CHAPTER XI
LEYBURN'S INSPIRATION
Feverish activity was going forward in all the labor controls which acknowledged Austin Leyburn's leadership. Everywhere was agitation and ferment among the rank and file of the workers, while controlling staffs worked night and day.
Austin Leyburn had projected the greatest coup ever attempted in the country. At one stroke he intended to paralyze all trade. East and west, north and south, it was his purpose to leave the moving world at a standstill.
There were many nominal causes for the upheaval. They could be found every day, in almost every calling, each one, in itself, of a trivial nature, perhaps, but, collectively, an expression of tyranny and injustice on the part of the employers that he, Leyburn, and those others interested in the labor movement, declared could not be borne by the worker. So the latter awoke to learn of the many injustices he had been enduring, and of which, before, he had been utterly unaware.
The real cause of the forthcoming struggle lay far deeper. It found its breeding ground in the fertile realms of human nature, the human nature of the men who led the movement. They required self-aggrandizement and profit, and beneath the cloak of Principle they hid their unworthy desires from the searchlight of publicity. Principle—since democracy had struggled from beneath the crushing heel of the oppressor the word had become enormously fashionable. Its elasticity had been its success. It could be molded by the individual to suit every need. But in these days, it had become far more the hall-mark of hypocrisy than the expression of lofty ideals.
Years ago Austin Leyburn had declared his belief that some of the overflow from the world's pockets could be diverted into his own, by methods far less strenuous than those of the great Leo. Since then he had endeavored to prove his assertion.
That he had been successful there could be no doubt. He was far better equipped with this world's goods than he would have cared to proclaim from the platform to one of his labor audiences. He kept his private life hidden by a very simple process, and so much noise and bustle did he contrive in his calling that no one gave him credit for possessing any—private life.
But herein the world was mistaken. The life he displayed to his colleagues was simple and unpretentious. He lived in a cheap suite of apartments in the humbler quarters of Toronto. He ate in restaurants where he rubbed shoulders with men of the labor world. In his business he walked, or rode in the street cars. To carry added conviction his clothes were always of the ready-made order, and he possessed a perfect genius for reducing the immaculateness of a low, starched collar.