The spokesman for the workmen expressed his thanks and arose to go, but Philip asked him to stay a few moments.  He wanted to know at first hand what the man’s representative fellows would do if the church should at any time decide to act after Philip’s plan.

“Well, to tell the truth, Mr. Strong, I don’t believe very many of them would join any church.”

“That is not the question.  Would they feel the church any more there than where it is now?”

“Yes, I honestly think they would.  They would come out to hear you.”

“Well, that would be something, to be sure,” replied Philip, smiling.  “But as to the wisdom of my plan—­how does it strike you on the whole?”

“I would like to see it done.  I don’t believe I shall, though.”

“Why?”

“Your church won’t agree to it.”

“Maybe they will in time.”

“I hope they will.  And yet let me tell you, Mr. Strong, if you succeeded in getting your church and people to come into the tenement district, you would find plenty of people there who wouldn’t go hear you.”

“I suppose that is so.  But oh, that we might do something!” Philip clasped his hand over his knee and gazed earnestly at the man opposite.  The man returned the gaze almost as earnestly.  It was the personification of the Church confronting the laboring man, each in a certain way asking the other, “What will the Church do?” And it was a noticeable fact that the minister’s look revealed more doubt and anxiety than the other man’s look, which contained more or less of indifference and distrust.  Philip sighed, and his visitor soon after took his leave.

So it came about that Philip Strong plunged into a work which from the time he stepped into the dingy little hall and faced the crowd peculiar to it, had a growing influence on all his strange career, grew in strangeness rapidly as days came on.

He was invited again and again to address the men in that part of Milton.  They were almost all of them mill-employes.  They had a simple organization for debate and discussion of questions of the day.  Gradually the crowds increased as Philip continued to come, and developed a series of talks on Christian Socialism.  There was standing room only.  He was beginning to know a number of the men and a strong affection was growing up in their hearts for him.

That was just before the time the trouble at the mills broke out.  He had just come back from the hall where he had now been going every Thursday evening, and where he had spoken on his favorite theme, “the meaning and responsibility of power, both financial and mental.”  He had treated the subject from the Christian point of view entirely.  He had several times roused his rude audience to enthusiasm.  Moved by his theme and his surroundings, he had denounced, with even more than usual vigor, those men of ease and wealth who did nothing with their money to help their brothers.  He had mentioned, as he went along, what great responsibility any great power puts on a man, and had dealt in a broad way with the whole subject of power in men as a thing to be used, and always used for the common good.