"No—he's opposed to it. He's queer. I don't exactly understand his ideas. He says strikes are ridiculous—that it's like trying to cure smallpox by healing up one single sore."
Jane gave a shiver of lady-like disgust. "How—nasty," said she.
"I'm telling you what he said. But he says that the only way human beings learn how to do things right is by doing them wrong—so while he's opposed to strikes he's also in favor of them."
"Even I understand that," said Jane. "I don't think it's difficult."
"Doesn't it strike you as—as inconsistent?"
"Oh—bother consistency!" scoffed the girl. "That's another middle class virtue that sensible people loathe as a vice. Anyhow, he's helping the strikers all he can—and fighting US. You know, your father and my father's estate are the two biggest owners of the street railways."
"I must get his paper," said Jane. "I'll have a lot of fun reading the truth about us."
But David wasn't listening. He was deep in thought. After a while he said: "It's amazing—and splendid—and terrible, what power he's getting in our town. Victor Dorn, I mean."
"Always Victor Dorn," mocked Jane.
"When he started—twelve years ago as a boy of twenty, just out of college and working as a carpenter—when he started, he was alone and poor, and without friends or anything. He built up little by little, winning one man at a time—the fellow working next him on his right, then the chap working on his left—in the shop—and so on, one man after another. And whenever he got a man he held him—made him as devoted—as—as fanatical as he is himself. Now he's got a band of nearly a thousand. There are ten thousand voters in this town. So, he's got only one in ten. But what a thousand!"