Now the shouting swells into a general outburst of enthusiasm. “Trueman! Trueman!” are the words that reach the ears of the men at the foot of the terrace.

It is not the militia then, that is swooping down upon the people to crush them for demanding the body of their dead; it is not the Pinkertons. It is the champion of the people come to their aid!

Breathless from the three miles he has traversed at a run, Trueman sinks exhausted on the stone steps in front of Purdy’s house.

The excited leaders cluster about him and tell him of the events that have transpired during the afternoon and early evening. “It was four o’clock when we first heard that Metz had shot and killed Purdy. The news spread to all the mills and furnaces,” explains Chester, one of the yard hands of the local depot.

“Some one started the story that the police had been instructed to bury Metz secretly for fear there would be trouble if he was given a public funeral. You know there was a note found on him which said he had killed Purdy for the good of the workingmen.”

“Yes,” breaks in O’Neil, “the folks all over town said they were bound to see Metz given decent burial. A committee came to me and asked if I would head a procession to come here and demand the body. We came and were refused it. Then we broke into the house and got Metz’s body.

“Some one started the cry, ’Find Purdy’s body and bury it in Potter’s field!’ This set the crowd crazy. I could not prevent their seizing it.”

Harvey Trueman listens to the stories of the men. He realizes that no half-measure can be proposed. It will either be necessary for him to acquiesce to their plan to throw the multi-millionaire’s body into the Potter’s field or else oppose them to the last point.

With the knowledge of the various events that have occurred he can estimate the effect that such an act of violence will have upon the country. Should the people of the other mining districts hear that the miners of Wilkes-Barre have risen in revolt against their masters it may precipitate a general uprising.

The deaths of the leading financiers and manufacturers throughout the country have made a panic inevitable. If to this is added rioting, the country will be plunged into a state of veritable anarchy. Why should not Wilkes-Barre be the centre of this national movement for a peaceable solution of the question of the rights of labor? One clear note of confidence sounded amid the general babel may serve as the signal for rational action.

Reasoning thus, he determines to make a grand effort to convert the crowd to moderation.

As he passed through the larger cities on his way to the town he heard that the people of Wilkes-Barre were up in arms. The militia have been ordered out and will arrive at any moment. The Coal and Iron Police are crossing the mountain and will show no mercy to the miners. If they find the people engaged in mischief, the story of past massacres will be repeated.

“Come with me,” says Trueman to his lieutenants. They move quickly up the steps to the piazza of the magnate’s palace.

Here Trueman turns to the crowd.

The cheering and shouting has been kept up during the two or three minutes that he has been resting. The people have again massed themselves about the grounds surrounding the house.

“Speech! speech!” they cry.

Trueman raises his hands before his face and lowers them in a sign for silence. The buzz of the thousands is instantly hushed. In a clear full voice that increases in volume as he proceeds, he begins his never-to-be-forgotten oration.

“Women and men of Wilkes-Barre:

“That you are; testified in claiming the body of the man who sacrificed his life that you might live as freemen in this land of equal rights none can deny; that you should be moved to seek revenge upon the body of the man who has of all men been the most intolerant, tyrannical and merciless to you and the hundreds whom death has claimed, during the past twenty years, is nothing more than human.

“I believe, as have the philosophers and statesmen of all ages, that the people can do no wrong; for the voice of the people is, in fact, the voice of God.”

As these words fall upon the ears of the multitude a great shout is given. Men wave their hats; women flutter their vari-colored shawls, which serve them as headgear; the sense of righteousness is awakened in them.

“With an abiding faith in the justice of the Almighty, you have bided your time; tolerance has ever been your actuating principle; reason has dictated every appeal that you have made to your masters.

“To-day you feel that the hour for your deliverance has come; that the fetters have fallen from your wrists. You stand here as emancipated men of a great nation. That your hearts should be filled with rejoicing, shows that you are alive to the importance of the occasion.

“Metz, who this day sacrificed his life for you, is worthy of your admiration. He is one of the world’s heroes, one of its martyrs. It is for you to say if he shall have a monument worthy of his memorable act.

“The peoples of all ages have had their heroes and their martyrs. The progress of the world is marked by the monuments that have commemorated the deeds of these men.

“It remains for you to erect a monument for the martyr of the Twentieth Century.

“Shall it be of brass or of enduring granite?

“Either of these would be a prey to the long lapse of time.

“You may choose as a monument, a mound that shall endure as long as the world rolls through space; you may convert those piles of brick and iron on the further side of the river into a mass of ruins; you may set the indignant torch to this fine line of palaces.

“Whatever you do you may be sure that your example will be the signal for your fellow workmen throughout the land.”

“Burn down the breakers!” cries a thousand voices.

“Those breakers as they stand to-day are fit only to be destroyed,” continues Trueman.

“They have consumed a pound of human flesh for every ton of coal that fed them. They have afforded money to a few Plutocrats, with which to satisfy the rapacious desires of greed; they have been the source of revenue that made these palaces possible. Those breakers have given you in return for your long days of toil, only enough to keep life in your bodies; they have bound you to this spot with fetters stronger than those of steel. If you should flee from this bondage you would find starvation awaiting you on the roads.”

These sentences have an electrical effect upon the audience. The passive temperaments of the men and women are being quickened.

“Should you destroy the breakers and furnaces, and these homes of your oppressors, your own losses would outweigh those of the millionaires.

“Yet your acts would be justifiable.

“Do not move till I have delivered the message I bear.

“I come to you with tidings that will make the blood in your veins flow faster in a delirium of joy.

“I come to tell you that your fellow workmen in every state in this Republic are to-day emancipated, even as you yourselves have been. The sword has been wrested from the hands of tyrants, and has been placed in the hands of the people.

“The centuries that have come and gone since Christianity was first preached have seen the sword turned upon the humble, the meek, the worthy. Now it is to be turned upon the craven few who have fattened at the expense of the many.

“At the very hour when Melz sent Gorman Purdy to his doom, avenging angels, disguised as men, were abroad in our land weeding out the seed of iniquity.

“In San Diego, California, Senator Warwick was killed by the hand of a man who, when he had rid the earth of the most avaricious man who ever worked a mine, completed the chapter by taking his own life.

“Henceforth men will not slave in the mines of California or elsewhere for the sole benefit of misers. The miner will enjoy the fruits of his labor. He will make significant the words ’The laborer is worthy of his hire.’

“In St. Louis at the same hour, the owner of the grain elevators, in which is stored the crops of the great plains, there to be kept until the needs of the people shall place an exorbitant price upon every bushel, was smothered to death in the hold of one of his own ships. With him died the martyr who had succeeded in bringing a just retribution upon the head of an insatiate oppressor.

“Henceforth bread shall not be made a product of speculation. The hungry mouths of women and children shall not go unfed that the stock broker and the grain speculator may amass fortunes.

“The Cotton King of Massachusetts, who has kept men and women out of employment, and in their stead has worked children in his mills, was killed in his office as he refused the fifth appeal for an advance of three cents a day in the pay of the six thousand half-grown children, most of them girls, who tended his looms and spindles for pauper wages.

“The man who thus abolished for all time the further slaughter of innocents, went to eternity with the dragon he had slain. The mill owner went to expiate his sins; the martyr to receive his reward.

“And in New York, the city which I have just left, the ruler of the Nation’s money, the President of the Consolidated Banker’s Exchange, died in a pot of molten lead which he had been brought to hope would be turned into gold under the touch of an alchemist. The lust of gold that in life had been his only incentive, proved the means of his undoing.

“Bond syndicates will no longer be formed to corner the people’s money, that millions may be squeezed from the public treasury.

“My fellow-countrymen, this is indeed a great day.

“The full story cannot be told you at a single meeting.

“Know that you are once again free men, not in name only, but in reality; that your children will never suffer the degradation through which you have passed.

“The story of your deliverance you will soon know in its entirety. To-night I can only give you a summary.”

“Tell us all! Tell us everything!” thunder the astonished masses. They forget Metz and Purdy in the presence of this greater news.

“I have only just learned the true facts of this remarkable movement. The representatives of the people who met in Chicago six months ago to formulate plans for the protection of labor, found that little could be accomplished against the combined wealth of the Trusts.

“A permanent committee of forty was elected to carry out the purposes of the convention. For several weeks the committee occupied itself in routine work. Its sub-committees reported that they could make no headway.

“Then at one of the meetings a committeeman named Nevins proposed that inasmuch as the committee had to deal with a wily and unscrupulous foe, it constitute itself into a secret body.

“At the first secret meeting he submitted the plan which was carried into effect to-day.

“It required that every one of the forty men should pledge himself to rid the world of one of its chief tyrants. He proved to the satisfaction of the men that by so doing they would be securing the blessings of liberty and happiness to mankind.

“He counselled them to strip their acts of any semblance of selfishness by sacrificing themselves with their vanquished enemies.

“At this moment the news is being flashed around the world that the forty tyrants and the forty martyrs have been gathered to their Maker in a single day.

“Again is the message that was first uttered in the Garden of Eden sent to the world: ‘Labor is the God-given heritage of man.’ Nor shall anyone keep man from his inheritance.

“To you, men and women of this Trust-ridden community, is given the opportunity to reap the full benefit of to-day’s atonement.

“That you should waste your efforts on the mere gratification of revenge, was but natural when you did but know of the result of one deed in the plan of emancipation. Then it might have been enough that you should destroy the breakers and tear down these palaces.

“But now that you have heard of the National blow that has been struck for you, all thoughts of violence must be swept from your minds. Now you must realize that a greater triumph awaits you than to watch the flames lick up the property of your tormentors.

“That property is now yours!

“These breakers, furnaces, factories; these houses, the mines beneath the earth’s surface, the lands above them, all, all, are yours. It needs but for you to take possession of your own; for you to enjoy the full measure of the profit of your labor.

“Return to your homes, filled with rejoicing that you have not been called upon to stain your hands with blood; that your rights have been restored through the sacrifice of forty men to whom you and your posterity shall give immortal fame.

“You will have to work as hirelings only until you yourselves place your government in the hands of trusted men of your own selection.

“Fraud will no longer seek for public office; avarice will no longer scheme to gain possession of the world’s wealth for the satisfaction of inordinate desires; inhumanity will no longer vaunt itself in our mills, our mines, our fields, for to-day the edict has been sent to the world that death awaits those who shall again seek to enslave labor. There will be forty martyrs ready for another sacrifice. Who will dare to be their foe?

“Choose your leaders with care; see that they are sincere in their determination to work your will.

“When this is done the hovels you now live in will be supplanted by decent homes; the poor food you now eat will be kept for your swine; your children will grow up to manhood and womanhood without having had their minds and bodies stunted by premature toil.

“A Republic of universal happiness and comfort will be yours.

“Such a Republic will be a monument to endure for all time to the memory of Carl Metz and his thirty-nine co-workers, to the honor of yourselves and to the security to future generations of the liberty that this Republic will afford all men.

“Pick up the body of Metz, and I shall help you bury it. I leave the body of Purdy for whomsoever may be inclined to care for it.

“Men of Wilkes-Barre, again I tell you, to-day you have been delivered from serfdom. Act as men, not as brutes.

“Choose some one to be your leader and let him direct you until to each of you is given the opportunity to vote for the laws that you may desire.

“With blare of trumpet and with tap of drum
Barbaric nations pay to Mars his due,
When victory crowns their arms. To him they sue
For privilege to war, though Mercy’s thumb
Bids them as victors, rather to be mum,
And show a noble spirit to the foe;
To vaunt not at their fellow-creature’s woe:
O’er victory only doth the savage thrum!
They conquer twice who from excess abstain;
The gentle nation that is forced to war,
In triumph seeks to hide, and put afar
All vestiges of carnage, and restore
Peace in the land, that men may turn again
To worthy toil, as they were wont before.

“Labour is your heritage; return to it.”

He ends in a tumult of enthusiasm.

The multitude has been led from one emotion to another with such rapidity that they are fairly bewildered.

Two things only are clear in all minds. Trueman, the man who has become their most faithful champion, assures them that now they are to be free; that they are to be made the sharers in the wealth they create; he also tells them to select a leader.

By a spontaneous decision Trueman is the name that comes to every lip.

“Trueman! Trueman! You are the man to lead us.”

The cry “Trueman!” sweeps through the crowd. It rises in an acclaim the like of which has never been heard before.

Men rush toward the orator and pick him off his feet. He is placed on the shoulders of the stalwart miners whom his eloquence and logic has won, and is borne in triumph at the head of the procession that goes to bury Carl Metz.

The millionaire’s corpse lies on the steps of his late mansion. Clinging to it in the desperation of outraged womanhood, is Ethel. She had crept from the house while the eloquence of Trueman’s words held the mob enraptured.

As Trueman is being borne in triumph down the steps his eyes rest on the terrible picture presented by the dead magnate and his daughter. In an instant the champion of justice forms a resolve. His heart and mind have a common impulse Purdy’s body must be saved from desecration; it must be buried with that of Metz.

“Pick up that body,” he orders of the men who surround him. “It must be buried with Metz.”

In his voice there is a ring of command that none dares to question. As the miners stoop to lift the corpse Ethel utters a cry of anguish that pierces the hearts of even the most hardened men. It is the wail of humanity protesting against anarchy.

By a vigorous effort Trueman frees himself from the miners who are carrying him on their shoulders. He is at the side of Ethel in a moment.

“Do not be frightened. I am here and will protect you and your father’s remains.”

His words are spoken in a loud decisive tone and reach the ears of the crowd that press around the corpse.

Yielding to his indomitable will Ethel arises. She wavers an instant; then stretches out her arms toward her protector.

Trueman seizes the delicate hands and draws her to his side.

“You are safe in my charge,” he whispers to her soothingly. “Come with me and you shall witness your father’s burial. If it is done now the mob will be pacified and will cease to clamor for vengeance.”

Ethel walks by his side in silence.

The magnate’s body is picked up and placed on the improvised litter of boards which serves to support the body of Metz. In silence the procession moves on toward the town.

The battle for moderation is won.