in sleeping minds. It was the time for art and beauty to awake in the land. Instead, the giant, Industry, awoke. Boys, who in the schools had read of Lincoln, walking for miles through the forest to borrow his first book, and of Garfield, the towpath lad who became president, be- gan to read in the newspapers and magazines of men who by developing their faculty for getting and keep- ing money had become suddenly and overwhelm- ingly rich. Hired writers called these men great, and there was no maturity of mind in the people with which to combat the force of the statement, often re- peated. Like children the people believed what they were told. While the new factory was being built with the carefully saved dollars of the people, young men from Bidwell went out to work in other places. After oil and gas were discovered in neighboring states, they went to the fast-growing towns and came home telling wonder tales. In the boom towns men earned four, five and even six dollars a day. In secret and when none of the older people were about, they told of ad- ventures on which they had gone in the new places; of how, attracted by the flood of money, women came from the cities; and the times they had been with these women. Young Harley Parsons, whose father was a shoemaker and who had learned the blacksmith trade, went to work in one of the new oil fields. He came home wearing a fancy silk vest and astonished his fellows by buying and smoking ten-cent cigars. His pockets were bulging with money. " I'm not going to stay long in this town, you can bet on that," he declared one evening as he stood, surrounded by a group
