Education subdues or obliterates the best of fighting in the coward only.  The brave man is always masculine in these crises, and he will fight with his bare hands when reason and intelligence fail.  A great longing rose up in Bennington’s heart to have it out physically with McQuade.  To feel that gross bulk under his knees, to sink his fingers into that brawny throat!—­The men, eying him covertly, saw his arms go outward and his hands open and shut convulsively.  More than ever they avoided his path.  Once before they had witnessed a similar abstraction.  They had seen him fling to the ground a huge puddler who had struck his apprentice without cause.  The puddler, one of the strongest men in the shops, struggled to his feet and rushed at his assailant.  Bennington had knocked him down again, and this time the puddler remained on the ground, insensible.  Bennington had gone back to his office, shutting and opening his fists.  Ay, they had long since ceased calling him the dude.  The man of brawn has a hearty respect for spectacular exhibitions of strength.

One o’clock.  The trip-hammers began their intermittent thunder, the rolling-machines shrieked, and the hot ore sputtered and crackled.  Bennington returned to his office and re-read the letter his father had written to him on his death-bed.  He would obey it to the final line.

That particular branch of the local unions which was represented in the Bennington steel-mills met in the loft of one of the brick buildings off the main street.  The room was spacious, but ill ventilated.  That, night it was crowded.  The men were noisy, and a haze of rank tobacco-smoke drifted aimlessly about, vainly seeking egress.  Morrissy called the meeting to order at eight-thirty.  He spoke briefly of the injustice of the employers, locally and elsewhere, of the burdens the laboring man had always borne and would always bear, so long as he declined to demand his rights.  The men cheered him.  Many had been drinking freely.  Morrissy stated the case against Bennington.  He used his words adroitly and spoke with the air of a man who regrets exceedingly a disagreeable duty.

From his seat in the rear Jordan watched him, following each word closely.  He saw that Morrissy knew his business thoroughly.

“We’ll get what we want, men; we always do.  It isn’t a matter of money; it’s principle.  If we back down, we are lost; if we surrender this time, we’ll have to surrender one thing at a time till we’re away back where we started from, slaves to enrich the oppressor.  We’ve got to fight for our rights.  Here’s an inventor who, if we permit him to remain, will succeed in throwing two hundred men out of work.  Bennington is making enough money as things are now.  There’s no need of improvement, such as will take bread and butter out of our mouths, out of the mouths of our wives and children.  We’ve got to strike.  That’ll bring him to his senses.”

At the conclusion he was loudly applauded.