man who had gone to see Mr. Winter had never reached the office door.  But, coming around the corner of the building where the new work was being done, he had fallen off the stone work, striking on a rock in such a way as to produce a fatal wound.  This tempered the feeling of the workmen toward Mr. Winter; but a wide-spread unrest and discontent had seized on every man employed in the mills, and as the winter drew on, affairs reached a crisis.

The difference between the mills and the men over the scale of wages could not be settled.  The men began to talk about a strike.  Philip heard of it, and at once, with his usual frankness and boldness, spoke with downright plainness to the men against it.  That was at the little hall a week after the attempt on Mr. Winter’s life.  Philip’s part in that night’s event had added to his reputation and his popularity with the men.  They admired his courage and his grit.  Most of them were ashamed of the whole affair, especially after they had sobered down and it had been proved that Mr. Winter had not touched the man.  So Philip was welcomed with applause as he came out on the little platform and looked over the crowded room, seeing many faces there that had glared at him in the mob a week before.  And yet his heart told him he loved these men, and his reason told him that it was the sinner and the unconverted that God loved.  It was a terrible responsibility to have such men count him popular, and he prayed that wisdom might be given him in the approaching crisis, especially as he seemed to have some real influence.

He had not spoken ten words when some one by the door cried, “Come outside!  Big crowd out here want to get in.”  It was moonlight and not very cold, so every one moved out of the hall, and Philip mounted the steps of a storehouse near by and spoke to a crowd that filled up the street in front and for a long distance right and left.  His speech was very brief, but it was fortified with telling figures, and at the close he stood and answered a perfect torrent of questions.  His main counsel was against a strike in the present situation.  He had made himself familiar with the facts on both sides.  Strikes, he argued, except in very rare cases, were demoralizing—­an unhealthy, disastrous method of getting justice done.  “Why, just look at that strike in Preston, England, among the cotton spinners.  There were only 660 operatives, but that strike, before it ended, threw out of employment over 7,800 weavers and other workmen who had nothing whatever to do with the quarrel of the 660 men.  In the recent strike in the cotton trade in Lancashire, at the end of the first twelve weeks the operatives had lost in wages alone $4,500,000.  Four strikes that occurred in England between 1870 and 1880, involved a loss in wages of more than $25,000,000.  In 22,000 strikes investigated lately by the National Bureau of Labor, it is estimated that the employees lost about $51,800,000, while the employers lost only $30,700,000.  Out of 353 strikes in England between 1870 and 1880, 191 were lost by the strikers, 71 were gained, and 91 com-promised; but in the strikes that were successful, it took several years to regain in wages the amount lost by the enforced idleness of the men.”