoyed a freedom not usual in political speaking--and Dorn and his fellow-leaders were careful that no router, no exaggerator or well intentioned wild man of any kind should open his mouth under a league banner.THAT was what made the League so dangerous--and so steadily prosperous.
The chairman, Thomas Colman, the cooper, was opening the meeting in a speech which was an instance of how well a man of no platform talent can acquit himself when he believes something and believes it is his duty to convey it to his fellow-men.Victor Dorn, to be the fourth speaker and the orator of the evening, was standing at the rear of the platform partially concealed by the crowd of men and women leaders of the party grouped behind Colman.As always at the big formal demonstrations of the League, Victor was watching every move.This evening his anxiety was deeper than ever before.His trained political sagacity warned him that, as he had suggested to Selma, the time of his party's first great crisis was at hand.No movement could become formidable with out a life and death struggle, when its aim frankly was to snatch power from the dominant class and to place it where that class could not hope to prevail either by direct means of force or by its favorite indirect means of bribery.
What would Kelly do? What would be his stroke at the very life of the League?-- for Victor had measured Kelly and knew he was not one to strike until he could destroy.
Like every competent man of action, Victor had measured his own abilities, and had found that they were to be relied upon.But the contest between him and Kelly-- the contest in the last ditch--was so appallingly unequal.Kelly had the courts and the police, the moneyed class, the employers of labor, had the clergy and well-dressed respectability, the newspapers, all the customary arbiters of public sentiment.Also, he had the criminal and the semi-criminal classes.And what had the League?
The letter of the law, guaranteeing freedom of innocent speech and action, guaranteeing the purity of the ballot--no, not guaranteeing, but simply asserting those rights, and leaving the upholding of them to--Kelly's allies and henchmen! Also, the League had the power of between a thousand and fifteen hundred intelligent and devoted men and about the same number of women--a solid phalanx of great might, of might far beyond its numbers.
Finally, it had Victor Dorn.He had no mean opinion of his value to the movement; but he far and most modestly underestimated it.
The human way of rallying to an abstract principle is by way of a standard bearer--a man-- personality--a real or fancied incarnation of the ideal to be struggled for.And to the Workingmen's League, to the movement for conquering Remsen City for the mass of its citizens, Victor Dorn was that incarnation.
Kelly could use violence--violence disguised as law, violence candidly and brutally lawless.Victor Dorn could only use lawful means--clearly and cautiously lawful means.He must at all costs prevent the use of force against him and his party--must give Kelly no pretext for using the law lawlessly.If Kelly used force against him, whether the perverted law of the courts or open lawlessness, he must meet it with peace.If Kelly smote him on the right cheek he must give him the left to be smitten.
When the League could outvote Kelly, then--another policy, still of calmness and peace and civilization, but not so meek.But until the League could outvote Kelly, nothing but patient endurance.
Every man in the League had been drilled in this strategy.Every man understood--and to be a member of the League meant that one was politically educated.Victor believed in his associates as he believed in himself.Still, human nature was human nature.
If Kelly should suddenly offer some adroit outrageous provocation-- would the League be able to resist?
