nowadays power comes with the possession of money. Who are the big men of
this town?--not some lawyer or politician who can make a good speech, but
the men who own the factories where you have to work. Your Steve Hunter and
Tom Butterworth are the great men of this town."

The socialist, who had come to speak on the streets of Bidwell, was a
Swede, and his wife had come with him. As he talked his wife made figures
on a blackboard. The old story of the trick by which the citizens of the
town had lost their money in the plant-setting machine company was revived
and told over and over. The Swede, a big man with heavy fists, spoke of the
prominent citizens of the town as thieves who by a trick had robbed their
fellows. As he stood on the box beside his wife, and raising his fists
shouted crude sentences condemning the capitalist class, men who had gone
away angry came back to listen. The speaker declared himself a workman like
themselves and, unlike the religious salvationists who occasionally spoke
on the streets, did not beg for money. "I'm a workman like yourselves," he
shouted. "Both my wife and myself work until we've saved a little money.
Then we come out to some town like this and fight capital until we're
busted. We've been fighting for years now and we'll keep on fighting as
long as we live."

As the orator shouted out his sentences he raised his fist as though to
strike, and looked not unlike one of his ancestors, the Norsemen, who
in old times had sailed far and wide over unknown seas in search of the
fighting they loved. The men of Bidwell began to respect him. "After all,
what he says sounds like mighty good sense," they declared, shaking their
heads. "Maybe Ed Hall isn't any worse than any one else. We got to break
up the system. That's a fact. Some of these days we got to break up the
system."