throats in the long run."

"But sometimes," said Colonel Woodburn, who had been watching throughout.
for a chance to mount his hobby again, "they make a good deal of trouble
first. How was it in the great railroad strike of '77?"

"Well, I guess there was a little trouble that time, colonel," said
Fulkerson. "But the men that undertake to override the laws and paralyze
the industries of a country like this generally get left in the end."

"Yes, sir, generally; and up to a certain point, always. But it's the
exceptional that is apt to happen, as well as the unexpected. And a
little reflection will convince any gentleman here that there is always a
danger of the exceptional in your system. The fact is, those fellows have
the game in their own hands already. A strike of the whole body of the
Brotherhood of Engineers alone would starve out the entire Atlantic
seaboard in a week; labor insurrection could make head at a dozen given
points, and your government couldn't move a man over the roads without
the help of the engineers."

"That is so," said Kendrick, struck by the dramatic character of the
conjecture. He imagined a fiction dealing with the situation as something
already accomplished.

"Why don't some fellow do the Battle of Dorking act with that thing?"
said Fulkerson. "It would be a card."

"Exactly what I was thinking, Mr. Fulkerson," said Kendricks.

Fulkerson laughed. "Telepathy--clear case of mind transference. Better