On the day of the great demonstration, when McGregor’s power over the minds and the bodies of the men of labour sent hundreds of thousands marching and singing in the streets, there was one man who was untouched by the song of labour expressed in the threshing of feet. David Ormsby had in his quiet way thought things out. He expected that the new impetus given to solidity in the ranks of labour would make trouble for him and his kind, that it would express itself finally in strikes and in wide-spread industrial disturbance. He was not worried. In the end he thought that the silent patient power of money would bring his people the victory. On that day he did not go to his office but in the morning stayed in his own room thinking of McGregor and of his daughter. Laura Ormsby was out of the city but Margaret was at home. David believed he had measured accurately the power of McGregor over her mind but occasional doubts came to him. “Well the time has come to have it out with her,” he decided. “I must reassert my ascendency over her mind. The thing that is going on here is really a struggle of minds. McGregor differs from other leaders of labour as I differ from most leaders of the forces of money. He has brains. Very well. I shall meet him on that level. Then, when I have made Margaret think as I think, she will return to me.”

When he was still a small manufacturer in the Wisconsin town David had been in the habit of driving out in the evening with his daughter. During the drives he had been almost a lover in his attentions to the child and now when he thought of the forces at work within her he was convinced that she was still a child. Early in the afternoon he had a carriage brought to the door and drove off with her to the city. “She will want to see the man in the height of his power. If I am right in thinking that she is still under the influence of his personality there will be a romantic desire for that.

“I will give her the chance,” he thought proudly. “In this struggle I ask no quarter from him and shall not make the common mistake of parents in such cases. She is fascinated by the figure he has made of himself. Showy men who stand out from the crowd have that power. She is still under his influence. Why else her constant distraction and her want of interest in other things? Now I will be with her when the man is most powerful, when he shows to the greatest advantage, and then I will make my fight for her. I will point out to her another road, the road along which the real victors in life must learn to travel.”

Together David the quiet efficient representative of wealth and his woman child sat in the carriage on the day of McGregor’s triumph. For the moment an impassable gulf seemed to separate them and with intense eyes each watched the hordes of men who massed themselves about the labour leader. At the moment McGregor seemed to have caught all men in the sweep of his movement. Business men had closed their desks, labour was exultant, writers and men given to speculation in thought walked about dreaming of the realisation of the brotherhood of man. In the long narrow treeless park the music made by the steady never-ending thresh of feet arose to something vast and rhythmical. It was like a mighty chorus come up out of the hearts of men. David was unmoved. Occasionally he spoke to the horses and looked from the faces of the men massed about him to his daughter’s face. In the coarse faces of the men he thought he saw only a crude sort of intoxication, the result of a new kind of emotionalism. “It will not outlast thirty days of ordinary living in their squalid surroundings,” he thought grimly. “It is not the kind of exaltation for Margaret. I can sing her a more wonderful song. I must get myself ready for that.”

When McGregor arose to speak Margaret was overcome with emotions. Dropping to her knees in the carriage she put her head down upon her father’s arm. For days she had been telling herself that in the future of the man she loved there was no place for failure. Now again she whispered to herself that this great sturdy figure must not be denied the fulfilment of its purpose. When in the hush that followed the massing of the labourers about him the harsh booming voice floated over the heads of the people her body shook as with a chill. Extravagant fancies invaded her mind and she wished it were possible for her to do something heroic, something that would make her live again in the mind of McGregor. She wanted to serve him, to give him something out of herself, and thought wildly that there might yet come a time and a way by which the beauty of her body could be laid like a gift before him. The half mythical figure of Mary the lover of Jesus came into her mind and she aspired to be such another. With her body shaken with emotions she pulled at the sleeve of her father’s coat. “Listen! It is going to come now,” she murmured. “The brain of labour is going to express the dream of labour. An impulse sweet and lasting is going to come into the world.”

David Ormsby said nothing. When McGregor had begun to speak he touched the horses with the whip and drove slowly along Van Buren Street past the silent attentive ranks of men. When he had got into one of the streets near the river a vast cheer arose. It seemed to shake the city and the horses reared and leaped forward over the rough cobblestones. With one hand David quieted them while with the other he gripped the hand of his daughter. They drove over a bridge and into the West Side and as they went the marching song of the workers rising up out of thousands of throats rang in their ears. For a time the air seemed to pulsate with it but as they went westward it grew continually less and less distinct. At last when they had turned into a street lined by tall factories it died out altogether. “That is the end of him for me and mine,” thought David and again set himself for the task he had to perform.

Through street after street David let the horses wander while he clung to his daughter’s hand and thought of what he wanted to say. Not all of the streets were lined with factories. Some, and these in the evening light were the most hideous, were bordered by the homes of workers. The houses of the workers, jammed closely together and black with grime, were filled with noisy life. Women sat in the doorways and children ran screaming and shouting in the road. Dogs barked and howled. Everywhere was dirt and disorder, the terrible evidence of men’s failure in the difficult and delicate art of living. In one of the streets a little girl child who sat on the post of a fence made a ludicrous figure. As David and Margaret drove past she beat with her heels against the sides of the post and screamed. Tears ran down her cheeks and her dishevelled hair was black with dirt. “I want a banana! I want a banana!” she howled, staring at the blank walls of one of the houses. In spite of herself Margaret was touched and her mind left the figure of McGregor. By an odd chance the child on the post was the daughter of that socialist orator who one night on the North Side had climbed upon a platform to confront McGregor with the propaganda of the Socialist Party.

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