Nevins is the stage manager; he has chosen the settings; has assembled the caste.  Now it is his duty to give the signal for the curtain to rise.  As with the dramatists of old, he decides to introduce his production with a prologue.

Advancing to the centre of the semi-circle he begins the explanation of his plan of salvation.

Is it destined to end as many thousands have done, in miserable failure?

“What I propose will strike you as the ravings of a man who has lost his last grain of sense,” he begins.  “Yet I am prepared to demonstrate that the plan is not only feasible, but that it is the only one which can be put into execution and carried through to a successful issue.  The greed and the power of the Trust Magnates is insatiable.  They will not make the least concession to the people.  The day for arbitration is at an end; the time for the people to act is at hand.

“Every means of defence against the Trusts has been absorbed by them.  What are we to do, surrender meekly, or fight?

“History shows us how terrible a thing war is—­especially revolutionary war.  Now, I have thought out a plan by which war and its attendant calamity can be averted and the people be reinstated in their power.

“There is not a man here who would not enlist to-day at the call for troops.  Many of you have already proven yourselves patriots by your service in the field and on the ships of the United States.

“Now, it is not always necessary to be on a battlefield in order to show courage.  Men can be heroes in the humble walks of life.

“What I want of you is a pledge that you will stand by me to put out of existence the deadly foes of this country.  I want you to swear that you will not flinch when the moment comes for you to fight, even to the death.

“Are any of you unwilling to swear that you would fight the foes of our country to the bitter end?”

No one speaks.  The excited condition of the speaker impresses the men strangely.  They do not know just how to take him.

“I shall at the next meeting name forty men, each of whom has been an enemy of the United States; each of whom has seen the growth of his private fortune built upon the ruin of homes; each of whom has opposed every measure for the alleviation of the condition of the masses of the people.

“Many of them are known to you as offenders of national notoriety.  You have mentioned them in your recital of grievances.

“You all know of the bloody history of the Czar of the Lakes, Anthony Marcus.  The graves of the murdered sailors and longshoremen are a sufficient indictment against him.

“Need I tell you of the horrors that have been daily perpetrated by the ruthless oil magnate, Savage, in my own State of Pennsylvania?

“Is the right to check competition by the use of the torch to be conceded to him?  Is murder for the sake of commercial advantage to be sanctioned as our national policy?