* Wall Street—­so named from a street in ancient New York, where was situated the stock exchange, and where the irrational organization of society permitted underhanded manipulation of all the industries of the country.

The captains of industry had turned upon the middle class.  The employers’ associations, that had helped the captains of industry to tear and rend labor, were now torn and rent by their quondam allies.  Amidst the crashing of the middle men, the small business men and manufacturers, the trusts stood firm.  Nay, the trusts did more than stand firm.  They were active.  They sowed wind, and wind, and ever more wind; for they alone knew how to reap the whirlwind and make a profit out of it.  And such profits!  Colossal profits!  Strong enough themselves to weather the storm that was largely their own brewing, they turned loose and plundered the wrecks that floated about them.  Values were pitifully and inconceivably shrunken, and the trusts added hugely to their holdings, even extending their enterprises into many new fields—­and always at the expense of the middle class.

Thus the summer of 1912 witnessed the virtual death-thrust to the middle class.  Even Ernest was astounded at the quickness with which it had been done.  He shook his head ominously and looked forward without hope to the fall elections.

“It’s no use,” he said.  “We are beaten.  The Iron Heel is here.  I had hoped for a peaceable victory at the ballot-box.  I was wrong.  Wickson was right.  We shall be robbed of our few remaining liberties; the Iron Heel will walk upon our faces; nothing remains but a bloody revolution of the working class.  Of course we will win, but I shudder to think of it.”

And from then on Ernest pinned his faith in revolution.  In this he was in advance of his party.  His fellow-socialists could not agree with him.  They still insisted that victory could be gained through the elections.  It was not that they were stunned.  They were too cool-headed and courageous for that.  They were merely incredulous, that was all.  Ernest could not get them seriously to fear the coming of the Oligarchy.  They were stirred by him, but they were too sure of their own strength.  There was no room in their theoretical social evolution for an oligarchy, therefore the Oligarchy could not be.

“We’ll send you to Congress and it will be all right,” they told him at one of our secret meetings.

“And when they take me out of Congress,” Ernest replied coldly, “and put me against a wall, and blow my brains out—­what then?”

“Then we’ll rise in our might,” a dozen voices answered at once.

“Then you’ll welter in your gore,” was his retort.  “I’ve heard that song sung by the middle class, and where is it now in its might?”

CHAPTER XI

THE GREAT ADVENTURE

Mr. Wickson did not send for father.  They met by chance on the ferry-boat to San Francisco, so that the warning he gave father was not premeditated.  Had they not met accidentally, there would not have been any warning.  Not that the outcome would have been different, however.  Father came of stout old Mayflower* stock, and the blood was imperative in him.