“What has been blown up?”

The bewilderment was great, for although accidents were common, such a violent explosion as this one had never been seen, and everybody perceived that something terribly strange had happened.

Attempts were made to locate the place of the accident; districts, streets, different buildings, clubs, theatres, and shops were mentioned.  Information gradually became more precise and at last the truth was known.

“The Steel Trust has just been blown up.”

Clair put his watch back into his pocket.

Caroline looked at him closely and her eyes filled with astonishment.

At last she whispered in his ear: 

“Did you know it?  Were you expecting it?  Was it you . . . ?”

He answered very calmly: 

“That town ought to be destroyed.”

She replied in a gentle and thoughtful tone: 

“I think so too.”

And both of them returned quietly to their work.

S. 3

From that day onward, anarchist attempts followed one another every week without interruption.  The victims were numerous, and almost all of them belonged to the poorer classes.  These crimes roused public resentment.  It was among domestic servants, hotel-keepers, and the employees of such small shops as the Trusts still allowed to exist, that indignation burst forth most vehemently.  In popular districts women might be heard demanding unusual punishments for the dynamitards. (They were called by this old name, although it was hardly appropriate to them, since, to these unknown chemists, dynamite was an innocent material only fit to destroy ant-hills, and they considered it mere child’s play to explode nitro-glycerine with a cartridge made of fulminate of mercury.) Business ceased suddenly, and those who were least rich were the first to feel the effects.  They spoke of doing justice themselves to the anarchists.  In the mean time the factory workers remained hostile or indifferent to violent action.  They were threatened, as a result of the decline of business, with a likelihood of losing their work, or even a lock-out in all the factories.  The Federation of Trade Unions proposed a general strike as the most powerful means of influencing the employers, and the best aid that could be given to the revolutionists, but all the trades with the exception of the gliders refused to cease work.

The police made numerous arrests.  Troops summoned from all parts of the National Federation protected the offices of the Trusts, the houses of the multi-millionaires, the public halls, the banks, and the big shops.  A fortnight passed without a single explosion, and it was concluded that the dynamitards, in all probability but a handful of persons, perhaps even Still fewer, had all been killed or captured, or that they were in hiding, or had taken flight.  Confidence returned; it returned at first among the poorer classes.  Two or three hundred thousand soldiers, who bad been lodged in the most closely populated districts, stimulated trade, and people began to cry out:  “Hurrah for the army!”