Nevins is absent on his visit to Trueman.  He has arranged with Professor Talbot and Stahl to delay the meeting and put the members through another test.

The proposition is argued anew.

It is explained that each man is called upon to make an equal sacrifice; that there is no difference in declaring one’s patriotism by enlisting in the army or navy to fight a common foe, or in being one of a numerically small and intrinsically strong army of forty.  The Trusts and Monopolies have proven a menace to the people, and can consequently be looked upon as a foe to the government, to be dealt with accordingly.

A unanimous decision to carry out the plan is reached.

At this juncture Nevins appears.

He asks permission to proceed with the reading of the list of the proscribed.  He is recognized and begins his startling speech.

“In the lapse of years one is apt to forget the springs from which the wells of human action are fed; it is commonly the lot of man to sink into a state of mind that is at once unreceptive and unretentive.  The result is that at the age of thirty he finds himself incapable of grasping new and difficult conceptions.  This is the reason why so many injustices are permitted to exist in the world.  Men in their youth are thoughtless; in their mature and old age they are neglectful or willingly negligent.

“A degree of success or a degree of failure has a like tendency to blunt the finer qualities of the mind.  A man with a competency will not take the troubles of his fellow man to heart.  The unfortunate man who has not the wherewithal to support his family is in no position to take the initiative in a labor movement or in a political revolution.

“So the work devolves upon the few men who have the means and the inclination to strive for the betterment of humanity.

“Yet even these men are not always capable of judging events by their true proportions and relations.

“Advancement is the one thing that reformers fear.  The ends they would attain are almost always reconstructive; they are never creative.”  Nevins utters these words with impressive emphasis.

“These remarks I have made by way of prelude to the matter I shall now proceed to discuss directly and earnestly.

“We are each and all convinced that the pernicious system of fostering monopolies that has been instituted in this country can have but one result, the undermining of our popular institutions, and in their place the substitution of moneyed Plutocracy.  This result is abhorrent to every true American.

“Now, there is no way to put an end to monopolies except by the people rising in their might and reassuming their own.

“The hypocritical advice of the leaders of the great universities, that the people ostracize the Magnates, has now ceased to satisfy the exigencies of the case.  What sort of ostracism would the President of a University endowed by the millions of a Magnate, propose to have enforced against his master?