30 per cent., while the cost of living had gone up 100;
and that with us, in a shorter time, wages had ad-
vanced 40 per cent. while the cost of living had gone
steadily down. But it didn't do any good. Nothing
could unseat their strange beliefs.

Well, I was smarting under a sense of defeat. Un-
deserved defeat, but what of that? That didn't soften
the smart any. And to think of the circumstances!
the first statesman of the age, the capablest man, the
best-informed man in the entire world, the loftiest un-
crowned head that had moved through the clouds of
any political firmament for centuries, sitting here ap-
parently defeated in argument by an ignorant country
blacksmith! And I could see that those others were