"Would you like to meet him?" asks Nevins.
"Indeed, I should be pleased to do so."
Professor Talbot and the friendly delegate approach Trueman.
For an hour or more the three are engrossed in animated conversation. Professor Talbot is delighted to find that Trueman is conversant with the most complex questions of the hour.
"I shall make it a point to have the chairman call upon you for an address," he assures Trueman at parting.
For three days the sessions of the conference are devoted to partisan discourses. There seems to be no hope of reaching middle ground. The newspapers ridicule the utterances of the speakers as the vaporings of demagogues. And they are little else.
On the fourth day, true to his promise, Professor Talbot gets the chairman to call upon Trueman for a fifteen-minute speech.
From his first words Trueman wins the attention of the audience. His voice is full and far-reaching; his language simple, and it is possible for every one to grasp his meaning instantly. He chooses to win the delegates to his way of reasoning by force of the truth he utters rather than by appealing to their senses by a display of forensic and oratorical ability.
In the few minutes allotted to him, he reviews the industrial conditions of a decade and shows where the insidious principle of class legislation has undermined the prosperity of the people to bestow it upon the few. In an unanswerable argument he pleads for the restoration of the rights of the majority; by a rapid review of the causes that have led to the downfall of the nations of the past, he shows that the unjust distribution of the fruits of labor must inevitably lead to the disintegration of the state.
His peroration is a fervent appeal to the delegates to reaffirm the equality of man; it calls upon them to adopt resolutions advocating the government control of all avenues of transportation and communication, and for the strict regulation of all industries that affect the common necessities of life.