Allos meditates on the fact that what he calls the “old world” (193) will die. Everything will pass away, including the stifling conditions from which he arose. The next few months are the first of his true intellectual freedom as his magazine, The New Tide, is released. José and Allos distribute 100 copies and feel that it is a victory for the Filipino people. Although the magazine goes out of print quickly, the passion that gave birth to it remains. Allos sees its death as the death of old ways of thinking.

Allos returns to the Santa Maria Valley and finds that one of the prominent workers’ unions is dissolving. In the course of attending various lectures and protests, Allos learns that government resistance to their cause is fierce. Allos plans a union meeting between a prominent Mexican and a Filipino farm-labor contractor, but sheriffs' deputies disrupt the meeting. They move the meeting to an empty barn outside Oxnard. During the meeting, cars arrive outside. Allos covers himself and José with manure, and they escape detection as white men search the barn.

On their way to Ventura, they are arrested for vagrancy but released after three days.