HN 
 
 (5otttcU HmowHitg Slihrarg 
 
 Jtljara. Niw ^ork 
 
 BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY 
 
 COLLECTED BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 
 1854-1919 
 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 

 Cornell University Library 
 HN64 .S63 
 
 Between eras from capitalism to democrac 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 032 570 552 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
This book was digitized by Microsoft Corporation in 
 
 cooperation witli Cornell University Libraries, 2007. 
 
 You may use and print this copy in limited quantity 
 
 for your personal purposes, but may not distribute or 
 
 provide access to it (or modified or partial versions of it) 
 
 for revenue-generating or other commercial purposes. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
BETWEEN ERAS 
 
 FROM 
 
 CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 
 
 BY 
 
 ALBION W. SMALL 
 
 A CYCLE OF CONVERSATIONS AND 
 DISCOURSES WITH OCCASIONAL 
 SIDE-LIGHTS UPON THE 
 SPEAKERS 
 
 INTEH-COLLEGIATE PRESS 
 KANSAS CITY, - MISSOURI 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
3--f-'^ f 
 
 Copyriehl 1913 
 
 By 
 
 Inter-CoUeffialc Press 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
DEDICATED 
 
 TO THE FERTILE FELLOW- 
 SHIP OF MEN AND WOMEN 
 WHO RATE THE INTER- 
 ESTS OF THE WHOLE 
 ABOVE THE CLAIMS OF 
 THEIR SPECIAL KIND. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
IF ALL MEN SAW THINGS 
 FROM THE SAME POINT 
 OF VIEW, THERE WOULD BE 
 NO SOCIAL PROBLEMS, AND 
 CONSEQUENTLY N O PROG- 
 RESS. THE WISER WE ARE, 
 THE MORE WE MAY ADD BOTH 
 TO OUR KNOWLEDGE AND TO 
 OUR VALUE FOR OUR FELLOW 
 MEN BY LOOKING OFTEN 
 AT LIFE THROUGH THE 
 EYES OF OUR OPPOSITES. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 THE PROBLEM CHAPTER I 
 
 "The main thread of the story is the evolution of an 
 ascending scale of wants in people's minds." 
 
 THE MEDIATOR CHAPTER II 
 
 "Action, and happiness in action, and richer life for every- 
 body as the result of action, vjrere the literal terms of his 
 theology." 
 
 THE CRISIS CHAPTER III 
 
 "It would surrender the fundamental principle that every 
 business must be run by its owners, not by outsiders." 
 
 THE MISFITS CHAPTER IV 
 
 "Mrs. Kissinger subscribed in a passive way to the formal 
 creed that it is everybody's duty to be useful; but she knew 
 of no way in which her own daughter could be useful with- 
 out losing caste." 
 
 THE PROPHET CHAPTER V 
 
 "It followed that if more churches could shed their re- 
 ligious trappings and adopt an essentially religious policy 
 toward the needs of everyday people, they would presently 
 be alive with the very masses that now stand aloof." 
 
 THE PHILANTHROPIST CHAPTER VI 
 
 "No one remarked that prevention before the accident, 
 or quick action afterwards, would have been worth more 
 than the cure likely to be effected at this late day." 
 
 THE SAFE AND SANE CHAPTER VII 
 
 "The real issue is this: — How do you know that your 
 better judgment hasn't usurped more authority than it is 
 entitled to as a dictator to men of poorer judgment?" 
 
 THE INSURGENT CHAPTER VIII 
 
 "The ground plan of a democracy is that all shares in the 
 profits of the cooperation shall be paid for in work, and 
 that no one shall have any rights that he does not earn." 
 
 THE UNCONVINCED CHAPTER IX 
 
 "But what's the use? The only difference between me 
 and the rest of the Company is that they don't believe a 
 word of these things, while I subscribe to them in the 
 abstract but don't believe they are available." 
 
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THE MORALIST CHAPTER X 
 
 "The key to the social struggle in its present stage is the 
 question: — Shall the social aim be to use men for the sake 
 of capital, or to use capital for the sake of men?" 
 
 THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY CHAPTER XI 
 
 "Everything that the gentleman said about capital would 
 have been equally true in itself and equally irrelevant to the 
 question at issue, if it had been alleged of the atmosphere 
 and the sunlight instead of capital." 
 
 THE DOOR OF HOPE CHAPTER XII 
 
 "Whether the world is getting closer together or pulling 
 wider apart, depends upon the number of us that can shake 
 ourselves free from handicaps, so that we can count for all 
 we are worth in the common interest." 
 
 THE RENEGADE CHAPTER XIII 
 
 "All the men whose brains are not thicker than their 
 necks will come to it sooner or later. Some of them still 
 get their fun going West to kill bear, but as a pure sporting 
 proposition coming East to rescue the unconscious rich 
 from themselves has a sure shade." 
 
 THE SENTIMENTALIST CHAPTER XIV 
 
 "While one of the chief counts in his theoretical indict- 
 ment of the system was that it was mechanical throughout, 
 from power house to President's office, with no room for 
 human sensibilities, yet after his feelings had been moulded 
 into a certain form for a generation, he could not rid himself 
 of the hauntings of a thoroughly inconsistent loyalty to the 
 Company." 
 
 THE TRANSFORMATION CHAPTER XV 
 
 "As a matter of fact, the world never possessed an abso- 
 lutely infallible automatic consumer of human rights until 
 it invented capitalism." 
 
 THE NOVICE CHAPTER XVI 
 
 "These two weeks burst the shell of Hester's intuition 
 that, for her class, relief of distress was less goodness than 
 polite evasion of the issue." 
 
 THE PRICE OF PROGRESS CHAPTER XVII 
 
 "We should have no saving of life by means of the ope- 
 rating room if some one hadn't the nerve to cause suffering 
 for the sake of relieving it." 
 
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THE SOCIOLOGIST CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 "The upshot was that all the folks who stopped to talk 
 the matter over between innings agreed that live-and-help- 
 live ought to be the game, and that every body would get 
 more out of it in the end, after it was fairly learned, than 
 they were getting out of the live-and-let-live game." 
 
 THE WAR COLLEGE CHAPTER XIX 
 
 "It ought to be easy for old college men to take up a 
 mooted question in the same spirit they used to show 
 
 when they got a good grip on a subject for debate 
 
 If there was something to be said after all for the moon's 
 being made of green cheese, it never entered their heads 
 to block discussion by pleading vested rights." 
 
 THE ILLUSION OF CAPITALISM .... CHAPTER XX 
 "The only producers of wealth are nature and labor .... 
 .... nature and labor always supply the power, while cap- 
 ital is merely the grist and the millstone." 
 
 THE FALLACY OF DISTRIBUTION . . . CHAPTER XXI 
 "A theory of economic distribution which assigns an in- 
 come to landlord or capitalist for any other reason than that 
 which assigns a wage to the manual laborer .... is not 
 merely a rape of justice but an insult to ordinary intelli- 
 gence." 
 
 THE SUPERSTITION OF PROPERTY . . CHAPTER XXII 
 "Everything fair and reasonable in property would be 
 affirmed and strengthened if it were readjusted on the 
 service basis." 
 
 THE DOVE OF PEACE CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 "Each in his way was suffering for peace. Neither could 
 quite believe that the apparently unattainable was within 
 such easy grasp. Each feared to trust his own senses that 
 he was not being played upon by some spiteful illusion." 
 
 THE DEGENERATE CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 "The one credit to the orgy was a currish sense of ac- 
 countability." 
 
 THE BROADER DEMOCRACY .... CHAPTER XXV 
 "My first principle is that it is the chief duty of the Com- 
 pany to adopt the policy which will do most towards en- 
 abling each one of its workers to make the most of his life." 
 
 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH .... CHAPTER XXVI 
 "We will make it a part of the business to find out how 
 many instead of how few of its workers may have a property 
 interest and a shareholder's voice in it." 
 
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THE PROBLEM 
 
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THE PROBLEM 
 
 I 
 THE PROBLEM 
 
 "The main thread of the story is the evolution of an 
 ascending scale of wants in people's minds." 
 
 "A 
 
 ND bring them while I'm making out the order. Nicht 
 wahr, old boy, first drown the taste of that show?" 
 'Twas the limit in Paris last Winter, but set to blunt Eng- 
 lish it's vile." 
 
 "By way of rebate, though, I checked up a surprising volt- 
 age of Prexy Patton's 'moral indignation' ! Case of survival 
 probably. Didn't know I still had that sort of talent !" 
 
 "If the gentle juice of corn fruit won't restore our normal 
 tone, there may be some virtue in the circumambient para- 
 phernalia and deportment. If you want me to profit by your 
 improving conversation, however, you'll have to keep their 
 various toploftinesses busy at a distance." 
 
 "Things are rather correct here?" 
 
 "They give the plain Chicago voter a sinking feeling that 
 his supply of used-to-it-all-my-lif e behavior may fail him at a 
 critical juncture. I don't suppose every college graduate in 
 New York is a member ?" 
 
 "Some of them have invested the equivalent in Yonkers 
 house lots. Others are trying to work their credit up toward 
 the figure, and meanwhile are serving their time in the army 
 of discontent that fires blank ammunition at both clubs and 
 property." 
 
 "Do you blame them?" 
 
 "I should blame any man a heap more that had the price 
 and didn't get all there was in it." 
 
 "Every time I come to New York lately," diverged Lyon, 
 "it seems to me more of a municipal panel house. You've got 
 the scavengers and scavengings brushed out of sight, and the 
 people in the show rooms put up a sober bluff of believing 
 there's no such thing as rot and riot behind the screen." 
 
 "Are we different from Chicago?" cavilled Barclay. 
 
 "We have our share of the same old original sin, but you've 
 done a lot more to develop your holdings." 
 
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THE PROBLEM 
 
 "I thought Chicago owned up to being the wickedest town 
 on earth?" 
 
 "Chicago doesn't own up to being the superlative any- 
 thing. In the early days, when the men that made the place 
 were too busy to be vicious, and too humdrum to make good 
 copy, the newspaper boys worked their imaginations over- 
 time turning out local stories. These pipes gave Chicago its 
 reputation, and the rest of the country prefers fiction to fact. 
 I'm no census sharp, but I'll confide to you my guess that 
 fifteen feet of New York frontage cover more curdled milk 
 of human kindness than the average Chicago block. We may 
 be wicked, but so far as execution goes we lack form to keep 
 with you into the semi-finals. We are fairly equipped with 
 the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of 
 life; but for team work between them we are not in your 
 class." 
 
 A scrap o\er the comparative merits of New York and 
 Chicago was the regular warming-up practice whenever Bar- 
 clay and Lyon had any time to themselves. Without it they 
 would hardly have known how to resume their earlier chum- 
 miness. This time the wind veered till the standard of taste 
 in the two towns was the storm centre. Lyon at last took to 
 cover with the concession: '"Yes, on the lower levels you 
 distance us. We may be gluttons, for instance, but no one 
 has called us epicures. If we could serve under-study terra- 
 pin like this, there would be less of the Chicago peril in Man- 
 hattan society. Stop me if it is Use majeste, but my frontier 
 taste demands a dash more sherry " 
 
 "Honestly, can you get a decent meal in Chicago?" inter- 
 rupted Barclay. 
 
 "If you are invited by the right people ; not if you have to 
 forage for yourself. For purposes of brute nutrition we're as 
 well off as the rest of the world. If one craves the sort of 
 feeding that insinuates flattering unction of combining all 
 the virtues of philosopher, artist, patriot and saint — well, 
 apropos I Chicago is not yet up to that method of adminis- 
 tering the consolations of religion." 
 
 "Never mind Chicago any more in general," prompted 
 Barclay. "You and Bob are the only worth-while particu- 
 lars. Post me about him to date. You know his father never 
 mentions his name in the office, and our orbits seldom cross 
 
 18 
 
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THE PROBLEM 
 
 outside. Mr. Halleck and I work together all right, but the 
 suspicion won't down that I get on his nerves. I'm in the 
 place he intended for Bob. He used to imagine a firm of 
 Halleck and Halleck at the head of the New York bar. It 
 will violate no confidence to remark in passing that one or 
 two jealous rivals might possibly contest this rank with Hal- 
 leck, Siemens and Barclay. The senior was to furnish the 
 legal lore and Bob the fireworks. Mr. Halleck was never a 
 good mixer, but he hoped his son would have a taste for pop- 
 ularity. The old man has the temper for a Tammany Boss, 
 if he could get in all his work behind a figure head. You 
 remember when Bob was a Freshman he could keep up his 
 end of a wrangle with any upper classman, whether he knew 
 anything about the subject or not. From the time Bob began 
 to talk, his father's chief amusement was to tease him into 
 argument and teach him all the logical leads and counters 
 and side steps. He wasn't stuffed with books, but his father 
 did everything he knew to make him shifty. If he had turned 
 out a composite of Evarts and Choate and Root, with strains 
 of Metternich and Disraeli and Bismarck, Mr. Halleck would 
 have been merely satisfied, not surprised ; and he would have 
 credited honors about equally between blood and training. If 
 Bob had gone into business and broken the code, his father 
 would have shot himself like a gentleman. If the boy had 
 run off with another man's wife, the stern parent in the case 
 wouldn't have had to make a pretense of being mad all 
 through; and when he fed the proper phrases to the report- 
 ers he would have been sincere enough; but he would have 
 consoled himself in private with the offset that the rascal at 
 least had nerve. But to turn out a parson! The governor 
 has been groggy ever since. Vice might have the saving ele- 
 ment of virility, but that a son of his, with the chances he 
 had, should turn his back on man's work and take to preach- 
 ing and praying, is a freak of nature without a redeeming 
 feature that his philosophy can discover. It strikes him as a 
 poltroonery, an unsexing of himself, something unclean and 
 
 obscene, not to be excused nor even decently named. 
 
 But I've slid into quite an opening for the prosecution ! You'd 
 know I was the talking partner. The case has been making 
 itself up in my mind though, these dozen years, and if my 
 chief should give the word I could try it for him with a good 
 
 17 
 
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THE PROBLEM 
 
 deal of his own spirit. In his place I should feel about the 
 same way." 
 
 Lyon was evidently taken by surprise. He began rather 
 uncertainly : — 
 
 "I haven't exactly specialized on the clergy, but in this 
 particular case the defense needn't go by default. The rec- 
 ord might very well start with those little affairs in which 
 Bob used to give Yale something to think about. To the best 
 of my recollection, when he was ripping holes in the Elis they 
 didn't act as though they thought the word 'virile' would 
 overstate him. He's bucking a different line now, but it's a 
 harder game. The toughs never had a stronger grip on our 
 City Hall than they had a year and a half ago. Bob Halleck 
 started a new Law and Order League. It turned out that he 
 had to do the work while the rest hypothecated their moral 
 support. He has had to fight everything, from averted 
 glances to infernal machines, but the ordinances have never 
 been so honestly enforced a.s in the past twelve months. If he 
 should quit, the lid would be off in a week. He has paralyzed 
 most of the church and temperance people by opening a re- 
 sort in one of the labor districts, and running it seven days 
 in the week in the interest of the men themselves. He didn't 
 merely pronounce a benediction over a saloon and hand it 
 back to the devil. He stays with it and steers it in the interest 
 of good order. He saj^s the way to tame the saloon is to tame 
 it, and make it serve as a means, just as the right sort of club 
 does for its members. He doesn't think one such experiment 
 can cut any figure in competition with the bar business; but 
 he is trying to show, in a sample instance, how the saloon 
 evil might be turned into a relative good, with the right sort 
 of management. He cuts out the idea of profits, and turns 
 the whole net receipts into increasing the attractions of the 
 place. He is making progress toward a system of member- 
 ships and petty dues that will carry the expenses without prof- 
 its from the bar. Among other things, the men can cash their 
 pay checks at the place, with no pressure to spend a cent. 
 Bob doesn't expect to throw out liquor entirely, any more 
 than he would tobacco; but nobody is bound to drink or 
 smoke unless he wants to, and there is plenty of chance to 
 have a good time doing something else. All the vicious ele- 
 ments in the town are fighting him on the crime, and the 
 vicious and virtuous together are fighting him harder on the 
 
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 saloon. Whether his father would agree with his theories 
 or not, it doesn't seem worth while to doubt Bob's nerve." 
 
 "But if he wanted to tackle that sort of thing," growled 
 Barclay, "he oould have done it better as a lawyer." 
 
 "Come now, dear boy," Lyon whispered, with a restrain- 
 ing pianissimo gesture, "we're not befuddling a jury. Our 
 business is to get the law interpreted in the interest of our 
 clients; and it isn't onoe in a thousand times that our client 
 is the public. Bob knew what he wanted, and he chose his 
 profession with his eyes open. He was as wise as you and I 
 that if a lawyer puts in any time on social reforms people 
 in the know either call it an advertising plunge or wonder 
 what interest pays his fees. A minister may do things that 
 get him rated as a fool, but that's supposed to be his job, and 
 there's a presumption of sincerity in his favor." 
 
 "Suppose he is sincere?" fretted Barclay, "a minister's bus- 
 iness sense isn't expected to go beyond touching the railroads 
 for cut rates, and collecting easy money for wedding fees. 
 He never gets a hearing with practical men when anything 
 serious is up." 
 
 "That depends on the minister," Lyon calmly contra- 
 dicted. "Before we are very far into the fight that's brew- 
 ing in Chicago, the whole town will be calling on Bob Halleck 
 and one or two other ministers of his stripe, with two or 
 three women, to get things out of the hole your 'practical' 
 men have dug. Professionally I can keep my countenance 
 and reel off all the old stuff about the superior sagacity of bus- 
 iness men ; but personally, if I was gunning for owls I'd ask 
 no better hunting ground than a directors' meeting." 
 
 "Then you pick Bob for a hawk?" cynically interpreted 
 Barclay. 
 
 "For the kind of politics we're up against, yes, and the old 
 style business man is as blind as a tenderloin policeman. I 
 know lots of them that call it practical to make the wall as 
 high and as thick as they can between themselves and their 
 help, and to order a wage-cut, or a raise of prices simply be- 
 cause they have the power. They can't see beyond the bet- 
 ter looking balance sheet tonight to the bad day-after-tomor- 
 row. Bob Halleck wouldn't get chesty over that sort of 
 monkeying with human nature." 
 
 "Human nature!" grimaced Barclay. "Yes, Bob took the 
 thirty-third degree in that order when he married 1" 
 
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THE PROBLEM 
 
 "The toast to the Queen might as well come in at this 
 point," suavely proposed Lyon. "Woman 1 God bless her! 
 We believe in her forever, in spite of all the women 1" 
 
 They exchanged worldly-wise looks over the rims of their 
 glasses, and Barclay vouchsafed the sage reflection : — 
 
 "The sentiment does you credit, my young friend, but it 
 doesn't let Bob out." 
 
 "What do you know about his domestic affairs?" demanded 
 Lyon with a touch of anxiety. 
 
 "I know enough for a salute of 'I-told-you-so's' if poetic 
 justice ever comes to her own. From the time we squawked 
 at one another out of our perambulators, Dora Doyle made 
 trouble for Bob and me, until we went to prep school. We 
 didn't set her to words, but if we had known how to phrase 
 our .^tate of mind we should have put her down simply as a 
 necessary evil. Ridgewood was a handful of cottages then, 
 and we three were the only children I remember. We seemed 
 to be fixed in the order of things, and had to make the best 
 of it. Dora was the sort of cross between turtle-dove and 
 tiger-cat that lives to kill joy and monopolize privilege. Ten 
 minutes of her pathetic racket would make us feel so mean 
 .<he could bully us the rest of the day. We didn't see much 
 of her for the next dozen years, but when Bob came back 
 from Germany, and wa.-^ waiting for a call, Dora was just 
 settling her father's estate and managing her mother. There 
 was little left but debts and the incompatible likenesses of 
 the two women. Dora knew that Bob's mother had left him 
 rich, but if she hadn't he was a man. His place in nature was 
 to furnish a kingdom for feminine tyranny. The pathetic 
 was mobilized and — I'm giving you iny theory of course 
 — before Bob could run up the not-in-control signal their 
 names were tm a marriage license. I felt a lot more like a 
 pall-bearer when I had to pose as best man at that wedding. 
 I should be a cad to talk like this to anybody else, but I'll 
 be damned if I believe we're doing right by Bob not to call 
 things by their right names. It's a tragedy, or I'm no mind 
 reader. Nine years with Dora Doyle and Bob Halleck is 
 either a clam or a slumbering volcano. I've never come to 
 the point before, but I've always wondered when you'd begin 
 to fill out the plot." 
 
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 "If you knew Chicago, 'twouldn't seem very strange," 
 oriented Lyon, with uneasiness about passing from externals 
 to the human factors. "Unless men are in the same line, 
 living on the north and south sides might as well be New 
 York and Boston. When one has business in the centre, and 
 the other hasn't, they meet only by appointment. Bob be- 
 longs to one of the down town clubs that I do, but he seldom 
 comes there. My father is treasurer of his church, and I'm 
 down for my part at the finance end of everything Bob says 
 is all right, but that's about as near as we get to each other. 
 We have a 'phone talk every few days. I have probably not 
 been in his house more than three or four times, and his wife 
 was not always there. As a bachelor I'm not very well 
 placed to entertain a minister and his wife; and to tell the 
 truth she has handed the ice rather freely whenever I have 
 made the attempt. That didn't strike me as particularly to 
 her discredit. If she was not for me, she was clearly within 
 her rights ; and anyway I was too busy to chew the rag. But 
 it's like having money in the bank to know Bob is within 
 reach. Gome to think of it, I'm afraid I've been letting him 
 accumulate too long without drawing the interest." 
 
 "If I lived within as easy observing distance as you do," 
 prognosticated Barclay, "I should take time enough from 
 commercial law to follow one first-class case in alienism. 
 Tolstoi and Zola never had better material. A woman with 
 the soul of a siphon, and the cunning to work her weakness 
 the harder, the less she ought to win ; this woman with a life- 
 lien on a man that's sheer strength and conscience — there's 
 a situation to turn the best man's program upside down. 
 Talk about your social problems ! Here's a social problem all 
 by itself. What can you say for a world that sacrifices such 
 a man to a woman of her stamp ? In a moment of freak gen- 
 erosity he promises to love and cherish her. If it had been 
 a contract to deliver a load of coal, it could be vacated in the 
 nearest court, on the ground that no equivalent could be 
 rendered; but men are cheaper than coal. The most she 
 ever did or can deserve of him is long distance charity, with- 
 out further benefit of femininity. We rule that her claim to 
 control and occupy is good, no matter if it licenses the worst 
 in her and handicaps the best in him." 
 
 "I'm not quite on to your curves yet, Ray; — and Lyon's 
 uncertainty was genuine. "What are you getting at, reform 
 
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 of the marriage institution in general, or a rescue expedition 
 for Bob in particular?" 
 
 "Suppose we compromise and call it weather prediction. 
 Here's an impossible situation. A woman who loves herself 
 only, and with a cankery little love that is jealous even of an 
 idea, if it refers away from herself. She's billetted on a man 
 who wants to spend his life making the world better. Not a 
 solitary thing can he undertake, from having a home with 
 that spirit in it to winning business and politics over to his 
 view, that isn't harder simply because she's his wife. Some- 
 thing's got to give way. Which is stronger, he or the sit- 
 uation?" 
 
 "Taking your estimate of ministers in general, along with 
 your theory of Bob's matrimonial flunk in particular, it looks 
 like an easy guess." 
 
 "That's all right, but I wasn't on oath in those sections of 
 my deposition. Besides, if a good man couldn't make an ass 
 of himself once in a lifetime without loss of rating, any one 
 left outside the fool class would argue a broken down detec- 
 tive system. Bob is bound to realize his situation sooner or 
 later. He's got to choose between carrying out his ideal and 
 settling down as a caterer to his wife's perversities. If it was 
 only a case of his whims against hers, it would be the old 
 story of our play days. She'd win every time. But when 
 it comes to a straight show-down between one shallow head 
 and empty heart and the whole range of ideals that Bob be- 
 lieves in to improve the world, it's another proposition. What 
 right has he to let her hold him back from making the most 
 of himself? So long as it's merely a matter of carrying 
 through a bad job, at the cost of his own comfort and happi- 
 ness, why he'll be the same old dead game sport to the end ; 
 but if he once decides that he's being worked for a breach of 
 trust, if he faces the immorality of squandering a leader of 
 many men on demand of one hopelessly petty woman, if he 
 sees himself as a pitiable type of defaulter, if he realizes that 
 he is surrendering a mission to a superstition, the social pro- 
 prieties will be due for a shake-up that will make his saloon 
 and slum ventures look prudish." 
 
 "You wouldn't survive the disappointment if the catas- 
 trophe failed to connect?" 
 
 "Most likely not. You see, Dora was practically the only 
 girl I ever knew. One of the reasons why I shall probably 
 
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 never marry, is that she is a fixed idea in my mind as a clue 
 to every woman I meet. At any rate, if the boy is father to 
 the man, it's a good gamble that Dora Doyle was mother to 
 the woman that's Bob Halleck's wife." 
 
 "There's such a thing as change of character?" 
 
 "Yes, and then there isn't. Kingfishers don't grow up 
 homing pigeons." 
 
 "But after all," ruled Lyon, "your case has no standing in 
 court. You have produced no corpus delicti. Bob shows no 
 signs of distress. He is making good all along the line. So 
 far as the evidence goes, if there were Dora Doyles enough to 
 go 'round they might make men of all the ministers." 
 
 "I'll admit the case isn't ready for trial, but I've freed my 
 mind, and gone on record. Cause and effect may be off duty 
 for a while, but if they are still earning wages you'll some- 
 time remember what I've said." 
 
 "It may all mean something," Lyon admitted hypothetic- 
 ally, "but it doesn't appeal to me. My habits have given 
 me the feeling that business and politics furnish the only 
 actual troubles. To help us forget them, family scandals are 
 invented, to be looked at over the footlights. They are no 
 more real to my mind than Niobe's tears." 
 
 "Such simplicity I have not found, no not in Flatbush! 
 You've got it precisely reversed. The serious things in life 
 are not business and politics. These trifies are only the 
 games we play to offset the private woes. Personal relations 
 are our heaven and hell. We've contrived an intermediate 
 state, but it's a doubtful success. The essence of life is the 
 give and take of sympathy between man and man." 
 
 "That sounds like the real thing," endorsed Lyon, "but it's 
 just the reason why it seems to me all a fiction that people 
 who belong together can go back on one another. In busi- 
 ness or politics, where men are mere counters, I'm prepared 
 for it. I have never come in contact with treachery in real 
 life between members of the same family. I can think of it 
 only as part of the make-up of imitation people." 
 
 "Then Chicago parents ought to send their daughters to 
 law offices instead of finishing schools." 
 
 "With judicious selection of the offices the daughters would 
 be first-class risks. But on the material point, I can't imagine 
 Bob Halleck's wife, whoever she were, clogging him in such a 
 way that he would count her an enemy. However selfish or 
 
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 stupid she might have been at the start, he would be liberal 
 and sane enough to pull her out of herself and gear her to his 
 interests." 
 
 "Then you think the trees have sap enough to supply the 
 surroundings with climate?" 
 
 "Well, I've always had the feeling that one fairly poised 
 mind ought to have common sense enough for two." 
 
 "Before this night's memories get dimmed," blustered 
 Barclay, "I swear I'll write a Willie in Wonderland. It's 
 just the other way. A level headed man can stand all sorts 
 of passive stupidity, and he can make a patient stagger at 
 carrying it on his back, but if it gets domineering it's like a 
 toothache. One can't be oneself with it. It's fight to a finish, 
 one way or the other." 
 
 "To sum up evidence and argument," contested Lyon, "it's 
 this, — ^You have a theory that the moon is inhabited; there- 
 fore that sort of folks can have no use for one another. If 
 that's the grade of reasoning you sell as well as give away, my 
 first duty when I get home will be to recommend a change of 
 eastern advisers." 
 
 "My last act under the existing arrangements," notified 
 Barclay, "will be to render my bill for dental surgery on be- 
 lated wisdom teeth. 'Twas more of an operation than I bar- 
 gained for. If I had suspected your innocence, I should have 
 left it undisturbed. You might have gone back to your Chi- 
 cago Eden without a doubt that it's all apple-blossoms and 
 bowers of bliss with no trace of a serpent. But the mischief 
 is afoot. Your mind has been poisoned. I suppose a suffi- 
 ciently sophisticated suggestion might have served in place of 
 a crime to inoculate the Marble Faun with a conscience. Any 
 way, your eyes are open now. Bob is a problem play in real 
 life. You can probably do nothing more than watch it for 
 a while, but the time may come when you'll be drawn for a 
 speaking part." 
 
 "Meanwhile it would relieve the tension," Lyon finically 
 observed, "to know whether I'm liable for oculists' or dentists' 
 rates." 
 
 "Slight overproduction of aliases and alibis, I'll allow," 
 nodded Barclay, after checking up the connection, "but any- 
 way all professions except ours charge what the traffic will 
 bear." 
 
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 It was Lyon's turn to treat the subject confidentially. For 
 a few moments the two men blew smoke rings in silence, and 
 then in a half apologetic tone Lyon resumed the discussion : — 
 
 "I might as well own up that since we left the law school 
 I've divided my time between getting the office into my head 
 in the morning and pitching it completely enough out to 
 sleep at night. 'Till I had to quit last year and take an ocean 
 trip, my interests were either pure business or any counter 
 irritant that would help me forget shop. That meant that I 
 took nothing seriously except my own work. To start with, 
 it was a good sample of the method we call 'practical,' to put 
 a boy fresh from his books where an old head was needed. I 
 stood fire all right; but the strain told, and left me rather 
 numb for anything else, even amusements. I've been think- 
 ing lately that I've learned my lesson well enough to handle 
 the professional end with a little lighter touch. What you 
 have been saying falls in pretty well with a suspicion that 
 began to creep in with that notion. I mistrust that business 
 induces absent mindedness about the rest of the world. Since 
 I've begun to take notice I feel like one of the babes in the 
 wood. Except in corporation affairs I can't place things as 
 well as I could ten years ago. Of course, we unlearn in that 
 time a lot of things that are not so ; but beyond that, people 
 outside of my line seem to have got away from me. They're 
 a little hazy and mythical. I have a sneaking feeling that 
 either they are not real or I'm not. I make it out to be a de- 
 mand for a change of ratio between business and life." 
 
 "Gives a fellow a sort of eaves-dropping-at-a-confessional 
 feeling," undertoned Barclay, "to hear you go off in this 
 fashion. When you swing over on such a tack I'm not skip- 
 per enough to follow. You might call it an air-ship chauffeur 
 stunt. I'm not up to the part. I'm with you though that you 
 can afford to look about a bit and watch other people." 
 
 Then after another silence, Barclay broke into a sort of 
 apostrophe: — "Things are doing in the world that nobody 
 understands. Whether they will go better when we do un- 
 derstand is another story; but people who like to see the 
 wheels go 'round are missing the time of their lives in not 
 prying more beyond their own circuit. I've always had a 
 notion that the old chaps who tried to get a theory to explain 
 life were picking up threads that would some day lead to 
 something. None of them have arrived, so far as I know, but 
 
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 why shouldn't they? What is it all about? After a few 
 billion more of us have served our term and made our record, 
 there ought to be material for working conclusions. As far 
 as I can see, fight and love are the two great commandments 
 with promise. Life is automatic adjustment of their propor- 
 tions. It takes a lot of fight along a lot of lines to get the 
 conditions for a little love. Up to date, the problem for every- 
 body is not whether to fight, but how. If you won't hold me 
 up for what I said a minute ago, I'll let you in on my theory 
 that fighting is the business of life. It's the biggest part of 
 what we're all doing. We keep up a pious pother to disguise 
 it, but the fight's the thing, wherever there's any going 
 ahead. When we are wise enough to be genuine we shall 
 stop trying to conceal it. After we've fought it out, love may 
 have its chance. Love is the end, not the means. If any one 
 can swipe a little of it as he goes along, he's that much ahead 
 of the game; but the reason why we've made such a mess of 
 life is that people have too soon got sick or ashamed of fight- 
 ing. They have made a virtue of loving while it's only a 
 luxury. "That's the philosophy underneath my interest in 
 Bob's case. He ought to be fighting that woman, not trying 
 to love her." 
 
 Lyon was less able than usual to make out how much Bar- 
 clay meant of what he said. With much the same uncer- 
 tainty about himself he answered : — 
 
 "I've heard the theory that food and sex are the two forces 
 that keep the world moving, and perhaps your 'fight and 
 love' amounts to the same thing. It sounds like that crazy 
 German Nietzsche, with his 'superman.' The philosophers 
 may sometime get a clue that will place these things, but they 
 all seem to be guessing at present. Edgerly, who married my 
 sister you know, is professor of ethics in our University. His 
 hobby is that the world so far has been a go-as-you-please 
 race, and that the next step is to turn it into a scientific pro- 
 gram. We've got to make up our minds what it's worth while 
 to aim at, and then resolve ourselves into a cooperative world's 
 bureau of social invention. His prescription is 'Take account 
 of cause and effect in the whole range of life, select your scale 
 of purposes, and adopt ways and means accordingly.' Your 
 'fight it out and love if you get a chance' has the call on the 
 score of feasibility. It's a religion most of us could fairly 
 well live down to ; but I wouldn't name it as a winner in the 
 
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 long run. A fight is like stopping a fire by blowing up build- 
 ings. It's a confession that we've lost our grip, and it's recov- 
 ery by means as destructive as the original evil. There's some- 
 thing wrong when we can't find any way out but a fight. 
 This tussle we're up against in Chicago has got to be fought 
 out of course. It's a simple case of must. I expect to fight 
 as though I'd rather do it than eat. At the same time, the 
 closer we come to it the more I'm haunted by the feeling that 
 the whole business is a hell broth. As to the specific issues 
 that are bringing the crash, we are absolutely right, and our 
 position against the unions is strictly legal. I would rather 
 fight till I'm beaten and forced into submission to superior 
 strength, than yield another hair. All the same, I don't be- 
 lieve there should be any fight. We've got a false start so 
 long as anybody has to be forced to surrender. All in all, 
 things as we find them are a very respectable argument for 
 resurrecting the devil hypothesis." 
 
 "When we get on a little further in penology," Barclay 
 prophesied disgustedly, "there'll be a Class A in the bribe 
 takers' penitentiary for your brand of trusties. Your price 
 is a pious phrase. You pretend you don't believe in fighting, 
 but you fight. I confess I do believe in fighting, because I 
 fight. I size up the world by the same measure. What we do 
 is what we believe, and we won't begin to do business on a 
 cash basis till what we believe matches what we pretend. We 
 have to fight for what we get in this world. Ergo, Have at! 
 Give and take ! Fight 'till the greater and less of forces have 
 settled themselves. Then you have your world to stay. It's 
 simply gravitation in all dimensions, with the disturbing 
 factors of hysterics and hypocrisy thrown out." 
 
 "Edgerly would say you haven't sufficiently generalized 
 your induction," objected Lyon. "It's his academic waj'^ of 
 welshing when he hasn't an answer handy. I can't stop you, 
 but I think you're off. You are simply blurting out what we 
 are all doing; at least what we're doing first and foremost. 
 You jump farther than I can to the conclusion that this tells 
 the whole story. I can't submit a theory in rebuttal. I 
 haven't thought beyond my sentimental challenge of appear- 
 ances. I have a feeling though that our whole social system 
 is assailable at the same point where I spot the weakness of 
 your theory. The world is not made up of things but of 
 people. Things gravitate, people climb. Things have a force 
 
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 of their own, but they get their values from people. Things 
 are at most the housing. People are the life inside. I've 
 never thought it out in this shape before, but to match your 
 theory I'll spring the claim that the main thread of the story 
 is the evolution of an ascending scale of wants in people's 
 minds. Life is a game of living chess working out a more 
 complicated scheme than any player could have had in 
 advance." 
 
 "Repeat Edgerly again," gasped Barclay, "while I think 1" 
 
 "No, don't think. Let's move for a stay of proceedings 
 
 till next time. You New Yorkers mistake sunrise for the 
 
 edge of the evening previous. I'm down for a heavy day's 
 
 work before my train leaves tomorrow." 
 
 "Well, light one more any way, to help us back to earth." 
 
 Barclay and Lyon were fair specimens of that frank type of 
 pagan upon which the destinies of modern Christianity de- 
 pend. Their breeding might have been a theorem in eugen- 
 ics. They had learned the traditional world in schools that 
 still seemed to them the best of their kind. By grace of fam- 
 ily connections they had learned the business world, through 
 rapid promotion to responsibility that initiated them into 
 commercial relations on a large scale. They had learned 
 themselves, they had formed their own individuality, they 
 had settled upon the valuations that decided their personal 
 conduct, without conscious prejudice or embarrassment from 
 any system or standard or code. They would have resented 
 any imputation that they had not become themselves with 
 perfect freedom from outside influence. The truth was 
 that social moulds had merely eased pressure on them at the 
 point where their world was tolerant of variation. They were 
 accordingly of the time and of the social stratum that pro- 
 duced them, with the faintest marks of sub-classification. If 
 hard pushed, they would have harked back to conventional 
 beliefs amounting to a moral creed, and a wholesome one. 
 Life to them meant doing, however, not defining. Their pro- 
 fessional experience had come at them like troops of raiders. 
 It had been a succession of challenges to repel attacks, to plan 
 counter-attacks, to seize strategic positions, to follow up ad- 
 vantages. Their occupation had prescribed a rigid habit of 
 mind. It had become second nature to choose distinct aims 
 to be reached, and to rate everything at what it was worth 
 
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 as means to those ends. All their thinking and feeling was 
 in terms of some concrete value-unit, avowed or implied. If 
 anything was worth while, it was because it had a use in get- 
 ting some result that they wanted. If they ever listened to 
 talk of ideal values, it was in moments of relaxation that 
 didn't count. They supposed themselves superior to illusions. 
 In fact, their mental background was chiefly illusion, while 
 their experience had explored a little segment of reality. 
 They did not knowingly think by rule. They believed that 
 the successful shall inherit the earth. If called upon to state 
 their idea of success, more power in the market would be the 
 chief item in the schedule. Yet they would insist on a blank 
 reservation. If pushed farther they would say that success 
 is control of the market, plus. Each of them had his moments 
 of irritation because he could not put a clear meaning into 
 that plus. Each of them occasionally wondered whether fail- 
 ure to run down that plus might not turn out to be leaving 
 some vital point in his scheme of life unprotected. Yet 
 these misgivings were wholly off-duty episodes. Expansion of 
 trade and firmer grip on the conditions of production, were 
 the chief landmarks within their horizon of strenuous action. 
 All other good things seemed to them so absolutely depend- 
 ent upon business that it cost no moral struggle to concen- 
 trate on commercial success. Although there was no rec- 
 ognized conflict, still the ghost of the plus might put in an 
 appearance at any moment, either as jester or spectre, to cast 
 suspicion on the completeness of the policy. The apparition 
 had never been detained for examination. It was a fugitive 
 conceit, passing with other fancies. 
 
 Certain anemic sorts of their contemporaries flattered their 
 own self-esteem by labeling such as Barclay and Lyon "mate- 
 rialists." Their mean aims and sordid purposes were sup- 
 posed by those same critics to mark the low estate of society. 
 If the two men should plead to the indictment their answer 
 would be: — "Our kind are the only respectable idealists. 
 What's the use of dreaming about the impossible, or deify- 
 ing the unattainable? It's a man's work to find the doable 
 and do it." 
 
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 H 
 THE MEDIATOR 
 
 "Action, and happiness in action, and richer life for every- 
 body as the result of action, were the literal terms of his 
 theology." 
 
 IN the four or five days just past Robert Halleck had been 
 like the bearer of a flag of truce between two armies ready 
 for battle. Old residents regarded the outlook as more threat- 
 ening than at any time since the Haymarket affair. The 
 form which the impending conflict had assumed during the 
 last twenty-four hours had taken Halleck completely by sur- 
 prise. He had for some time believed that a stronger labor 
 combination was organizing than capital in this country had 
 ever encountered. He was nevertheless entirely unprepared 
 for the latest phases of its plan of campaign. All his attempts 
 at conciliation had been wasted on details which now ap- 
 peared to have been immaterial. He had not supposed it pos- 
 sible to unite organized labor in the United States in support 
 of a position that would raise a radical question with capi- 
 talism. Labor conflicts had always before seemed to him 
 mere trials of strength over division of spoils. They did little 
 if anything either to promote the spirit of justice or to make 
 its letter more clear. They merely measured the relative 
 fighting force of opposing claimants. The conflict now at 
 hand would mark a new departure and possibly open an 
 epoch. 
 
 Both camps rated Halleck as their friend. He had vol- 
 unteered as an informal mediator, and each had accepted 
 his good offices. Both sides confided to him their views of 
 the claims in dispute, but neither went so far as to tell him 
 much more of its plans than was given to the public. In- 
 stead of showing results, the last few hours had revealed to 
 him that his efforts had simply helped his friends in the labor 
 party to gain time for more effective preparation against his 
 friends the capitalists. The quarrels over details had merely 
 masked manoeuvers that were establishing bases for a fierce 
 conflict of principle. Halleck was convinced of three points : 
 first, the cause of the unions was just ; second, the strike was 
 wrong ; third, peace was impossible. 
 
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 The faces of the two thousand people to whom he must 
 speak the next morning began to shape themselves in Hal- 
 leck's imagination. They all knew the signs of the coming 
 storm. Whenever he preached they expected him to speak for 
 the day and the hour. They knew it was not like him to 
 put them off with ancient history, or with abstract theology, 
 or with moral generalities, when they were interested in get- 
 ting at the heart of a practical question. 
 
 Halleck was aware that this reputation was both his strength 
 and his weakness. It made his opportunity and increased 
 his difficulty. He never allowed himself to forget that he 
 was trying to hold the attention of a type of people between 
 those who ignore a preacher's appeals altogether, and those 
 who want from him a "thus saith the Lord." Even the 
 hearers who had been attracted by his method were enough 
 like the average to want a dictum that would settle the right 
 and wrong in specific cases, and show how the settlement 
 might be enforced. They were not beyond suspecting sharp 
 practice if they were told that there was truth and error on 
 both sides. They were in danger of thinking it an evasion 
 of the issue to trace the case in question back to fundamentals. 
 They shared the common impulse to flout rehgion as a moral 
 guide unless it offers instant relief of acute conditions. 
 
 Halleck was no writer of ethical essays. He did not be- 
 lieve in the pedagogue in the pulpit. If there had been times 
 when the clergyman was the only person in the parish who 
 was educated and could educate, those times were no longer 
 in an American city. When he preached, he took for granted 
 all the agencies for popular instruction. He assumed that 
 his part was not to teach but to persuade and lead. He was 
 a hard student, along lines which he believed to be closest to 
 human needs; but he studied by system, not to furnish his 
 next discourse. His sermons never smelled of books. His 
 ideal was to know life so well that he could interpret it to his 
 neighbors in a way to convince them of the direction their 
 conduct ought to take. He did not put himself in special 
 training for each next encounter with his congregation. He 
 kept to his program of study, and thinking, and mixing with 
 real people. Saturday evening and Sunday morning were 
 reserved for suiting a message to the occasion. He mentally 
 interviewed the persons likely to make up his audience, and 
 the groups which some of them would represent. He asked 
 
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 himself "What is the glimpse into life that will most help 
 these people at this moment?" The answer always came from 
 the problem which he had found some of them tackling, or 
 from some moral phase of an immediate public interest. 
 Then he reflected whether the Bible contained any direct 
 teaching on the subject. His mother's ideas had been formed 
 before the Bible went out of fashion, and she had taught him 
 to memorize at least a verse a day almost from the time he 
 began to talk. At her death, when he was fourteen years old, 
 he had most of the New Testament, the Psalms, and large 
 sections of the prophetic books in a collection of indelible 
 mental records. He was rarely embarrassed long in select- 
 ing from these his biblical precedent. He used it not as a 
 proof but as an illustration. 
 
 A chess player might have said that he always used the 
 same pulpit opening. It was after this style: — "The prin- 
 ciple of life that I shall talk about this morning came to view 
 in such and such an incident recorded in the Bible ; or it was 
 stated in these words; the surroundings of the passage show 
 that the point was in brief this ; now things are not true be- 
 cause they are in the Bible, they are in the Bible be- 
 cause they are true ; I ask you, therefore, to notice how this 
 principle that was discovered so long ago applies in our own 
 lives." 
 
 As a rule Halleck had used his reference to the Bible and 
 dismissed it in less than five minutes. He often said that one 
 reason why the pulpit at present attracts so few people is 
 stupid pulpit psychology. Most preachers treat the Bible 
 like a collection of antiquities in which people must be bored 
 into taking an interest. He believed he could best use the 
 Bible as he would a stereopticon, to direct attention away from 
 the instrument itself to the views that it projects. 
 
 Robert Halleck had outgrown the first flush of his youth- 
 ful enthusiasms, but what he had lost in ardor he had gained 
 in decision. He made out the plot of human life to be steady 
 progress from crude beginnings into conditions making for 
 improvement beyond any known limit. In his version life 
 was a winnowing process, in which the deposit is types of indi- 
 viduals and types of dealings between individuals that on the 
 whole form an ascending scale. He could not be dragged into 
 discussing the scholastic question whether a better world could 
 be imagined. He frankly confessed that he had no way to ex- 
 
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 plain some of the commonplaces of life so as to prove that the 
 scheme which involves them is the best that might have been. 
 He did not hesitate to say that he could not understand how 
 some of the incidents of the common lot could occur, either 
 with God's consent or without it. He neither doubted the ex- 
 istence of God nor tried to conceal his feeling that God might 
 have done some things better. Yet he did not rush into the 
 paltry blunder of assuming that his mental failure settled 
 any thing. He did not attempt to ignore the inexplicable. He 
 recognized it without apology, but he steadied himself with 
 the equally candid belief that if he knew more he would un- 
 derstand more, and if he knew all he would understand all. 
 
 Whatever might be conceivable in the way of a superior 
 universe, Halleck was committed to work at his best in the 
 world as it is. So far as he could see, human progress has to 
 be paid for at a tremendous cost of pain and sorrow and 
 waste. Good men die when their friends think they are 
 most needed, and good efforts are defeated when the times 
 seem just ripe for their success. The individuals have been 
 rare in history who could clearly prove a margin on the profit 
 side of their life account. Halleck conceded all this, yet it 
 had no visible tendency to make him treat it as the final 
 word. With all its discounts, life seemed to him a paying 
 investment. He did not worry about partition of the divi- 
 dends. To him the final inducement to work was his belief 
 that someone, sometime, would profit by the work. Whether 
 a metaphysic could be invented to justify it or not, the method 
 of life seemed to him quite plain. His summary of it was, not 
 to let our circumstances master us, but to master them; 
 whether an experience brings pleasure or pain, not to be con- 
 trolled by it, but to control it. The practical application of 
 his philosophy was that it is stupid to fret over the more we 
 might do, or might enjoy, if our circumstances were differ- 
 ent. Our problem is to organize precisely the experience 
 which we meet into purpose and action of a better quality 
 than surrender to our surroundings. We shall amount to 
 the most in the end, for ourselves and for the scheme of 
 things in which every man gets his meaning, if we stoutly 
 refuse to be counted out, and keep on using such strength as 
 we have, in the direction of the best good we can see. 
 
 It was not interest in abstract speculation that led Halleck 
 to his creed. For his own sake it would have been enough 
 
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 that he found work to do. The task would have been its 
 own creed. As a minister, however, he had to hear the con- 
 fidences of all sorts of people. He found his problems in 
 their difficulties. He was not long in discovering that the 
 traditional forms of faith were moulded to fit a mental atti- 
 tude which he seldom met. The kind of first aid to the dis- 
 tressed that he was most often called upon to render created a 
 demand for a version of life which appealed to the every-day 
 man's sense of reality. There must be some common prem- 
 ises if there were to be common conclusions. 
 
 Yet he seemed to reach his least common denominator of 
 life by accident rather than calculation. He did not delib- 
 erately set out to construct a theory. As he widened his ac- 
 quaintance with plain people, and as he realized some of the 
 differences between what they thought and what they were 
 supposed to think, he became aware that a process of simpli- 
 fication was going on in his own mind. Figures of speech 
 were yielding up a literal meaning. Particulars that had 
 ranked as fixed terms in the equation of truth became alge- 
 braic symbols with varying value. Special formulas that he 
 had held as fundamental merged into more general expres- 
 sions of deeper meanings. His feelings quite failed to keep 
 pace with his judgment. If he had been given to introspec- 
 tion, he would long ago have discovered a break between the 
 mental habits which he inherited from the past and the per- 
 ceptions which he was deriving from the present. He had 
 observed that his thoughts were fast giving up life as a ritual, 
 and were accepting it as a coherent system of cause and effect. 
 Yet he was taken by surprise when he found that he had 
 stopped trying to make out a case for the moral order of the 
 universe in terms of the pains and pleasures of individuals. 
 
 In the first year of his pastorate Halleck was one day try- 
 ing to use the idea of divine help to encourage a man whose 
 affairs had all gone wrong. "No! No!" was the response, 
 "don't tantalize me with that. Your errand-boy conception 
 of the Almighty goes to smash against the facts." The young 
 minister did not welcome the conclusion, nor accept it out of 
 hand. It impeached all his theological training. He tried 
 to avoid it, like a lost child afraid to look into the dark for its 
 mother. He felt that it would rob both God and men of real 
 personality. 
 
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 He was never guilty of fighting for a theory simply be- 
 cause he had once held it; yet he refused to surrender on 
 demand to what seemed to him a stone-crusher version of 
 life. He had no stomach for reducing the spiritual factors 
 to mechanical forces. The substantial issue in his mind was 
 between order and no order as our final version of the moral 
 world. He found himself repudiating a supposed principle of 
 order under which the likes and dislikes of persons made 
 each into a world by himself. He took refuge in an idea of 
 individuality which pictured every person not as complete 
 in himself, but as made up of all the interests which link him 
 with the destinies of all other persons. 
 
 Halleck's terms of peace with his own doubts left a soul in 
 men and a sovereignty in God. They provided for what 
 seemed to him a more real unity between God and men than 
 his earlier notions had contained. The self that sets itself 
 up as an end to itself chooses isolation in the moral world, 
 and deserves it. The self that finds itself in falling into 
 harmony with the larger scheme of things, cannot be isolated 
 and cannot be disappointed. Its life becomes incidental, to 
 be sure, rather than final. At the same time it becomes real 
 rather than fanciful. The larger life comes to its own at 
 the very moment when the lesser life meets defeat. "Let 
 me die with my face toward the enemy" is the universal 
 symbol of the successful life. Its measure is not its individual 
 career, but the sweep of the movement to which it con- 
 tributes. 
 
 In Halleck's hands this philosophy was not mysticism. 
 There were timid souls in his church who even suspected it 
 of materialism. It lacked all the vague otherworldly tone 
 by which they were most suggestible. It did not borrow 
 enough of the stock phrases of religion to assure them that it 
 was Christian. Its working precepts were: Serve the best 
 good you can understand ; Don't shirk your share ; Do your 
 part; Look for your compensations not in the enjoyments 
 that end with yourself, but in the on-going of the greater 
 good. Halleck appraised religion chiefly as a means of fit- 
 ting people into the economy of life. As mere sentiment, he 
 classed it frankly with the other aesthetic enjoyments. 
 Action and happiness in action, and richer life for every- 
 body as the result of action, were the literal terms of his 
 theology. 
 
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 His scheme of action left little room for bewailing the 
 evil in the world. It was altogether occupied with promoting 
 the good. He did not flinch from his duty with the types of 
 people who are tenacious of the luxury of sorrow, but he al- 
 ways made a botch of his efforts with them. His discordant 
 hopefulness disturbed their glorification of grief, and his per- 
 sistent prescription of work as a panacea often affected 
 them as verging upon insult. He believed there would be 
 ample time for futile bemoanings if he should outlive strength 
 to lend a hand. Until senility vetoed effort, he preferred to 
 put his regrets for the evils of the world into the form of 
 work to remove the conditions that produce the evils. If he 
 should die before reaching the age of fruitless regrets, he felt 
 quite content to stand on his record. 
 
 The professional reformers looked askance at Halleck. 
 They could understand neither his temper nor his philoso- 
 phy. He notoriously neglected the inspiration of things out 
 of joint. Rueful contemplation of social wrongs gave him 
 no more joy than brooding over the sores he had seen in his 
 clinic would afford to a healthy physician. Evils suggested 
 to him not morbid reflection, but first thorough investigation 
 of their source, and then radical treatment. The world's 
 surplus of health and strength, physical and moral, over sick- 
 ness and weakness of all sorts, impressed him more than the 
 whole catalogue of casual ills. Gain, growth, healing, re- 
 covery, seemed to him the cardinal traits of life. 
 
 Halleck did not imagine that it ought to be as easy for the 
 average man as for himself to believe that the world is sound 
 at the core. He was all the time in touch with people who 
 needed more nerve every day to keep their courage than his 
 whole experience had required. He often wondered whether 
 in their place he could be as brave. At all events, he was 
 convinced of his mission to use his brighter outlook for the 
 benefit of people whose position was less secure. 
 
 Never had Halleck felt himself closer than this evening 
 to the limits of his resources. He had no misgivings about 
 the permanent course of events, but the present and his share 
 in it were in the balance. He doubted his ability to affect 
 the attitude of a single partisan, and still more his power to 
 get fundamental factors recognized. He was not ambitious 
 to project himself personally into the coming strife, but the 
 conflict, as it had betrayed itself in the last few hours, was 
 
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THE MEDIATOR 
 
 bound to put on trial not merely economics and politics but 
 religion. When hostile human interests threaten war on a 
 large scale, and make anarchy of social order, must religion 
 be a mute or worse? Can it contribute anything that will 
 count toward peace? Is religion a social force, or merely a 
 fashion in stage costumes, or the movable scenery of the play ? 
 Is religion the world's sanity, or simply a diversion of its mor- 
 bid moods, to be dismissed when work must be done ? 
 
 The one question under these different forms had not, at 
 this late day, overtaken Halleck unawares. He had answered 
 it for himself before he decided on his vocation. The answer 
 had dictated his decision. It became his controlling pur- 
 pose to do what he could to justify the answer, and to broaden 
 the scope of its influence. 
 
 But at this moment Chicago was in a condition that 
 warned every wise man to guard his words as he would sparks 
 in a magazine. Thousands of men were ready to fight over 
 claims which admitted no compromise. Each side repre- 
 sented an economic class. The interests of each class directly 
 challenged those of the other. There was no standard of ad- 
 justment that both would recognize. So long as each party 
 maintained its position, local business would be blockaded, 
 and the effects might paralyze the industries of the country. 
 Sooner or later someone must yield. As the hostile interests 
 recognized no moral tribunal competent to adjust the unal- 
 terable minimum of their differences, the only alternative 
 must be a test of force. But industrial war of the magnitude 
 now threatened must soon convince every serious mind that 
 neutrality is unthinkable. 
 
 Halleck set himself the task of analyzing the situation as 
 he had seen it developing during the week. Ruling out 
 prejudice on both sides, and neglecting lesser details, what 
 were the essentials at stake? He did not feel sure that he 
 could consistently play the role of a visitor from Mars, or of 
 a historian tracing the record a thousand years hence, but he 
 honestly made the attempt. 
 
 He had soon reduced the confusion to this form : — On the 
 one hand are employers demanding "Must I submit to out- 
 side dictation? Have I not a right to run my business as I 
 please?" The answer must be, "Yes, surely, provided your 
 business ever can be yours in a sense that warrants you in 
 fighting for it at the expense of your partnership with your 
 
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 employees, and your trusteeship to the public. On the 
 other hand are employees with their contention, "Have we 
 not a right to organize, and does not that right carry with 
 it the right to use the power of organization?" Again the 
 answer must be, "Yes, surely, provided your organization is 
 not for purposes, or is not operated according to policies, 
 which convert your partnership with your employers, and 
 your social trusteeship, into piracy upon the rights of others 
 who do not choose to join your organization, or still others 
 who depend upon you for your share of the world's work." 
 
 But great combinations of fighting force, representing 
 these opposite claims, were on the brink of war to force each 
 other into submission. What could be said in the name of 
 religion about such an issue? By an hour's hard thinking 
 the ground had been cleared for the second stage in the process 
 of preparing the message. Two hours later Halleck had de- 
 cided on the main lines of his appeal for a Christian attitude 
 toward the fighting issue. 
 
 Halleck had a volume of mediaeval prayers, which had 
 often been his recourse against unmanageable states of mind. 
 They were voices out of a world with which he had hardly 
 more than one impulse in common. In spite of mawkish de- 
 tails, he found in them genuine aspiration to reach a spiritual 
 rendering of life that would silence immediate discords. For 
 thirty minutes Halleck tried the tonic of Basil, and Augus- 
 tine, and Anselm, and Bernard, and Gregory, and Thomas a 
 Kempis. It did not give him quite the same kind of satis- 
 faction they seemed to desire, but it calmed and steadied him. 
 It slacked his mind's grip on the evening's problem. It sent 
 him to sleep with a glow of assurance that whether his own 
 work counted much or little, he was enlisted in a winning 
 cause. 
 
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 III 
 
 THE CRISIS 
 
 "It would surrender the fundamental principle that every 
 business must be run by its owners, not by outsiders." 
 
 AS Lyon entered the "Twentieth Century" Saturday after- 
 noon, the Conductor handed him a bunch of letters and 
 telegrams. He ordered a table for his compartment, and 
 sent for the stenographer. Before the train had passed West 
 Point, answers to the letters were ready for his signature. 
 Among the telegrams sent out at Albany was an order to his 
 chauffeur to have his car at the Van Buren St. station at 8 :55 
 the next morning. Another read : — 
 "Mr. Walther Kissinger, 
 
 4608 Woodlawn Ave., 
 
 Chicago. 
 Meet me at office tomorrow (Sunday) morning at nine. 
 
 LOGAN LYON." 
 
 Kissinger was precisely on time, but he found Lyon al- 
 ready at his desk. Their greeting was that of men whose 
 working relations were mutually satisfactory, without sugges- 
 tion of further intimacy. 
 
 "It's rough to call you down here Sunday morning, Mr. 
 Kissinger, but we'll get through in time to go to church, and 
 that's my cue today at any rate. It will help settle my mind 
 into the proper spirit if you tell me the worst up to date ; and 
 I can talk a little more to the point with my father this aft- 
 ernoon if the facts are in the back of my head during the 
 service." 
 
 "We know nothing of importance beyond what I wired, 
 except that late last night I got a pretty straight tip about 
 the proposition the officers will ask the unions to endorse 
 today." 
 
 "Is it the general strike?" 
 
 "No, at the start it's just the opposite. Whether the lead- 
 ers have had this move in mind all along, or whether the new 
 plan is an afterthought, I can't say. The last word, however, 
 is for a complete change of front. Nothing that has been in 
 dispute for the last two months is to be pressed, for a while 
 
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 at any rate, by any of the unions. The scheme is now to 
 make a test case with us. They're not going to claim a griev- 
 ance against anybody else, and other people will be drawn in 
 only by helping us. They are going to make an issue with 
 the Avery Company alone. The demand will be that the 
 company shall give a place on the Board of Directors to a 
 representative elected by the help." 
 
 "Have they lost their minds?" gasped Lyon. 
 
 "Some of them say they have just found their minds." 
 
 "What do they suppose they mean?" 
 
 "Well, you know Graham is touted as the smartest labor 
 leader yet, and " 
 
 "He's several different kinds of a scoundrel, but it remains 
 to be seen whether a smart one is in the combination." 
 
 "At any rate he has hacked off a brand new chip for the 
 shoulder of labor." 
 
 "I should say he had I It's a plain case of 'whom the gods 
 will destroy.' On its face every labor fight ever heard of be- 
 fore has been a question of terms. It didn't strike at the un- 
 derpinnings of things, except indirectly. This proposition 
 means dynamiting the foundations of business, and turning 
 the ruins over to lunatics as receivers. Does the fellow ac- 
 tually think he can get any one to stand with him on that sort 
 of a bluff? If he is fit to be at large he can't imagine for a 
 minute that business at this late day can be reorganized on 
 Quixotic principles. What's his game, and how far does he 
 mean to play it?" 
 
 For a moment Kissinger did not answer. He seemed to be 
 balancing something that diverted his thoughts from Lyon's 
 outburst. His features had been set in correctly emotionless 
 business expression. Now a glimmer of light played under 
 the surface, with good promise of flashing out in a frankly 
 human symptom. 
 
 Kissinger's family had intended him for a place in the 
 foreign office. He had served his term in the army, and had 
 passed his first law examinations, when he had come to this 
 country as a subordinate in a special commission. Before he 
 had been in the United States a month his whole outlook was 
 changed. Nothing appeared to be within easier reach than 
 wealth. In two or three months more he had decided to re- 
 main in America. Diplomacy had come to look like a too 
 long road to success, while business promised to be a short cut. 
 
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 The Avery Company was just beginning to develop its foreign 
 trade, and could use a German correspondent. It offered Kis- 
 singer a position, with prospects of promotion. Without 
 much hesitation he accepted. His accurate and methodical 
 habits proved invaluable, but he had not the aggressive stuff 
 that makes a manager. In a short time he was the confiden- 
 tial secretary of the President of the company, but that was 
 his limit. For years he had done duty at his post with the 
 loyalty of a soldier. He had long ago given up ideas of inde- 
 pendent business ventures. So far as his employers knew, he 
 had no other ambition than to serve the company for all he 
 was worth. 
 
 Kissinger was essentially not a man of affairs, he was a seer 
 of visions. He belonged to the race of Klopstock, and Schiller, 
 and Arndt, and Uhland and Korner. A century earlier he 
 would have been among those futile youths who first fought 
 at Leipzig and Waterloo to free their country from Napoleon, 
 and then formed the Burschenschaften to free it from itself. 
 His prattle of "Ueberzeugungen" would have been as pious as 
 theirs, and he would have had no doubt that lighting the 
 Wartburg with bonfires of musty books was progressive states- 
 manship. He lived the double life of routine and sentiment. 
 The problem of making the two consistent had never fairly 
 presented itself, nor had it occurred to him that neither of 
 them was whole so long as they were separate. 
 
 Practically Kissinger was an obedient and virtually auto- 
 matic cog in the conventional machinery of society. In the of- 
 fice his devotion to the company was as unreserved as though 
 the thought of economic evils had never troubled his imag- 
 ination. Out of business hours he was never quite himself 
 unless he was dreaming dreams of reforming the world. He 
 read the class of literature, and he cultivated the type of ac- 
 quaintances, that wasted no attention upon feasible improve- 
 ments, but devoted themselves to theories of an ideal society. 
 Instead of stimulating actual invention, this speculation 
 tended to make him timid and perfunctory. He knew no 
 ways and means but those of his every-day program. These 
 got results. Any interference with them would have scan- 
 dalized his sense of fitness. He was not aware of it, but his 
 philosophy actually left room for only two alternatives ; either 
 to be content with the established order of things, or to expect 
 a miraculous transformation of the real world into the ideal. 
 
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 Of forces capable of modifying social institutions he had no 
 clear-cut conception. 
 
 But there was another and more pathetic contradiction be- 
 tween the two phases of Kissinger. Though he did not admit 
 it to himself, he loathed the whole economic system, and all 
 his affections responded to incoherent suggestions of a better 
 condition. 
 
 He had spared himself the outright confession, but in fact 
 he was haunted by a feeling of degradation. He was not 
 heroic, he was merely impressionable. He was sure the world 
 was ruled by the coarser motives instead of the finer, and he 
 revolted in spirit against his acquiescence. If he had consented 
 to his sympathies rather than his prudence, he would long ago 
 have rebelled against the whole social order. He would have 
 denounced it as a scheme of cumulative inequality ; as cynical 
 selfishness masquerading in a soiled domino of democracy; 
 and he would have declared his individual independence. 
 Since the luxury of that sort of genuineness was beyond his 
 means, he simply allowed his practical and his speculative 
 lives to develop each according to its bent, under an inviolable 
 tradition of non-intercourse and non-intervention. 
 
 For an instant the crisis that the two men were facing al- 
 most surprised Kissinger into recognizing the antagonism be- 
 tween his two selves. The unions that would present their 
 ultimatum next morning were simply his theoretical secession 
 incarnated. They were merely putting into action at a sin- 
 gle point the sentiments that he cherished toward economic 
 institutions in the abstract. A stronger man would have ac- 
 cepted the challenge to renounce one side of himself or the 
 other. Kissinger could neither reconcile his two selves nor 
 renounce either. He could merely reserve them for favorable 
 occasions. His theories had never of their own motion so 
 far violated good form as to interrupt the course of business. 
 Now that the actions of others had forced them into the day's 
 work, he had a guilty feeling that they deserved arrest for dis- 
 orderly conduct. Utopia seemed as much out of place in the 
 Avery offices, as the company itself would be in Utopia. 
 
 As an item in an actual business proposition, the conflict 
 between routine and affection was too unequal to last. Before 
 the pause was long enough for Lyon to notice it, Kissinger 
 continued : — 
 
 "I have seen Graham only two or three times, and have 
 
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 very little to go on except what his friends say. They make 
 him look like a hard man to fight. We shall go wrong though 
 if we size him up as a rascal. In the first place, he has a good 
 deal more money than he will ever spend on himself, and he 
 doesn't seem to care for more." 
 
 "Trust the people behind him to see that he soon has less." 
 
 "If they are in for that they are taking long chances. At 
 present he is putting all his surplus into developing his min- 
 ing properties in Idaho on a cooperative basis, and they all 
 know it. He tells the men around him he is willing to pay his 
 own salary and expenses, and a fair amount, like anybody 
 else, to the common fund ; but beyond that it's got to be share 
 and share alike in hard work for the cause, and plenty of it. 
 They believe him. When his father died Graham had a 
 chance to hire superintendents and spend his dividends with- 
 out going near his property. Instead of that he dropped law 
 and studied mining engineering three years. In his vacations 
 he worked with the men. When he was through studying he 
 settled in the camp, and told the men his policy was not only 
 to increase the output, but to find a way for every man in the 
 camp to get out of the business all he put in." 
 
 "What does organizing strikes in Chicago have to do with 
 that program?" 
 
 "It didn't take him long to find that competitors wouldn't 
 let him alone. He had to come East to deal with other con- 
 cerns, and he says the more he has to do with financiers the 
 better he likes working men. He claims that the long end of 
 distribution belongs to the man who works with his hands, 
 and that wits should take a larger part of their pay in the 
 comfort of their job. His theory is that the interests of work- 
 ers are not taken care of because they are not organized, and 
 that the best of every economic deal goes to the men that float 
 stocks instead of those that do the work." 
 
 "The old story ! Every raw recruit to socialism thinks he 
 has invented a brand new idea, and the rear rank in the awk- 
 ward squad expects to sweep vested interests off the earth." 
 
 Quarterly reports were so much more real to Kissinger than 
 social reforms, and days of reckoning with the directors had 
 so long been the chief signs of his zodiac, that he had nothing 
 to say for applied utopianism that would not have sounded 
 foolish to himself in a session with Lyon. He rnerely made 
 semi-conscious notes of exceptions, and stuck to his facts. 
 
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 "I have not found out how long Graham has been working 
 on this scheme, or how far he is looking ahead ; but as I figure 
 it out, this move against us doesn't bulk very large in his cal- 
 culations, win or lose. It is merely the opening gun of a big 
 political campaign. He reckons that there's enough working- 
 men's class-consciousness awake in the country to capture the 
 government in most of the states and at Washington. It is 
 only waiting for the right sort of issue to rally on. He doesn't 
 pick the Avery Company as better or worse than other corpo- 
 rations. We are simply in the open and easy to attack. We 
 really haven't anything that he would take as a gift. It 
 isn't victory he's after but an issue. Any old question will do, 
 so long as it makes capital and labor line up on opposite sides. 
 He wouldn't give a picayune to get one of his men into our 
 Board. Indeed the worst jolt we could give him would be to 
 accept his terms on the spot, and tell him to name his man. 
 What he is after is not directors but recognition of an idea. 
 His strategy is to concentrate the working class vote on the 
 principle of labor representation in control of corporations." 
 
 "In other words, if the thing worked out, nothing but labor 
 would be represented." 
 
 "That's about the size of it. Labor and capital are to 
 change places. Labor will dictate and capital must submit." 
 
 "Suppose we take this view of the movement, how much 
 more do you get about the fighting strength it can muster?" 
 
 "There is nothing definite yet beyond their own claims. 
 We can't tell how far they know their strength, or take stock 
 in their own estimates. They say they are organized inde- 
 pendent of the unions in half the states, and will be in the 
 rest as fast as it is worth while. These organizations are sup- 
 posed to be strike supporters. At the right time they will blos- 
 som out as political machines. They seem to be officered pretty 
 largely by the union leaders, but take in everybody that 
 thinks he has a grudge against capital. The funds are not 
 held directly by the unions, and it looks as though they came 
 from a good many sources that could not be tapped for strictly 
 union purposes. Our fight will hold the attention of the 
 country, and furnish material for a campaign of education 
 along the lines of 'smash the trusts,' and 'government for the 
 people, not for the corporations.' In other words, it is one 
 more way of trying to get the balance of power for the labor 
 interests. The fight will be narrowed down to the issue 'law- 
 
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 making by the many instead of the few.' It is not hard to 
 show on paper how the results of two out of the last four presi- 
 dential contests might have been reversed by a little less rad- 
 ical break with economic prejudice. Graham's friends think 
 he can unite the different sorts of people who want a new deal, 
 and they believe his plan of operations will succeed. Noth- 
 ing is to be said about politics at the outset, but after the 
 country is roused by the labor fight the political reserve will 
 be brought to the front. If I am on the right track, things 
 are to be so shaped up that the next election will turn on the 
 one question of rule by the workers or the capitalists." 
 
 The two men had been by turns sitting, standing and 
 pacing in zigzags across the office. The pantomime of jerky 
 movement and cramped attitude fairly reflected their state 
 of mind. Except when he had thrown in a remark, Lyon's 
 manner had not shown whether he was listening to Kissinger 
 or following an independent train of thought. As Kissinger 
 stopped speaking, Lyon halted close to him, and for a few 
 seconds looked steadily into his eyes; or rather he seemed 
 less to be looking into Kissinger's eyes than trying to see 
 something through them. Then, with the air of having set- 
 tled a question, he seated himself and resumed the discussion. 
 In sharp contrast with his usual habit, he spoke haltingly, as 
 though he was feeling his way from each word to the next. 
 
 "Your theory, Mr. Kissinger, would explain several things 
 that I see no other way to account for. I had thought of it 
 before, but hadn't facts enough to test it. Whether it proves 
 to be correct or not, I am ready to adopt it for working pur- 
 poses. But that after all merely puts the case before us. It 
 settles nothing, except that we rule out the bluff idea. 
 Whether the plan in the large is crazy or not is their affair. 
 We needn't resolve ourselves into a lunacy commission. Our 
 first concern is that Graham can give us a fight, and we must 
 assume that he means to do it. The next thing is to count 
 the cost and decide whether the game is worth the candle. 
 Our grade of labor can't be replaced offhand. It might mean 
 a shut-down for months. That would cost us at the start 
 several million dollars' worth of contracts, besides the indirect 
 consequences. You think we could side-track the whole 
 thing by letting one of them into our Board?" 
 
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 "Sure! Unless the terms are changed today, that would 
 concede all they ask." 
 
 "And what then?" 
 
 "Why, they would have to pick out a corporation that would 
 stand pat." 
 
 "Suppose everybody paid the price?" 
 
 "Well, in that case they would sooner or later get around 
 to us again with a demand for two directors, and so on till 
 they had a majority everywhere." 
 
 "I see, curing the morphine habit with more morphine." 
 
 A grim smile relaxed the tense expression of Lyon's face. 
 It changed to a chuckle, and developed into a series of com- 
 bined laughs and whoops that blended ridicule with admi- 
 ration. 
 
 "It reminds me of a gang of amateur counterfeiters," he 
 gurgled, "trying to bribe the United States Government. I 
 wonder if they'd be willing to throw in a job to any of us 
 under the new management!" 
 
 Kissinger's sense of humor was not equal to the occasion. 
 To him both business and social reform were too serious for 
 levity. His mind was baffled by the contrast between con- 
 crete and ideal principles. He did not harbor a suspicion 
 that questions Avere begged on both sides; still less could he 
 mdulge in irreverence toward either; even when they came 
 into collision. He simply waited till Lyon should return to 
 a business basis. 
 
 Lyon's change of mood may have been either cause or 
 effect of a new grasp of the situation. At all events, when 
 his serious tone returned the problem had reduced itself in 
 his mind to very simple terms. 
 
 "We could insure our business for several years at least 
 by admitting a labor delegate to our Board?" 
 
 "That is my opinion," confirmed Kissinger, "assuming of 
 course that we could remove the legal difficulty of making a 
 director of a man who owns no stock in the company." 
 
 Lyon suppressed another spasm of levity and dryly re- 
 marked: — "I believe corporations have been known to over- 
 come difficulties of that nature when it was to their ad- 
 vantage. But would there be any difficulty about reducing 
 a director chosen under such circumstances to the value of a 
 dummy?" 
 
 "I can't see how he could have any influence on the busi- 
 
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 ness whatever, unless the other directors chose to humor 
 him." 
 
 "Precisely! In other words our insurance would cost us 
 nothing. Our tangible assets would not be reduced, and our 
 power of independent management would remain the same 
 as before, but we should be free from labor disturbances for 
 an indefinite period. Why isn't it a clear case of getting a 
 whole lot for nothing?" 
 
 "It would be if it didn't violate business principles," Kis- 
 singer answered, with the air of a man testifying against his 
 own interests under cross-examination. Lyon would as soon 
 have suspected economic unsoundness in a cash-register as 
 in Kissinger, and the signs passed undetected. On the con- 
 trary, Lyon had no doubt that he had rather shocked Kis- 
 singer by seeming to dally with temptation. He went on 
 with the aim of restoring the confidence of the literal-minded 
 secretary, as well as of clinching the concliision. 
 
 "Now you come to the other side of the ledger, Mr. Kis- 
 singer. It would cost us nothing except everything. It 
 would surrender the fundamental principle that every busi- 
 ness must be run by its owners, not by outsiders. At just the 
 time when it is more necessary than ever for all the business 
 interests of the country to stand together against socialism, 
 it would make us silent partners of the socialists. There is 
 only one alternative, if we propose to keep on doing business. 
 The other thing would turn us into pirates. We can afford 
 to go to pieces fighting for our rights, but we can't afford to 
 succeed by making common cause with anarchy. If the 
 case they put up to us tomorrow turns out as we expect, there 
 will be no room for a difference of opinion on the main ques- 
 tion. We shall simply be up against the problem of ways 
 and means to force the fighting." 
 
 If Kissinger had clearly understood himself, his dilemma 
 would have been cruel. Fortunately his dreams had never 
 shaped themselves aggressively enough to dispute precedence 
 with his duties. For every-day purposes the decision seemed 
 to him as inevitable as it did to Lyon. But to the other 
 idealistic self that would answer to his name when he was 
 fairly free from the atmosphere of the office, the logic was 
 utterly irrelevant. The Czar might decree that there should 
 be no more music in his dominions, and the music might have 
 
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 to stop, but it would not prove that tyranny is better than 
 music. If we do not know how to make business anything 
 but business, if business must be a tyrant, not a servant, then 
 human rights must be devoured by business as tinder is con- 
 sumed by flame. 
 
 Kissinger had found no way for the world to go on without 
 taking business for granted ; and so far as he could see, busi- 
 ness principles were as fixed as the laws of physics. But 
 there were all the human emotions and sentiments and aspira- 
 tions. They made a world of their own. They demanded 
 of business that it should take its orders from them, and 
 build a world which they should occupy. There was inso- 
 lence and sacrilege in the logic of business that arrogated to 
 itself the right to own and regulate the world, and to de- 
 nounce and defame moral contestants of the claim as mis- 
 chief-makers and disturbers of the peace. 
 
 The talk then turned to details that must be taken up the 
 next morning. 
 
 It would be too much to say that Kissinger had progressed 
 in a couple of hours toward a common center for his two 
 selves. Each of them had become more self-conscious, but 
 the contrast was so much more evident that nothing but con- 
 flict between them was in prospect. The net result of the 
 conference for his whole mental attitude was rather a con- 
 firming of his sense of helplessness and humiliation. He 
 was nearer to distinct classification of himself as a bond ser- 
 vant to an inexorable machine. He was more aware that his 
 own predicament was despicable. He was rather more per- 
 suaded that it could not be helped. He did not know that 
 he was a fatalist, and he had never called himself a pessimist, 
 but in the last few minutes his view of human destiny had 
 passed under a cloud. So far as he could see, there was no 
 prospect of promoting the kind of life his feelings demanded. 
 From this time on his business fidelity was likely to be more 
 dogged, but his temper would be more depressed. 
 
 With Lyon it had not been a question of feelings but of 
 decisions. Business was to him a fully charted sea. Until 
 recently he had been no more disturbed by speculations about 
 what might be possible if business were on a different basis, 
 than a Sandy Hook pilot would be turned from his course 
 by theories of possible geologic changes in the Atlantic coast. 
 
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 Lyon had imagination, and in college he was considered a 
 good deal of a philosopher, but he had disciplined himself in 
 dismissing non-essentials and in confining himself strictly to 
 the point. Things took their turn, and at times received 
 his undivided attention, which he would have been at a loss 
 to place in a reasoned scheme of life. He was not conscious 
 of needing logical schemes beyond his business system, and 
 these digressions had not put him at odds with himself. 
 They were merely diversions from the main current of busi- 
 ness, and were not to be taken seriously as competitors. 
 
 Lyon had a practical man's horror of uncertainty. He 
 had been worried not so much because of the coming fight 
 as because it was so largely a fight in the dark. A theory of 
 the campaign was a relief. Costly as the struggle was likely 
 to be, he felt that the problem had been simplified, and that 
 what remained was adjustment of details. 
 
 "We seem to have covered everything, and I can talk to 
 my father this afternoon with my eyes open. Today's de- 
 velopments may turn us back to our previous theory, but we 
 shall be prepared for either line of action tomorrow morning. 
 My auto is waiting. Shall we go over and give Halleck a 
 chance at us?" 
 
 "Mrs. Kissinger and Elsie will represent the family. I 
 can do better at home." 
 
 "Then let Parker take you there after he drops me." 
 
 As the office door closed, Lyon had something like a sense 
 of relief at leaving himself behind for a while. Kissinger 
 felt a slight access of animation in prospect of rejoining 
 himself. 
 
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THE MISFITS 
 
 IV 
 
 THE MISFIT 
 
 "Mrs. Kissinger subscribed in a passive way to the formal 
 creed that it is everybody's duty to be useful ; but she knew 
 of no way in which her own daughter could be useful 
 without losing caste." 
 
 IF Kissinger was less unreal to himself in his family than in 
 the company's office, it was because he took more for 
 granted. He did not probe his domestic situation. It did 
 not so directly antagonize his dreams. He had formed no 
 distinct images of family life in contrast with his own. There 
 had never been appreciable lack of harmony between himself 
 and his wife. He was proud of his daughter, and she was 
 always affectionate toward her parents. Yet Kissinger was 
 occasionally conscious of a forlorn feeling that he was not a 
 part of the family. It seemed to be less his larger self than a 
 group to which he was welcomed by courtesy. If he actually 
 belonged there it would have had a different tone. Some- 
 thing seemed to be lacking. In a vague way he felt an ab- 
 sence of sentimental factors, which might have made his 
 home more complete. So far as he ever tried to account for it, 
 he was inclined to rest with the explanation that it was sim- 
 ply the American atmosphere. He thought his wife would 
 probably have had similar feelings if he had taken her to 
 live in Germany. It was not to be expected that he could 
 transform the whole American environment. Having mar- 
 ried into a foreign country, it was probably inevitable that he 
 should remain to a certain extent a foreigner in his own 
 family. 
 
 Closer inspection would have raised the question whether 
 the alien element in the family, was Kissinger or his wife. 
 If men and women of her parents' generation could have been 
 called as experts upon the subject, they would doubtless have 
 expressed the uniform view that the wife's modification of 
 the family was less national than individaul. All that might 
 be learned of her ancestry would tend to strengthen this 
 opinion. 
 
 Ellen "Wells retained vivid impressions, partly direct and 
 partly transmitted, of the storm and stress period following 
 the fire. Her father was one of the men who created the new 
 
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 city. Any enterprise that Enoch Wells failed to endorse 
 ranked in the shady list. Mrs. Wells had come with her hus- 
 band from an Ohio farm. She was rich in all those essentials 
 that grow by grafting larger world experiences upon Scotch- 
 Irish tradition. Her education was that of the prosperous 
 rural home, the country school, and the Presbyterian meet- 
 ing house. From girlhood she had met occasions as they 
 came, doing her best in trivial and important things alike, 
 never wasting speculations beforehand about her ability, and 
 never nursing regrets over her limitations. When the arti- 
 ficial distinctions between Chicago people disappeared in the 
 flame and smoke, Mr. and Mrs. Wells were among those who 
 at once rose to the eminence of their qualities. They had 
 courage, judgment, honesty, public spirit and the joy of work. 
 Never was charter patented to clearer nobility than was 
 unchartered in the generation of men and women whose only 
 capital was their character, but who wrought that character 
 in a decade into the plant and the business and the ideals of 
 the foremost western town. They never faltered till their 
 work was done. Then they began to betray to themselves, 
 rather than to each other or to the heedless world, a sort of 
 bashfulness in the presence of their own achievements. Their 
 work was greater than their thought. They had been adapt- 
 ing means to ends with but the faintest shadow of self-con- 
 sciousness. They had not reflected that they were less build- 
 ing than planting. They had been the enterprising folk of a 
 typical western county-seat. The chief esthetic element 
 which their eager lives could entertain was a semi-humorous 
 habit of picturing the larger destinies in reserve for the prai- 
 rie metropolis. In their serious hours, and those not serious 
 were minutes, they were planning and doing the hard work 
 that the passing moment demanded. But distress relieved, 
 homes rebuilt, business resumed, the machineries of life re- 
 stored and improved, they had occasional time to look around 
 and within themselves and to take thought of their record. 
 Then the largeness of it all began to produce the first hesita- 
 tion. These path-breakers had never distrusted themselves 
 when work was ahead, but it had turned out to be so big, and 
 mixed, so many new people had appeared, it was so much 
 more conventional and impersonal than they had intended, 
 that they began to be overawed. Life threatened to pass from 
 the literal into the mystical. The World's Columbian Expo- 
 
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 sition was their resolution to repeat and so to reassure them- 
 selves. They would not abdicate their own realness. They 
 would confirm the probability of their own past by doing the 
 impossible in the present. 
 
 It was the audacity of a splendid humility. If they had 
 builded better than they knew, they would now show that 
 they well knew how to build. They had not gone through 
 the discipline of difficulty to flinch from new enterprise. They 
 were conscious of strength, and skill, and ideals, and to save 
 their own self-respect they would put their reserve force into 
 a piece of work fit to prove their past no accident. 
 
 Mr. Wells did not live to share in this masterpiece of Chi- 
 cago maturity, and his wife was no longer able to act on the 
 Woman's Board when the work approached completion, but 
 no one had larger influence than they in forming the public 
 character of which the plan and its execution were consistent 
 expressions. 
 
 Ellen Wells grew up with the impression that the family 
 standing was a part of the foreordained order of things, but 
 never quite comprehending what it meant. Not to be "promi- 
 nent" would seem to her a disgrace, but she had never thought 
 out the different kinds of prominence, nor the different titles 
 to prominence, nor a standard to determine what sort of 
 prominence is worth while. To mingle with the leaders of 
 Chicago society was to her the breath of life. Not that they 
 were more congenial than others whose names never appeared 
 in the papers; not that they were more like herself; it was 
 simply family tradition to move with the leaders. 
 
 When she met Kissinger she was returning from the six 
 months in Europe following the end of her school days. His 
 foreignness had just enough glamour to dazzle her inexpe- 
 rience. It fitted into the rude frame of romance that she 
 had pieced together from the litter of light fiction and the 
 scraps of fact which her short excursions into life had col- 
 lected. Their wedding was one of the smartest events of that 
 relatively simple period. 
 
 Not long after came the sudden death of Mr. Wells, 
 hastened no doubt by the shock of treachery that crippled his 
 business and left but a fraction of his fortune. Then the 
 lingering illness of her mother, the birth of three children, 
 the death of Mrs. Wells, and an accident that confined Mrs. 
 Kissinger herself to the house for a year, filled time in which 
 
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 her world left her far behind. Her old acquaintances had 
 not forgotten her. Indeed she had often been surprised by 
 signs of sympathy from persons hardly in her calling list. 
 But she began to be vaguely aware that her own status was 
 not precisely her mother's. People depended on Mrs. Wells, 
 and looked up to her. Nobody seemed to find Mrs. Kissinger 
 essential. She would have perished rather than admit it, but 
 in the niohe reserved for her heart's select skeletons there 
 was a nasty suspicion that she was being pitied and patronized. 
 
 Thereupon her resources rallied around an absorbing pur- 
 pose. It became the passion of her life to seem as important 
 as her parents had been. Her family must be recognized. 
 Her social standing must be respected. She must rank with 
 the best people. 
 
 It was not a mean aim. Mrs. Kissinger wanted to be worth 
 her reputation and to deserve her place. Her mother had, 
 why should she not? That her husband and herself were 
 lesser factors in the life of the town than her parents had 
 been, she could not reconcile. That prominence equal to 
 theirs, if not due to the accident of wealth, must rest on some 
 sort of individuality much stronger than hers or Mr. Kissin- 
 ger's, was an idea too subtle for her thinking. 
 
 Mrs. Kissinger was not an inferior woman, but she was ob- 
 trusively mediocre. She had not been obliged, like her father 
 and mother, to make her surroundings. She was bred for a 
 life that others had made. She would have fitted well in the 
 situation that her parents' generation created, if that situa- 
 tion had not ruthlessly changed. She had neither imagina- 
 tion, nor force, nor leisure nor money to fill a like place in 
 the newer life. Her instincts were wholesome rather than 
 whole. She aspired toward better things, not because she had 
 distinct and balanced aims, but her home life had started her 
 in the right direction. She had become a club woman, not 
 because she had very clear notions of what a club could do, 
 but because a club was tangible, and might help to satisfy the 
 longing she felt for something more than her life contained. 
 She believed in "culture" without forming a definite notion of 
 what it might mean. The "enlargement of woman's sphere" 
 was a cardinal point in her creed, but beyond the dues of do- 
 mestic loyalty, and the proprieties of the social intercourse to 
 which she had prescriptive rights, the boundaries of that 
 sphere were nebulous to her mind. 
 
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 Mrs. Kissinger's demands upon life were not really her 
 own ; they were invented by other people, and she felt forced 
 to adopt them to escape being left out. She had a fitful fear 
 that things were going on among the best people which 
 she was in danger of missing. The early death of the two 
 younger children brought her genuine grief, but she never 
 realized the measure of the calamity which limited the scope 
 of her natural interests. At this period all her anxieties cen- 
 tered about the problem of her daughter's prospects. 
 
 The discriminating classification of the society column 
 placed Elsie in the category "beautiful and accomplished." 
 That she was beautiful no one capable of recognizing radiant 
 girlhood could have found excuse to deny. Her beauty was 
 not a mere external aspect of facial form and expression. It 
 was a compound of affluent health, sunny temperament, eager 
 sympathy and a tact of mental coloring that animated her 
 I most ordinary actions. Both men and women, of all ages and , 
 j types, frequently expressed in various ways their sense of debt / 
 to her for merely existing. Her presence always stimulated 
 good cheer, and kindly feeling, and complaisancy with life 
 in general. She seemed to be made for happiness and a maker 
 of happiness. 
 
 The subject of her accomplishments was somewhat more 
 ambiguous. She did everything so easily that she did noth- 
 ing particularly well. She had no more recollection of learn- 
 ing her father's language than her mother's, and when she 
 was taken at the age of twelve for two years in a Tbchterschule 
 with her German cousins, she had little trouble in entering 
 their classes and getting as high marks as they did in all the 
 work ; but her knowledge of German language and literature 
 halted at the level of a child of fourteen. At her graduation 
 from Ansley Hall she had received the prize for the best rank 
 in the class ; but it was well known among the girls that she 
 spent less time and worry than any of them upon her studies. 
 With only the simplest rudiments of musical education, she 
 could sing all the latest popular airs, in a decidedly "catchy" 
 style, playing her own accompaniments from memory, and 
 she had amused herself enough with the violin to prove that 
 with study she might easily have become a respectable per- 
 former. She had often been cast for leading parts in school 
 theatricals, but her success gave no real proof of ability to 
 accomplish anything serious in dramatic art. She was simply 
 
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 her exuberant self upon the stage, and that was enough to 
 satisfy all the requirements of amateur standards. She was 
 called an athletic girl, but in outdoor sports she was invari- 
 ably just skillful enough to be good company. Her interest 
 in none of them was sufficient to make her excel. 
 
 For the sort of reasoners who derive generalizations from a 
 single example, Elsie Kissinger would have settled a leading 
 social principle. It might be stated in the form : — Enlarged 
 opportunity for women, without corresponding access of mas- 
 culinity, is a misfortune. She was irresponsibly feminine. 
 She followed no resolutions of her own, but merely selected 
 the pressures to which she would yield. While her instincts 
 were all refined, it would require little imagination to conjure 
 the plot of her ruin if she had been thrust into an environ- 
 ment that was discreetly bad. She was assailable not by temp- 
 tation to defy her ideals, but by solicitation to comply with 
 influences that would presently dissipate the ideals. 
 
 Mrs. Kissinger was unconsciously creating the role of her 
 daughter's Nemesis. She was a protection against the sort 
 of evil to which unguarded girls as pure as Elsie every day 
 succumb. At the same time she had set a mark that virtually 
 excluded aims for positive good. If Elsie had chosen for her- 
 self upon leaving school, she would have taken a full course 
 of training either as Kindergartnerin or as nurse. Each alter- 
 native was prompted by normal womanly traits. The girl was 
 not yet so artificialized that she had to be useless in order to 
 be happy. There was healthy human feeling in the impulse 
 to have a vocation. There was undeveloped maternal instinct 
 in her preference of occupations. 
 
 Elsie's inclinations affected her mother as distressingly 
 vulgar. Mrs. Kissinger subscribed in a passive way to the 
 formal creed that it is everybody's duty to be useful ; but she 
 knew of no way in which her own daughter could be useful 
 without losing caste. The callings which Elsie was thinking 
 about seemed to have no more in their favor than the position 
 of a salesgirl in a down town store. Mrs. Kissinger would not 
 have questioned the propriety of either for the daughters of 
 people not in society, and she could frame no very dependable 
 reason why it would be discreditable for Elsie to follow her 
 choice. She was simply sure that some way must be found 
 to turn her in another direction. 
 
 She was tactful enough to avoid direct discussion of the 
 
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 question. She was slightly subdued by a dim feeling of in- 
 feriority to her daughter in many ways, and she especially 
 distrusted her ability to get the better of her in an argument. 
 When the subject once came up indirectly, Elsie had ex- 
 pressed her ideas in such vigorous terms that her mother's 
 eagerness to create a diversion was confirmed. Elsie drew a 
 contemptuous picture of the plight of a girl without occupa- 
 tion, and forced by fear of social custom to advertise the con- 
 stant confession "I am helpless and must stay helpless till 
 some man marries me." As Mrs. Kissinger was at a loss to 
 substitute a more favorable rendering of the fact, she applied 
 her ingenuity in other lines. 
 
 A batch of invitations to Elsie for Summer visits gave Mrs. 
 Kissinger more than ordinary satisfaction. With a little ef- 
 fort she contrived to prolong the series well into October. By 
 that time she had completed arrangements for Elsie's "pres- 
 entation to society." From the mother's point of view the 
 daughter was an immediate success. More determined de- 
 cisions than Elsie's would have weakened under the pressure 
 of engagements that made her first season a continuous varia- 
 tion of delicious excitement. 
 
 It was no trouble for Mrs. Kissinger to bridge over the next 
 Summer. In the first place, the season's experience had not 
 only overtaxed Elsie's abundant physical strength, but it had 
 operated as a moral, anesthetic. If her opinions were un- \ 
 changed, there"^as less energy in her preferences. It was 
 easier to enjoy than to endeavor. She was left in a lotus- 
 eating temper. In the second place, the competition for her 
 visits was sharper than the year before. Circumstances easily 
 insured gravitation into the second season and then the third. 
 
 In certain respects Elsie Kissinger had been improved by 
 running the social gauntlet. She had apparently lost noth- 
 ing of her genuineness, and she seemed not in the least spoiled 
 by extravagant flattery. Probably because society offered 
 nothing that she was sure she very much wanted, she had not 
 developed the spites and jealousies of those women to whom 
 society is a struggle for life. The game had not yet become 
 desperate for her. She was present rather as an interested 
 spectator. It was playful humor rather than cynicism when 
 she said that she deserved no credit for readiness to step aside 
 at any time in favor of other girls, because it might be dififer- 
 ent if she should ever meet a real man. She had amply veri- ; 
 
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 fied her premonition of the unreality of the hfe her mother 
 preferred; and as a matter of pure judgment she believed 
 more strongly than ever that it was dignified for a girl to 
 choose a serious employment, in which she could be inde- 
 pendent, while it was poorly disguised degradation to join in 
 the social display of professional uselessness. 
 
 On the other hand, while her perceptions had been sharp- 
 ened, her purposes had been dulled. The toxic effect of com- 
 promise was very evident in Elsie Kissinger's compliant con- 
 tinuance in a course she despised. She had apparently stopped 
 balancing choice of careers, and had accepted a destiny which 
 it would cost too much effort to reverse. 
 
 At the same time it is the irony even of the idle life that 
 it is held sooner or later to a declaration of intentions. One 
 cannot remain forever the guileless debutante of the first 
 season. A girl who has not finished her play days, or people 
 who have an assured position in life, may frankly use society 
 as an end. When a girl is old enough for her status to be- 
 come problematical, she may use society only as a means. If 
 she is among the select few who justify themselves as bachelor 
 girls, society bows to her success and is happy to hold her stir- 
 rup. If she is among the typical many to whom society is 
 principally a matrimonal speculation, realization on the in- 
 vestment may not be indefinitely deferred. After the permitted 
 period of grace, society becomes the sort of dissolving tableau 
 in which the proud pose of the unsuited passes imperceptibly 
 into the painful predicament of the unsuccessful. At thought 
 of a fourth season Elsie was hardly yet apprehensive, but the 
 order of events which she had hitherto regarded in a wholly 
 impersonal light was at last beginning to suggest applications 
 to herself. 
 
 What had been to Elsie an episode, with occasional fore- 
 warnings of a possible crisis, had really become the family 
 problem. It affected her father and her mother very differ- 
 ently. They tacitly avoided comparison of views upon the 
 subject. Both brooded constantly upon it, and this was really 
 the flower, if not the root, of that foreign element which pro- 
 duced in Kissinger the uneasy feeling of an alien in his own 
 household. 
 
 If he had been consulted, Kissinger would have heartily 
 encouraged Elsie's earlier ambitions. His belief in the dig- 
 nity of labor, for both men and women, was literal and sin- 
 
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 cere. He felt that evasion of the universal law of service was 
 as dangerous to the individual as to society. He distrusted 
 people who did not work, and he felt that his daughter would 
 be contaminated by contact with them. He believed that 
 marriage was desirable for both men and women, and he 
 hoped that Elsie would come to the same view; but he had 
 no dearer wish than that she might make herself independent 
 enough to be able to marry from choice and not from nec- 
 essity. 
 
 Mrs. Kissinger was neither mercenary nor unscrupulous, 
 but she was frankly certain that it would be a misalliance if 
 Elsie should marry outside the socially prominent class ; and 
 among the marriageable men in that class in Chicago her dis- 
 criminations, to say the least, erred on the side of worldly pru- 
 dence. She had probably never heard of Tennyson's York- 
 shire farmer ; but so far as she could influence her daughter it 
 was strictly in the line of his policy. To do Mrs. Kissinger 
 justice, it was guilelessness rather than indifference that led 
 her to encourage the attentions of men who were received by 
 well informed families only on the most distant terms, and 
 purely from regard for their relatives. 
 
 Kissinger was hardly better posted than his wife about some 
 of the men that surrounded Elsie, but he suspected them on 
 general principles. Most of them belonged in the class that 
 had been systematically predisposed to vice by the unwise in- 
 dulgence of their parents. The best that could reasonably be 
 predicted of them was that, for the sake of appearances, they 
 would exercise their license within limits which would save 
 exposure. That they would ever become good citizens was 
 hardly to be expected. 
 
 The cloud gathering over the Kissinger household was 
 ominous in two opposite aspects. The father was beginning 
 to tremble for fear that his daughter might marry one of 
 these perverts. The mother was in the first stages of hysteria 
 for fear she might not. 
 
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 'It followed that if more churches could shed their religious 
 trappings and adopt an essentially religious policy toward 
 the needs of everyday people, they would presently be 
 alive with the very masses that now stand aloof." 
 
 HALLECK was one of the few ministers in Chicago who 
 preached to more men than women. A first glance at 
 his congregation might suggest that it was a commercial asso- 
 ciation, with a sprinkling of additions from the families of 
 the older strata. There was nothing ecclesiastical about the 
 hall in which the service was held, and still less of the tradi- 
 tional demeanor of piety in the assembly itself. The details 
 of seating the people, and of conducting the program, would 
 impress a stranger as first of all business-like. At the same 
 time one could hardly fail to note the general decorum and 
 dignity and thoughtfulness. Anyone accustomed to classi- 
 fying audiences would quickly decide that, while this one 
 represented no extraordinary grade of intellect, it responded 
 principally to the stimulus of reason, rather than of emotion. 
 Perhaps it would not be remarked at first contact, but after 
 one or two repetitions of the test it would be clear that a sec- 
 tarian tone was conspicuous by its absence. 
 
 Indeed, though some of the older members of the church 
 would doubtless repudiate the finding, it would not require 
 phenomenal shrewdness to make out that the only basis of 
 common understanding between congregation and minister 
 amounted substantially to this creed: — 'We have all the 
 centuries of religious yearnings behind us. They have 
 threshed out a great many religious conceptions. They have 
 left us a record that is instructive. We learn from it much 
 more about the limits of profitable prying into the mysteries 
 of life than positive knowledge of what is beyond the range 
 of human vision. This tradition, and especially the Jewish 
 and Christian portion, furnishes a fund of common ideas 
 which we accept or reject according to our own judgment; 
 and it gives to our minds a certain sympathetic bent in deal- 
 
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 ing with fundamental questions ; but it leaves us free to reach 
 our own decisions. We have the same essential problenas 
 that have puzzled people before our day, but they come up 
 in new forms, and it takes more to satisfy us with anything 
 proposed as a solution. On the whole, the main thing seems 
 to be to face life with perfect candor. We want to know the 
 truth, whether it is new or old, and we believe it is our busi- 
 ness to square ourselves with the truth, however it hits." 
 
 Although Halleck had never used precisely this language 
 in explaining his own beliefs, his whole policy put it into 
 consistent practice. Before he had been in the pastorate a 
 year he had decided that his mission was chiefly with a type 
 of people who had no respect for the cloth, nor for anything 
 else that would prevent them from meeting whatever he 
 might say with the challenge, "How do you know?" He 
 did not feel bound in consequence to restrict himself to state- 
 ments that he could prove. He simply made up his mind 
 that he would never lend himself to the duplicity of trying to 
 enforce by authority anything which he knew to be merely 
 a matter of opinion. 
 
 At first Halleck had attracted only feeble attention. The 
 church had been principally the personal following of a 
 preacher gifted with a rare combination of qualities, and in 
 the nature of the case his influence could not be transferred to 
 a successor. The task which the young minister undertook 
 was to build up a new constituency fast enough to replace 
 defections from the old. His success was by no means rapid. 
 In two or three years, however, he had won a hearing, and 
 the congregation had so increased in size that a larger hall 
 was leased. If the new subscribers for sittings had been 
 polled for their reasons, the replies would have pointed more 
 to Halleck's personality than to his preaching. He made 
 his impression primarily as an earnest fellow-man trying to 
 avoid shams in getting at a sane version of life. He was 
 never a priest working the credit of supposed inside informa- 
 tion about the unknowable. 
 
 Without the slightest affectation, or pretense or appeal to 
 credulity, Halleck expected his congregation to grant one 
 fundamental position. He believed, and in all his preaching 
 he assumed, that the world had discovered no more convinc- 
 ing moral attitude than that of Jesus. He insisted that our 
 judgments of ethical values are credible in the degree in 
 
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 which they may be reaffirmed from Jesus' point of view. 
 
 At the same time, Halleck always referred to Jesus as a 
 test of_ the spirit of life rather than of the rule of life. In 
 his thinking this was a cardinal distinction. He was sure 
 that some of the most costly mistakes of the Church had been 
 due to disregard of the distinction. He found the religious 
 significance of Jesus not primarily in any addition he may 
 have made to the world's knowledge of what is right, but in 
 his influence upon the world's appreciation of the importance 
 of doing the right that is known. He said for example, that 
 Jesios had none of the special information necessary for draft- 
 ing a Russian constitution, or an American tariff. His gift 
 was the more fundamental one of knowing the moral attitude 
 that a man ought to maintain when his duty leads up to one 
 of these tasks. 
 
 The fact that his public was steadily growing, and that the 
 proportion of men increased faster than the totaJ gain, was 
 not only a personal gratification to Halleck, but he took it 
 a.s a valuable item of evidence in social and religious psychol- 
 ogy. He did not question that the preponderating demand 
 for religions of authority reflected the average mental juve- 
 nility of mankind. So far as they could not be disposed 
 of as mere variations of religions of authority, Halleck was 
 inclined to hail even the most extravagant of the religions of 
 mystification, of which the last quarter century had been so 
 prolific, as in part onsets of approaching mental puberty. 
 But he believed there was already more maturity among 
 modern men than religious statistics would indicate. He 
 did not find the marks of it chiefly among the people who 
 considered themselves highly cultured. On the contrary, 
 if he had been a free lance in education, as he was in re- 
 ligion, he would have said that a so-called cultured person is 
 one who is bound to show cause why he should not be sus- 
 pected of superinduced incompetence to see things as they 
 are. He detected mental maturity rather in the rare peo- 
 ple, educated or uneducated, who are able to face life as a 
 whole in a genuinely candid temper. 
 
 One of Halleck's unpublished opinions was that a consid- 
 erable fraction of the unchurched, and the partially churched, 
 were to be classed not as irreligious, but as more religious than 
 the churches. It followed that if more churches would shed 
 their religious trappings and adopt an essentially religious 
 
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 policy toward the needs of every day people, they would pres- 
 ently be alive with the very masses that now stood aloof. 
 
 The mental maturity that Halleck detected, as a trait of 
 occasional men and women, was a sort of sophisticated matter- 
 of-factness. It was a minority exception which proved the , 
 rule that most men like to be humbugged. It was a 'habit, ' 
 which a few men get through scientific training, but more 
 from the discipline of their occupations, of demanding the 
 facts of everything that claimed their attention. 
 
 Halleck was sure that life had at last differentiated a type 
 of men who want to be treated just as literally in religion as 
 they expect to be in their trial balances, or the crop reports, 
 or the statement of bank clearings. They do not require 
 that religion shall appeal to the same interests, nor in the 
 same terms, nor by the same standards. They require that 
 religion shall observe the same distinctions between fact and 
 fancy which have to be respected elsewhere. They require 
 that religion shall justify itself as a literal interpretat;ioxi_Qf_ 
 experience. They require that religion shall furnish a crecL 
 ible perspective of life. They refuse submission to religion 
 as a discipline superadded to life. 
 
 A single case of the natural selection of a congregation of 
 a couple of thousands from the population of Chicago would 
 do little toward proving the general validity of a theory. Hal- 
 leck realized that he might easily overestimate the influence 
 of a single factor in his own success. It might be that he had 
 a hearing in spite of being mistaken about the key to the 
 modern man's attention. He was surely not tempted to 
 magnify any inferences from his own experiments into laws 
 for general application. He early adopted the rule for him- 
 self, however, that he would never utter in his preaching any- 
 thing which he could not repeat in less formal words, in a 
 casual conversation at the club, or to a chance acquaintance 
 in the smoking room of a Pullman car. 
 
 Whatever Halleck might say, or refrain from saying, about 
 the results of his work, he had attracted the notice of many 
 other religious leaders. There had been vigorous debate 
 among them about the extent to which his experience should 
 be taken as a sign of the times. Arguments had often cov- 
 ered the ground between two extremes. It was charged on 
 the one hand that the sort of thing which Halleck repre- 
 sented was not religion at all, but merely an unreligious 
 
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 morality, with forged endorsement of religious phrases. On 
 the other hand, a great many of the younger ministers were 
 saying among themselves that Halleck had given them a 
 better idea of what the expected restatement of religion would 
 be like in practice than all the other theories and experiments 
 together had suggested up to date. Meanwhile what Hegel 
 would have called the synthesis of the two extremes was the 
 working organization of which Halleck was the centre. 
 There was no more masculine moral force in Chicago. 
 
 On the previous Monday there had been a general min- 
 isters' conference upon the topic, What can the pastors of 
 Chicago do in the approaching labor crisis? When one of 
 the pastors told a large contractor, a vestryman of his church, 
 that he was on his way to take part in the discussion, and re- 
 peated the subject, he received a flood of light from the frank 
 ejaculation, "For God's sake, tell them to keep their mouths 
 shut!" Belief that radical principles were presently to be on 
 trial, and that there was danger of generating explosives in 
 every attempt to guide public feeling, had been growing 
 during the week. Halleck felt the current the moment he 
 stood before the congregation. It thrilled and exhilarated 
 him, and made him eager to do his part ; yet he had to brace 
 himself with all his strength against surges of shame at the 
 audacity of trying to make his feeble voice a factor in the 
 coming struggle. 
 
 Not precisely the same, but a corresponding conflict of emo- 
 tions had quickened the pulse of the congregation during the 
 earlier parts of the service. Halleck began his sermon in a 
 tone which might have been called an echo of the hush that 
 had fallen upon his hearers. There was no artifice in it, but 
 merely spontaneous adaptation. His first sentence was equiva- 
 lent to a pledge that, whether he said much or little, whether 
 he spoke wisely or unwisely, he would try to deal frankly 
 with the uppermost thought of the hour. 
 
 "We should look in vain for anything that came to the 
 knowledge of Jesus, or that is recorded anywhere in the Bible, 
 which is an exact parallel of the social situation in Chicago 
 today. 
 
 "'There have always been social classes, but until now never 
 our social classes. 
 
 "There have always been class struggles, but only today 
 our class struggles. 
 
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 "If there are people who think they can go to the Bible 
 and get a ready-made solution of our present labor problems, 
 as they can send the number of their watch to the factory and 
 get a substitute for a broken wheel, they are doomed to be not 
 only disappointed but dangerous. 
 
 "Yet, in his most famous popular addre.ss, Jesus touched 
 on the problem of poverty, as it was known in his day. It 
 was not the modern poverty problem. It was very much 
 simpler. But in telling people how to act about the bare neces- 
 sities of life Jesus sounded a note which contains the secret of 
 all permanent social harmony. 
 
 "I quote enough of Jesus' words to indicate both the con- 
 crete conditions that he had in mind, and the general prin- 
 ciple by which he would test all !<chemes for social improve- 
 ment. This is what he said, as reported by the Apostle 
 Matthew : — 
 
 ' ' ' Therefore I say unto you, Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall 
 eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. 
 Is not the life more than the food, and the body than the raimentf Behold 
 the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather 
 into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not of much 
 more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit 
 unto his stature? And why are ye anxious concerning raiment? Consider 
 the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; 
 yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like 
 one of these. But if God doth so clothe the grass of the field, which today 
 is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, 
 O ye of little faith? Be not therefore anxious, saying. What shall we eat? 
 or, What shall we drink? or. Wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after 
 all these things do the Gentiles seek; for your heavenly Father knoweth 
 that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first his kingdom and his 
 righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Be not there- 
 fore anxious for the morrow: for the morrow will be anxious for itself. 
 Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.' 
 
 "Ever since these words were spoken," Halleck expounded, 
 "the interpreters have been busy degrading them to base 
 uses. It would be hard to find in the whole history of litera- 
 ture a more vivid illustration of the rough old saw, 'No teacher 
 can furnish ideas and brains too.' 
 
 "Jesus has been made to teach that if people will be pious, 
 God will do the rest. 
 
 "What Jesus meant was that God has done the rest before- 
 hand, and real piety consists in acting accordingly. 
 
 "In other words, the only way to insure the supply of 
 
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 human wants is to lead the kind of life which draws ration- 
 ally on the resources that God has already provided. 
 
 "Jesus did not say, Keligion will feed you. He virtually 
 said, 'Feeding yourselves is religion.' 
 
 "Jesus was apparently talking to people who were thrift- 
 less, like our southern negroes. They were tempting fate 
 by shirking work, and, to use a slang phrase, 'laying down on 
 God.' They were like an excessively pseudo-religious college 
 classmate of mine, who one Sunday evening testified in prayer 
 meeting : 'I had been taking a walk on the other side of the 
 river. When the prayer meeting bells began to ring I was 
 in the middle of the bridge. I dropped down on my knees 
 and prayed the Lord that I might not be late.' 
 
 "To that sort of people Jesus said 'Stop worrying about 
 what will become of you if you spend your time worrying. 
 Take up your part in the scheme of things, and the scheme 
 of things will take care of you.' 
 
 "The promises of religion are due only to the kind of piety 
 that is practical. 
 
 "Superstition spends itself on grafting experiments to beat 
 the laws of nature. 
 
 "Genuine religion learns the laws of nature, and conforms 
 to them, and gets the benefits of their workings. 
 
 "Not worry, but work, is the worship that pays. 
 
 "Of course, a life pihilosophy so radical, packed into a few 
 such proverbs as these, must be qualified and expanded and 
 diluted in a thousand ways, before it can fertilize the popular 
 mind. Expressed from the other point of view, human stu- 
 pidity had to go through thousands of years of hard knock- 
 ing against reality, before many wits were sharp enough to 
 accept the truth of this philosophy. 
 
 "But in our paraphrase of Jesus' words, so far, we have 
 repeated only the alphabet of his complete idea. So much 
 fits the case of the ordinary man, in his relations to every day 
 tasks. The pith of this philosophy, however, is contained in 
 what follows; and I know of nothing in the entire range of 
 religion that cuts closer to the quick of our present social 
 situation." 
 
 By this time the hush of the congregation had become less 
 strained. The audience had the manner of a greater jury 
 
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 interested in the case. Many bodies were bent forward, as 
 far as the next row of chairs would allow, not because it was 
 difficult to hear, for Halleck's voice easily carried its lightest 
 inflections to every part of the hall ; but rather as an involun- 
 tary sign of attention. Halleck too was reassured by a re- 
 turn of the feeling that he had a piece of real work on his 
 hands, and he settled ihimself for the main action. 
 
 "In summing up his talk to this multitude of commonplace 
 folk, about the working partnership between the providence 
 of God and human conduct, Jesus coined an axiom of moral 
 economy: — 'Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteous- 
 ness, and all these things shall be added unto you.' 
 
 "If we listen to all the social philosophers who have the ear 
 of the world today, we hear no word that rings truer than this 
 generalization of Jesus. 
 
 "Curiously enough, and flattering to our pride of knowl- 
 edge, the harmony is most apparent between the theorem of 
 Jesus and the most modern phases of social philosophy. The 
 interpretations of life which are giving most credible proof 
 of their right to disturb tradition have at bottom most in 
 common with the insight of the Great Teacher. 
 
 "The eighteenth century mortgaged the nineteenth to a 
 view of life from which it is the task of the twentieth century 
 to earn our release. 
 
 "The types of arms with which most nineteenth century 
 battles were fought, are no more obsolete than the assortment 
 and emphasis of ideas behind nineteenth century struggles. 
 
 "The eighteenth century persuaded itself that the social 
 world is made up of individuals whose independence of each 
 other is the first law of life. 
 
 "Wherever this general version of the world appeared with 
 religious coloring, a sort of private wireless telegraphy be- 
 tween each individual and God was pictured as the central 
 feature in the moral structure; while no clear consistent ac- 
 count was given of the bonds that unite men with one another. 
 / "Individualistic philosophy at its best is merely a refine- 
 ment of selfishness. 
 
 "It is a theory of paramount private rights unbalanced by 
 recognition or guarantee of liabilities to the social whole. 
 
 "Men on the high places know that the individualistic in- 
 terpretation of life breaks down in presence of the facts. 
 
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 "The intellectual and moral tone-givers of the twentieth 
 century are confidently calling back to the half-seers of the 
 eighteenth, 'No ! not the independence, but the dependence of 
 individuals is the first law of life !' " 
 
 The illustrations and comments with which Halleck sup- 
 ported these abstract statements evidently did their work. 
 There was no sign of wandering attention. The audience 
 seemed to have followed the line of thought, and to be ready 
 for the next step in the argument. 
 
 "There are almost as many theories about what Jesus 
 meant by the phrase 'the Kingdom' as there are first-hand stu- 
 dents of the New Testament. It is not necessary to catalogue 
 them, nor to decide between them, in order to be sure of 
 enough of the substance of his teaching for our present pur- 
 pose. 
 
 "The gist of the whole matter is this. There is no hope of 
 putting human affairs on a secure and satisfactory basis, 
 until we transfer the meridian line of all social calculation 
 from our own selves to a moral order that is bigger than our 
 special interests. 
 
 "It makes comparatively little difference whether we mis- 
 take our higher or our lower interests for the axis on which 
 our world turns. 
 
 "We may be just as fatally at odds with the final law of 
 life if we suppose the centre of things is a plan for our soul's 
 salvation, as we are if we assume that the moral fulcrum is a 
 scheme of individual rights in economic competition. 
 
 "We are bound to see things in a blur, and to tangle our- 
 selves in moral confusion, in the degree that our theory and 
 our practice presuppose that our selfish appraisal of our pri- 
 vate rights can settle our relation to our fellow men. 
 
 "Magnify our inner life, and our individual worth, how we 
 will — and we cannot overestimate them if the other factor at 
 the same time gets its ratio of value — at our largest and our 
 best, with all that we have and all that we are, each of us is 
 merely an infinitesimal subject in a sovereign moral order. 
 
 "The elements of value are in ourselves, but the proportions 
 of our values, and their claims to precedence, and the measure 
 of influence they may justly exert upon the destinies of other 
 
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 men, are settled at last not by our separate standards, but by 
 the supreme moral constitution. 
 
 "This final arbiter rates the individual, without preference 
 or prejudice, on his merits as a factor in the well-working of 
 the whole. 
 
 "Whether we arrive at this principle through the traditions 
 of religion, or through direct perception, or through the find- 
 ings of social science, it is the only secure foundation for 
 society. 
 
 "If private interests may constitute petty sovereignties, each 
 a law unto itself, there is no peace for the world till some in- 
 terest shall destroy or subdue all the rest. 
 
 "If there is a sovereign order, then peace can assume its 
 place in human affairs only through surrender of sovereignty 
 by separate interests, and acceptance of allegiance to the su- 
 preme interest of the whole. 
 
 "Whether we call this foundation principle of human 
 society, natural law, or the world order, or the welfare of all, 
 or essential justice, or the Kingdom of God; whether we think 
 of it in naturalistic, or legalistic, or religious forms, our pres- 
 ent insight into moral relations affords us no further appeal. 
 
 "We have our choice between an arbitrary social world, 
 and society progressively conforming to verified moral values. 
 In that direction lies anarchy. In this direction is progress. 
 
 "We have our choice between taking our risks fighting for 
 our chances in an arbitrary world, and working out our com- 
 mon salvation in a rational world. 
 
 "The one alternative is destructive and costly to the aver- 
 age man. The other is constructive, and insures to the aver- 
 age man the largest rate of return for his investment in life. 
 
 "We shall live in a world of disorder, of accident, of cross 
 purposes, with a ruinous rate of frustration and disappoint- 
 ment, until our lives are federated around a common centre, 
 and controlled by a common principle pervasive enough to 
 organize all our clashing interests into mutual support. 
 
 "Allowing then for the necessary inaccuracy of great gen- 
 eralizations popularized in proverbial form, Jesus actually 
 anticipated the soberest results of modern social science when 
 he said 'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and his righteous- 
 ness, and all these things shall be added unto you.' " 
 
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 A few faces in the congregation gave signs of foreseeing 
 the application of this analysis to the specific issue. Others 
 indicated appreciation of the high plane on which the ques- 
 tion was evidently to be considered, with curiosity whether 
 a connection could be found between these generalities and 
 the pending problem. The majority seemed to understand 
 what had been said, but with a passive sort of intelligence 
 which was docile rather than critical. Halleck made a men- 
 tal note that he was calling on his hearers for a wider survey 
 than usual, but he felt that he was driving down some stakes 
 that would be permanent points of departure. His pause was 
 a signal for a moment's recess of attention, and his manner 
 when he resumed gave notice of transition to a different phase 
 of the subject. 
 
 "For practical purposes, the constitutional law of society, 
 or the Kingdom of God, has always meant, and always must 
 mean, the largest conception that can be entertained, in a 
 given situation, of the entire community of interests which 
 fixes the proportional rating of all contending special in- 
 terests. 
 
 "It would be easy, if time allowed, to recite historical illus- 
 trations of this fact. They range from primitive tribal con- 
 ditions, in which that group survives and prospers which ex- 
 hibits the highest degree of individual subordination to group 
 interests, up to the standards of civilization, which set the 
 limits within which stronger peoples may dictate to weaker 
 neighbors. The record is so clear on this point, however, 
 that we may merely mention it, and go on to its bearings upon 
 our own case. 
 
 "Human knowledge of social justice, or of the Kingdom of 
 God, is like the traveller's conception of the height of a moun- 
 tain. It can be filled out only by practical experiment with 
 the facts. 
 
 "For us, social justice, or the Kingdom of God, must be 
 the largest sweep of human interests that we can bring into 
 view, arranged in accordance with the truest scale of compar- 
 ative values that we can understand. 
 
 "For you and me, social justice, or the Kingdom of God, 
 cannot mean less than a fair field and an impartial judgment 
 for every sort of human interest that is struggling for recog- 
 nition today. The Kingdom of God has no place for pref- 
 
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 erence or concession to one interest more than another, ex- 
 cept on valid evidence that progressing human well-being 
 requires stimulus of this interest and restraint of that. 
 
 " 'Pure religion and undefiled' does not mean today 'to 
 visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.' That is 
 common decency. It is matter of course. We have out- 
 grown it as an ideal. There is harder work for religion to do 
 now than that. Pure religion means to take the next steps 
 toward realizing the Kingdom of God. Pure religion means 
 to adopt into our conception of human obligation the most 
 enlightened standard of moral action that we can discover. 
 Pure religion means to quit taking refuge behind social con- 
 ventionalities that exempt our interests from submitting to 
 re-examination of their title. Pure religion means to unite 
 in a perpetual peace congress with our fellow men, for inquast 
 into the operations of established institutions. Pure religion 
 means resolution to diminish the ill-workings of these insti- 
 tutions when they work ill, and to protect their well-working 
 when they work well ; to judge between the claims of vested 
 rights and protested rights ; to devise means of reducing to a 
 minimum the obstructive possibilities of selfishness, and to 
 accelerate every notion toward harmonized human progress. 
 
 "A keen newspaper man would find in a twentieth century 
 version of this old speech of Jesus a first page 'story' for to- 
 morrow's paper. It goes to the roots of our modem troubles, 
 while most of the agitators and reformers are merely spraying 
 some of the twigs. 
 
 "In a word, if we want the benefits of religion we must 
 first get religion. If we are bound to let our world stay as 
 crude and blind and bad as it is, we must take the conse- 
 quencas, and go on distributing the losses by insuring our- 
 selves as well as we may against the extra-hazardous risk of 
 living in such a world. To reduce the risk we must remove 
 the hazards. 
 
 "There was never in the world before such a volume of 
 demand for richer life, better secured, more widely distrib- 
 uted. It is not merely a demand for more fleshpots. It is 
 al.«o an honest ciy for completer living. There is one way to 
 .satisfy the demand, and one only. Lift life to the next 
 higher moral plane. Accept life as a common enterprise. 
 Stop treating it u.^ a handicap race. Retire your obsolete 
 morality. Ratify the next cUiuse in the constitution of the 
 
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 Kingdom of God, and you will presently begin to transform 
 the waste of this half-civilized human struggle into the divi- 
 dends of a loftier righteousness !" 
 
 Halleck's style seldom passed from the conversational to 
 the declamatory. In the exceptional cases there was no pre- 
 mediated effort for dramatic effect, but genuine feeling was 
 allowed to utter itself without restraint. In the last few 
 minutes Halleck had felt the freedom and the joy of a seer 
 arriving within sight of a prospect unfamiliar to most men. 
 The distinctness of the vision strengthened his faith. His 
 voice responded to the impulse and spurred the audience like 
 a bugle sounding the charge. After stopping long enough 
 to avoid an abrupt contrast, he resumed the argument in his 
 usual manner. 
 
 "We are tempted to consume such large outlooks as lux- 
 uries. We shirk our duty unless we capitalize them as in- 
 vestments. Our business is to bring the particular case that 
 is nearest to our thoughts into focus within this wide per- 
 spective. 
 
 "From the view point which we have just considered, 
 many debatable aspects of every special social situation are 
 visible. We are likely to have occasion to deal with a long 
 list of them before we hear the last of our present difficulties. 
 We shall have done enough for one Sunday, if we make 
 practical application of the principle before us in a single 
 phase of its bearing upon our problem. 
 
 "Until we have accomplished the ascent to the next higher 
 level of life, the Kingdom of God, as a goal to be reached, 
 and as an obligation to be accepted, will mean, in a word, 
 human struggle transformed into a system of mutual aid. 
 
 "If we want to take this principle out of religious terms, 
 and give it a more commonplace phrasing, we may put the 
 facts in this way : — Life is misunderstood if it is thought of 
 as a collection of parallel interests which are at their best 
 when they let one another alone. Life is a system of re- 
 ciprocating interests. They cannot avoid the alternative of 
 obstructing or promoting one another. The total output 
 of life will be increased in quantity and improved in quality 
 in the degree in which we learn how to advance from struggle 
 
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 between interests, and defeat and destruction of one interest 
 by another, to concurrence and correlation of interests. 
 
 "We claim to have risen above the rule of force, and to 
 have adopted the rule of reason; but we are marking time 
 before the next great step in human progress. As a rule 
 every interest persists in using against all rival interests the 
 method of force instead of the method of reason. 
 
 "Let us look our present local situation frankly in the face. 
 It sets our special task in promoting social welfare, or the 
 Kingdom of God. At the same time it is merely one typical 
 case of the universal problem of modern society. 
 
 "The men who earn wages, and the men who pay wages, 
 are trying to get into position to defeat each other in a trial 
 of strength. 
 
 "Both sides will be recruited from this congregation. 
 
 "Both sides will convince themselves with plausible pleas 
 that they are contending for the right. 
 
 "Both sides will in reality throw their whole weight against 
 the kind of right that is due for recognition in the modem 
 world; and both will wage the fierce fight of conscientious 
 stupidity — for what? Why the net outcome of your fight 
 will be simply that you will insure another lease of life to 
 the miserable regime of wrong! 
 
 "During one of our recent national campaigns, representa- 
 tives of the different parties explained briefly, in one of the 
 leading weekly papers, the essence of their respective plat- 
 forms. The presidential nominee of one of the labor parties 
 made a statement which at least proved that his party was 
 endowed with its share of our common human nature. The 
 argument amounted to these three claims : — 'First, it is dan- 
 gerous to the liberty of any class to be legislated for by a 
 class whose interests are antagonistic. Second, the capital- 
 ists are now legislating for the laborers. Third, the labor 
 party proposes to seize political power and legislate for the 
 capitalists.' 
 
 "There you have it I It is not the wage earner alone. 
 With different degrees of tact in masking our egotism we are 
 all trying to win on the platform: — 'It is wrong for you to 
 regulate me, but it is ri^ht for me to regulate you I' We are 
 all fighting for this policy. And we wonder that the world 
 is no more prosperous and happy, while such an enlightened 
 and beneficent conception of life prevails! 
 
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 "Labor and capital do net devise means of correcting their 
 partisan claims by some non-partisan standard. They do 
 not ask, 'How do our demands as separate interests look 
 when judged, not from our special point of view, but from 
 the standpoint of the whole civilization in which they are 
 incidents?' Each ignores the right of the other to modify 
 a one-sided conception of rights. Each party isolates itself, 
 and magnifies its separate importance, and declares, in de- 
 fiance of all the world 'These are our rights ! These we want I 
 These we will have !' 
 
 "The most inconsistent modern immorality is provin- 
 cialism. 
 
 "Never have rivals, interests, competitors, classes, had such 
 manifold effects upon one another's destinies. 
 
 "Never was it so evident that equity must be a composite 
 judgment, in which conflicting claims are impartially rep- 
 resented. 
 
 "The peculiar social task of our era is to install the mor- 
 ality of legislating and regulating not for one another but 
 with one another." 
 
 Halleck had none of the zealotry which flatters itself that 
 the world's work is done when a truth is told. He was ad- 
 dicted neither to belittling his own division of labor nor to 
 over-sanguine hopes of visible results. "While he was putting 
 all his resources into a restatement of the argument, and an 
 appeal for recognition of the moral standard it presented, 
 he was aware of a certain indifference as to whether or not any 
 of his hearers ever gave proof of having taken his words to 
 heart. He had at all events clarified his own mind. He 
 had satisfied himself both of social needs and of social ten- 
 dencies. He had crystallized his liquid conception of the 
 radical element in the moral problem, and he had reassured 
 himself of the mark toward which his own efforts must con- 
 verge. Whether these particular hearers carried the truth 
 to application or not, he had fortified his own faith that the 
 truth would sometime do its perfect work. 
 
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 VI 
 THE PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 "No one remarked that prevention before the accident, or 
 quick action afterwards, would have been worth more 
 than the cure likely to be effected at this late day." 
 
 SUNDAY noon at David Lyon's house would remind a New 
 Englander in his sixties or seventies of Thanksgiving cel- 
 ebrations in his youth. Religion and domesticity and hos- 
 pitality joined in a genial warmth that may not have marked 
 the summit of social attainment, but it surely presented one 
 of the fine types of life. 
 
 Sunday was Mr. Lyon's only home day. He wanted his 
 whole family around him, and as many intimate friends be- 
 side as the size of his dining room would permit. The num- 
 ber this time was smaller than usual, for it included only the 
 seven persons whom Mr. Lyon claimed as the members of his 
 immediate household. Within this group there was greater 
 intimacy and freedom, but no more genuine good feeling 
 than a guest always recognized under David Lyon's roof. 
 
 The Lyon homestead might have ranked as palatial when 
 it was built. It was no longer among the more pretentious 
 residences of the city. It was designed for domestic comfort, 
 rather than for display or elaborate entertainment. A stand- 
 ard of utility that was commonplace in kind, but liberal in 
 scale, had evidently dictated the specifications. 
 
 The appointments indicated wealth without an insistent 
 standard of taste. Except in the case of furniture bought by 
 the set, it would have been difficult to assign a sufficient artistic ' 
 reason for the presence of any two articles of use or ornament '■ 
 in the same room. The furnishings seemed to have been 
 selected on their separate merits, and to have been assembled 
 without the aid of esthetic principles that could have been 
 definitely expressed. Although there were no glaring dishar- 
 monies, the passive incongruity would have produced an ef- 
 fect upon a sensitive taste very much like that of a rich and 
 benevolent person without manners. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Lyon were choice specimens of a type of 
 arrested development especially frequent among Americans. 
 
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 Their material prosperity had overtaxed their imagination. 
 Their personal expenditures had by no means increased in 
 the ratio of Mr. Lyon's gain of income, but the changes in 
 their demands upon life were much more conspicuous in 
 quantity than in quality. While Mr. Lyon's business had 
 been a large factor in creating the new industrial era in the 
 United States ; while he was commercially not only a product 
 but a producer of the times ; his ideas of the relations between 
 person and person showed only the faintest perception of the 
 changes that had occurred in social conditions. 
 
 Both Mr. and Mrs. Lyon had been faithfully schooled in 
 the elementary principles of integrity with equals and charity 
 towards inferiors. Their social conceptions dated from the 
 period when there was no dispute that industry, and honesty, 
 and thrift, and fair dealing were infallible means of success 
 for all, because all were supposed to have equal opportunity 
 to practice these virtues. Their personal observance of the 
 code which they had learned in childhood was not from fear, 
 but from reverence and love. They had high-minded pleas- 
 ure in the duties which their sense of honor prescribed. 
 
 If they had been told that the world had been transformed 
 since the morality which they inherited had taken shape, they 
 would have said that it could not pos.sibly have been a change 
 which made wrong right or right wrong. With them this 
 would not have been a quibble, but to their best knowledge 
 and belief a good and sufficient answer to all suggestions that 
 obligation might be made more liberal or more exacting. If 
 it had still been urged that the difference between people of 
 a century or two ago, and modern men, was like the contrast 
 between a population of primitive farmers, each peaceably 
 providing for his own wants, with little dependence upon the 
 rest, and the same population organized as an army to repel 
 invasion, each dependent upon all the others for hope of life 
 and happiness ; they would have been honestly unable to see 
 any propriety in the comparison. The world had grown more 
 complex, of course. There were greater inequalities. But 
 these simply corrasponded to actual differences in diligence 
 and prudence. They allowed for a certain modicum of mys- 
 terious misfortune, but they were convinced that, with this ex- 
 ception, rewards and merits on the whole corresponded, as 
 they always had and as they always must. 
 
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 They were equally candid in this view, and they held) it 
 with equal firmness, but there was an obtrusive contrast be- 
 tween the two sorts of evidence on which their faith reposed. 
 Mr. Lyon frankly claimed that he had built up his fortune 
 by his own efforts, without help from anybody. His success 
 seerned to him merely a case of Providence protecting its 
 credit. No one who knew him questioned his exceptional 
 ability ; few doubted that he had earned his success ; and only 
 here and there an extremist challenged his right to all he had. 
 
 Measured by the same standard, his wife was entitled to 
 the rewards of fidelity in a comparatively humble position ; 
 but a thousand women whose personal desert quite equalled 
 hers, still earned merely the modest wages of employments 
 like that which she resigned to become the second Mrs. Lyon. 
 Whether their rate of return for service or hers was in pro- 
 portion to merit, the excess or deficit in the other case was 
 sufficient to confirm the increduloiis in distrust of the theory. 
 
 The work of the future Mrs. Lyon as head of a sub-depart- 
 ment in one of the large down-town stores had been highly 
 valued by her employers, and it was altogether to her credit 
 until, after her marriage, she fell into the bathos of being 
 ashamed of her former occupation. Her aggressive anxiety 
 to make people forget it, not only kept the fact fresh in their 
 memory, but it sharpened criticism of other traits that might 
 have been overlooked. If she had shown the genuine pride 
 in having earned her living as a business woman that her 
 husband did in his advance from small beginnings, her other 
 qualities might have conquered most of the doubts about 
 her fitness for her present position. She really had all the 
 homely virtues except indomitable simplicity. She would 
 have been a model wife for a man whose income was not large 
 enough to intoxicate her sense of importance. Promoted sud- 
 denly to opportunity for which she was untrained and unpre- 
 pared, she remained true to her previous convictions, but she 
 deplorably failed to bring consistent order and proportion 
 into the confusion of values among which her choices now 
 had to be made. 
 
 Her only child, Chester, more generally known as "Buck," 
 now eighteen years old, was already cited rather freely as the 
 le.gitimate result of Mrs. Lyon's limitations. His father had 
 been too much preoccupied to concern himself directly with 
 the boy's education. Left entirely to maternal discretion. 
 
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 he had asserted his independence almost from the cradle, and 
 had never learned the rudiments of respect for any authority 
 but his own will. He had rapidly lengthened the radius of 
 his freedom by artful use of the endless chain "all the fel- 
 lows," and "everybody." The cumulative effect of assuming 
 the sanction of all for what was approved by none, plainly 
 marked the bunch chiefly of rich men's sons in which Buck 
 both led and followed. Because the parents of each lacked in- 
 dependence to obey their better judgment, their combined 
 timidity amounted to a conspiracy to defeat their unorgan- 
 ized scruples. 
 
 The fallacy and the pathos of Mrs. Lyon's whole misman- 
 agement of her son lay in allowing him to presume upon the 
 external results of his father's success, instead of grounding 
 him in the elements of purpose and habit which had made 
 the success possible. By permitting Buck to grow up without 
 the discipline of responsibility, Mrs. Lyon had inverted the 
 process of heredity, and although she was still fondly unsus- 
 picious, he was already far advanced along lines of moral 
 reversion. 
 
 Mr. Lyon's other two children had welcomed his second 
 marriage. Logan was already in college, and Edith in an 
 eastern preparatory school. They had known Miss Williams 
 as Secretary of the Sunday School, and as a prominent worker 
 in other church organizations, and the choice seemed to them 
 ideal. Edith was four years younger than Logan, and after 
 her graduation at Vassar she had studied music two years in 
 Europe. With the exception of the year before her marriage, 
 she had been at home only during parts of her vacations, and 
 as her brother was absent still more, their relations to their 
 stepmother had quite easily adjusted themselves on a cousinly 
 basis. 
 
 Edgerly was the brother of Edith Lyon's college chum. 
 He had been an instructor three or four years at Yale, and 
 was in Berlin getting ready for his first semester, when the 
 party containing the two girls arrived. During the two fol- 
 lowing years, he found it convenient to act as their courier in 
 vacations, and soon after Edith's return the engagement was 
 announced. They were married a year later, after Edgerly 
 had taken his Doctor's degree in Berlin. Meanwhile he had 
 been advanced to a higher position at Yale, and they had 
 
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 lived in New Haven until Edgerly accepted the call to 
 Chicago. 
 
 Mr. Lyon had not yet returned from church, and the sixth 
 member of the group in the library was evidently the focus 
 of attention. Hester Kinzie was hardly midway in her twen- 
 ties, but the manner of the others toward her was an uncer- 
 tain compromise between tolerance of youthfulness and def- 
 erence to seniority. A casual glance would have gathered the 
 impression that here was a girl who had herself excellently 
 well in hand. Continued inspection would bring into relief 
 the fine poise; the secure self-possession, with entire efface- 
 ment of self -consciousness ; the rare combination of repose 
 with vigilant attention and stimulating sympathy. Perhaps 
 more notable still was her economy of physical effort. She 
 ran the gamut of emotion from grave to gay, in harmony 
 with the others, but all her effects were produced with a ret- 
 icence of tone, of gesture, of expression, that was almost 
 telepathic. 
 
 One might have written down all these observations with- 
 out having thought to propose that first question in the cate- 
 chism of womanhood, was she beautiful? More than this, one 
 might have neglected to review the evidence on the subject 
 without counting the oversight an important omission. Na- 
 ture might or might not have endowed her with beauty. Cul- 
 ture had certainly enriched her with charms that were more 
 subtly attractive. 
 
 Hester Kinzie was the daughter of Mr. Lyon's lifelong 
 friend, one of the original organizers of the Avery Company. 
 She did not remember her mother, but from her earliest rec- 
 ollection she had been her father's companion. He had re- 
 mained until his death a nominal member of the board of di- 
 rectors of the company, but had retired from active business 
 shortly after the death of his wife. He was a graduate of 
 Williams College, and though he had rapidly accumulated a 
 large fortune, he often said that if nature intended him for 
 money-making Mark Hopkins had vetoed the arrangement. 
 He had a scholar's tastes, with discernment enough to be 
 aware that he lacked the modern scholar's equipment. But 
 he was not equally limited in his fitness to teach. From the 
 time that he gave up business he devoted himself to his daugh- 
 ter's education. They travelled constantly, and studied to- 
 gether the subjects which he approved, with the exception of 
 
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 the languages. He found that she could acquire them so 
 readily that it would be an injustice to hamper her by keeping 
 to the methods which he found necessary for himself. 
 
 As long as she could remember, both Hester and her father 
 had spoken of Mr. Lyon as their guardian. He had always 
 held Mr. Kinzie's proxies for all purposes that required them, 
 and he was the executor of his friend's estate. 
 
 Hester had not visited Chicago since her father died, a lit- 
 tle more than a year before. Logan Lyon had always regarded 
 her as a very entertaining child. He had romped with her, and 
 hectored her, and always called her "Gypsy," without taking 
 notice that the girl gave promise of becoming a rarely notable 
 woman. The promise had not been so visibly in the way of 
 fulfillment when he last saw her, but he was now aware that 
 a transformation had occurred, though he did not at once 
 realize its extent. 
 
 Several years earlier, when Edgerly first saw Hester, his 
 wife had asked his impression of her. At first he tried to get 
 off with the reply that youthful prodigies always appealed to 
 his pity. After further urging he admitted that her varie- 
 gated hues would be fascinating if thej' were not uncanny. 
 Finding that his wife would not be satisfied until he spoke 
 with some show of seriousness, he said that he would not ven- 
 ture to label Hester without further study ; but at present she 
 appeared to be a rather volatile compound of Puritan tradi- 
 tion, Parisian taste, German mental affinity, and Salvation 
 Army practice. Perhaps the only change that he had since 
 seen reason to make in the analysis was substitution of the 
 term stable for volatile. 
 
 When Mr. Lyon came in, it was like the appearance of 
 Santa Claus clean shaven. He had been to the West Side to 
 visit a family in trouble, and he seemed to be enjoying some 
 of the superior happiness of giving. 
 
 Dinner had been waiting, and was at once announced. Mr. 
 Lyon asked the blessing with phrase and fervor that were 
 rather rare survivals from another generation. Then he be- 
 gan at once to tell of the errand from which he had just 
 returned. 
 
 The Charity Organization Society had discovered a man 
 and his wife entirely destitute, and so sick that neither could 
 help the other. In tracing their record it was found that the 
 man had been for fifteen yeans a skilled laborer in the employ 
 
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 of the Avery Company. An accident, caused by the careless- 
 ness or incompetence of another workman, had injured him 
 so severely that when he recovered he was no longer capable 
 of filling his former place, and nothing else was offered him 
 by his employers. When he was sent to the Company's hos- 
 pital, he had to sign a release of all claims against the Com- 
 pany. For half a dozen years both he and his wife had kept 
 busy at any work they could find, and so far as the neigh- 
 bors knew they had not suffered, until sickness had made 
 them helpless. 
 
 Mr. Lyon told how he had verified the story of the day 
 before, and had sent a visiting nurse with instructions to pro- 
 vide everything immediately needed by the couple. After 
 inspecting their surroundings himself, he had made arrange- 
 menteto move them to the Presbyterian Hospital. The 
 physician whom the nurse called had assured him that proper 
 nourishment for a few weeks was the chief element in the 
 treatment indicated to restore their normal condition. 
 
 No one remarked that prevention before the accident, or 
 quick action afterwards, would have been worth more than 
 the cure likely to be effected at this late day. The thought 
 may have been prompted, and possibly it recurred in veiled 
 form a few moments later. 
 
 Mr. Lyon assumed that the couple were to be put on their 
 feet again, both physically and industrially. Mrs. Lyon was 
 no less eager than he to work out ways and means forthwith, 
 and they pursued the subject so intently that at last Mrs. 
 Edgerly interposed the query if it would not be the regular 
 procedure to appoint a chairman and secretary and take 
 stenographic minutes. 
 
 The hint was received with a sigh of relief by all, not ex- 
 cepting Mr. and Mrs. Lyon. Logan quickly followed it up 
 with a challenge to Hester. Even as a child her ideas had 
 always amused him, but he was beginning to take notice that 
 she had a point of view which might yield something more 
 than diversion. He tried to adopt his customary tone, but in 
 spite of himself respectful qualification tempered former con- 
 descension, as he remarked : — "I was wondering. Miss Gypsy, 
 whether we should get some new readings of our palms this 
 trip." 
 
 Without turning her eyes from the figure she was exam- 
 ining in the table-cloth, Hester answered musingly: — "Oh 
 
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 no; alles bleibt beim Alien. All Chicago is still divided into 
 three classes; the machine-tenders, the want-to-be-machine- 
 tenders, and the escaped^from-being-machine tenders." 
 
 "You credit us then with a few escapes?" returned Lyon. 
 
 " 'Credit' is your own version," answered Hester, fixing on 
 him a comical expression of surprise. "I should say it is like 
 the canary's escape from the cage. The first two classes are 
 in the way of salvation, thanks to having their wants. The 
 others are more lost than before, because they don't know 
 what they want." 
 
 "Yet some of the canaries enjoy their freedom," ventured 
 Mrs. Lyon. 
 
 "Yes, in their fluttering little fashion," continued Hester, 
 as though dropping again into meditation, "but on the whole 
 isn't enjoyment much less in evidence than bewilderment?" 
 
 Mrs. Edgerly was sure Hester was turning over in her mind 
 something worth hearing, if she could be provoked to utter it. 
 To furnish a random stimulus she interposed, with a mild af- 
 fectation of anxiety: — "Promise me, Hester, that you will 
 prepare our minds gradually, before you shake our republican 
 dust from your feet to transfer your allegiance to an effete 
 monarchy." 
 
 The only sign that Hester was taking up the aggressive 
 might have been found in the somewhat irrelevant abrupt- 
 ness of her answer: "Isn't modern royalty more democratic 
 than modern riches?" 
 
 "Does the key go with the cipher?" inquired Mr. Lyon in- 
 dulgently. 
 
 "It's easier than the prospectus of Esperanto," chirped Hes- 
 ter, turning upon him a curiously confidential expression, 
 which left everybody uncertain whether she was in earnest 
 or simply preparing to tease her guardian. "Isn't the king 
 today the chief worker in the settlement? Isn't he a trained 
 specialist in public service? Isn't he the most representative 
 citizen? Isn't he a sort of digest of the life of the people? 
 Isn't he not only the symbol of the State, but the most active 
 unifying agent? Isn't the modern rich man his opposite at 
 all points? Doesn't he work people instead of working with 
 them? Does he soil his hands with public service? Isn't he 
 an exception, instead of a specimen? Doesn't he make him- 
 self a spectator, instead of taking his part as a plain man ? On 
 
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 the whole, doesn't he do more to divide society than to unite 
 it?" 
 
 "Eeally, Miss Gypsy," groaned Logan, with a fair imita- 
 tion of dejection, "this is too much of a disappointment. You 
 are billed to be original or nothing. These recitations out of 
 the Anarchists' Handbook will ruin your reputation." 
 
 Still looking at the father, as though wishing to confine 
 her attention to him, Hester answered parenthetically, "Re- 
 member, Logan, you didn't ask me for news, but merely to 
 read your palms. A real seeress must be truthful though tire- 
 some." 
 
 Mrs. Lyon never had toleration for flippancy on such a 
 subject. Irreverence at this point seemed to her to threaten 
 the gold of the altar. Following so close upon the evidence 
 to the contrary, in the plans they had just discussed, these re- 
 flections seemed to her especially unkind. She usually 
 avoided disagreement with Hester. She had a dread of mis- 
 taking play for earnest, and her distrust of her own sense of 
 humor perhaps made her interpret the obvious in Hester as 
 mystery. This time, however, although she si:ispected that 
 her reply left much to be desired, both as to novelty and con- 
 clusiveness, she took the risk, before any one else could 
 answer. 
 
 "But, Hester, you forget the millions of dollars given to 
 charity in the United States every year." 
 
 "I didn't forget them. Aunt Jenny," Hester began sooth- 
 ingly. "Some of the blessedest dollars in the world are among 
 them." Then returning to the more impersonal aspects of 
 the subject : — "Some of them too are the same snobocratic dol- 
 lars I had in mind. Their image and superscription make 
 me wonder if modern royalty isn't more human than mod- 
 ern riches. We sit on our thrones and command the Grand 
 Vizier of the Bank Account to scatter largesses, but Ahasuerus 
 and all his ancient kind did that. It's not modern at all. 
 While the up-to-date king devotes his life to finding out what 
 his people need, and working harder than any of them to get 
 it, aren't we the American rich spending our money like 
 nabobs for anyone we can patronize, but do we any more make 
 common cause with people outside our financial class than we 
 take our cook into our box the first night of the opera?" 
 
 Edgerly was beginning to suspect that Hester was much 
 deeper than an impressionist; and he was highly edified by 
 
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 the effect of her heresy on both Mr. and Mrs. Lyon. For men- 
 tal and physical cures alike however, he believed in ninety- 
 nine parts nature to one of medicine. At the present moment 
 he judged that the dose already administered might be 
 enough for a single treatment, and that a diversion might be 
 in the line of gx>od policy as well as good fellowship. With 
 a glance at Mrs. Lyon, for her permission to interrupt the ar- 
 gument, he volunteered his mediation. 
 
 "It has occurred to me, Miss Kinzie, that Logan got his 
 references mixed. It sounds more like plagiarism from this 
 morning's sermon." 
 
 Edgerly was not content to let his father-in-law drop out 
 of the conversation. Few families more rigidly observed the 
 taboo of "shop" in the household. From the table talk a 
 guest would seldom be able to place Mr. Lyon ; but the infer- 
 ence would almost always be drawn that philanthropy was 
 his chief occupation. Edgerly reckoned that reference to 
 Halleck's line of thought was an approach to forbidden 
 ground, and that it would call for a defensive movement. 
 Mr. Lyon did not take alarm, however, until Hester had 
 tripped blithely across the danger line. She more than half 
 guessed what was in Edgerly's mind. She had been privileged 
 from childhood as an enfant terrible toward her guardian, and 
 since she had arrived at ideas of her own she had often turned 
 the role to serious account. With the carelessness of an 
 ingenue exchanging banter she smiled back upon Edgerly : — 
 
 "Mr. Halleok and I have merely been reading the same 
 palms. After one of his climaxes I retired into a reverie, and 
 when I returned I fancied he had been saying, 'David Lyon, 
 you are one of the best men in the world, but the social prob- 
 lem is how to get you into moral relations with your help!" 
 
 To do both Mr. and Mrs. Lyon justice, their imagination 
 was honestly lost in the attempt to put a workable meaning 
 into Halleck's ideas. The only direction along which they 
 could see any hope of industrial betterment, was through 
 growth of intelligence in laborers that would show them the 
 necessity of trusting the superior wisdom of employers. To 
 their minds the wage system was a part of the order of nature 
 no less than the changes of seasons. The application to Mr. 
 Lyon in particular seemed so extravagant that both preferred 
 to take it as a facetious way of retreating from the charge upon 
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 Mr. Lyon's patience with Hester's escapades of opinion was 
 very much like the Kaiser's sufferance of his daughter's lib- 
 erties with imperial dignity. They did not aft'ect him as 
 social sj'mptoms, but merely as signs of girlish detachment 
 from the real world. That Halleck should put arguments into 
 the mouths of feministic theorists was another matter ; yet tliis ■ 
 was a subject for the office, not for the family. To avoid the 
 trap, he chose to treat Hester's allusion playfully. 
 
 "I heard Mr. Kissinger say yesterday that one of the young 
 women in the office wants leave of absence for two months, to 
 help her sister get ready to be married. I will recommend 
 you for the position, Hester, and you can see what an ogre I 
 am at close quarters." 
 
 "Oh, I've no doubt you'd be so nice to me that I should 
 quite forget the personal and the business duality. But suppose 
 I should join the Office Girls' Protective Union. Wouldn't 
 you say I was trying to reverse divine foreordination, and 
 wouldn't you boycott me ?" 
 
 "Of course, if you should conspire against me. I should 
 have to defend myself." 
 
 "Would my Office Girls' Union be more of a conspiracy 
 against you, than your corporation laws, and your community 
 of interests among capitalists would against me?" 
 
 "I will answer allegorically, Hester. Suppose the blades of 
 corn in some farmer's field should form a union next Spring 
 to outwit the climate. Suppose they agreed to grow in spite 
 of drought when rain was needed, and to fill out fuller ears 
 than usual even if rain fell all the time that sunshine was 
 wanted. What would you think of the prospects of the union 
 against the climate?" 
 
 "They would strike me as a rather forlorn hope. Uncle 
 David, but I wish you would explain the allegory. The 
 blades of corn represent ?" 
 
 "Why the members of your union, with your easy supe- 
 riority to the laws of business." 
 
 "And the climate?" 
 
 "The climate stands for business of course, and the blades 
 of corn must conform to it." 
 
 "You didn't mean to imply that the employers are the 
 ehmate?" 
 
 "The employers understand the climate, and the unions 
 do not." 
 
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 "I see. That makes the allegory very striking. If I had 
 a masculine mind, I suppose I should be convinced forever, 
 Uncle David; but as I haven't, I'm foolish enough to im- 
 agine that something may still be said for the unions. Would 
 you mind if I try my hand at an allegory?" 
 
 A gentle murmur of encouragement circled the table, and 
 Hester proceeded: — 
 
 "One fine Spring morning, the blades of corn in a small 
 patch, in one corner of the field, put their heads together and 
 decided to form a syndicate to control irrigation. They said 
 to one another, 'We know what we want, and the rest of the 
 field doesn't know what it wants. All these hills of corn can't 
 prosper of course. There isn't material enough to go around. 
 We must make things come our way. We will keep our- 
 selves well watered. We will wash plenty of soil from the rest 
 of the field, if necessary, to cover our roots, but any way we 
 will get rich and fat.' Would it be so awfully unreasonable. 
 Uncle David, for the rest of the field to form a union, while 
 the few hills were organizing their syndicate?" 
 
 The air of artless innocence with which Hester propounded 
 the dilemma was too much for the gravity even of Mr. and 
 Mrs. Lyon. Buck had been inwardly voting the whole talk 
 an infernal bore, but the humor of the last turn drew him 
 into the general outburst of hilarity. Mr. Lyon declared that 
 he felt like sending a large check at once to the firemen's 
 fund, in gratitude for the narrow escape from letting such a 
 pyromaniac into his office. Logan said it merely went to 
 show our need of an underground route to Siberia ; and Ed- 
 gerly submitted that they had all guessed wrong, and these 
 were advance sheets from a new Communist Manifesto. 
 
 Hester toyed demurely with her liqueur glass, and reflected 
 that a little well placed irony now and then might help the 
 world move on as much as many a ponderous argument. 
 
 While the others were returning to the library, Buck took 
 the opportunity to extricate himself, with the notification to 
 his mother, "I won't be home very early. Tom and I are 
 going to take two of the girls on an auto ride." 
 
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 VII 
 
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 'The real issue is this : — How do you know that your better 
 judgment hasn't usurped more authority than it is entitled 
 to as a dictator to men of poorer judgment?" 
 
 AT the head of the long table in the directors' room, the 
 President of the Company was dispatching his Monday 
 morning's work. 
 
 He might have been described as a twin of David Lyon, 
 with reverse English upon every feature that made his brother 
 lovable. In the lines of his face, as he rapidly disposed of 
 one document after another, not a mark of a gentle emotion 
 could be detected. He was following a routine, with no more 
 betrayal of sentiment than is visible in a machine. After 
 watching and listening for a half -hour to his curt comments 
 to his secretary one might have said that his relentlessness 
 in action resembled nothing so much as the strain of an ex- 
 press engine making up time lost from the schedule. 
 
 Yet this was David Lyon in his business character. Not 
 dishonest, not dishonorable, not unscrupulous, he was simply 
 unequivocal in his purpose, and unswerving, uncompromis- 
 ing, inflexible in its pursuit. He accepted the working world 
 as a scheme of order as unvarying and inevitable as the har- 
 mony of the spheres. The Newtonian law of this system was, 
 Capitalize all the wealth you can, and make it pay every 
 penny of dividends it will produce. The general limitations 
 of the system were defined by the statutes and the recognized 
 rules of competition. Within these boundaries, success be- 
 longed to the strongest force. 
 
 No courts would have been needed to secure his observance 
 of these restrictions to the letter, as he interpreted them. 
 David Lyon's word was always as good as his contract. But 
 honor, as he understood it, required rigid respect for the rules 
 no more than pitiless use of the power of economic resources. 
 It would be burying talents in the earth to permit embarrass- 
 ment of business by sentimental considerations. His whole 
 office philosophy was once packed into a remark to Edgerly : — 
 "We can't go into battle without losing killed and wounded. 
 
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 but we must win the fight first and attend to them afterwards. 
 When human sympathies obstruct the operation of business 
 principles, they are as much out of place as lace curtains and 
 bric-a-brac in a foundry." 
 
 The difficult thing to understand was not the make-up of 
 ]Mr. Lyon's two selves, but that he had never been disturbed 
 hy the contrast between them. He serenely accepted the benef- 
 icent provision of nature which divided life into personal and 
 impersonal parts, the former of which subsisled upon crumbs 
 from the table of the latter. 
 
 Perhaps more anomalous still, in a man of his type, was the 
 fact that his partial suspension, in practice, of the funda- 
 mental law "capitalize," was not in accordance with a definite 
 formula. He was liberal in his expenditures, and generous 
 in his gifts, but this did not alter the material fact. In prin- 
 ciple, his personal life was not the master but the pensioner 
 of his economic life, and he had never attempted to account 
 for the ratio of withdrawal from possible capital, and transfer 
 to bounty, which his business self permitted his personal self 
 to administer. The truth was that these habitual concessions 
 to the larger life represented ideas and influences which flatly 
 contradicted his business theory. 
 
 If he had been a philosopher, Mr. Lyon would have been 
 a puzzle to himself. He would have seen that there was irre- 
 pressible conflict between the two divisions of life which his 
 working scheme created; and the conflict would have pre- 
 sented itself to him as either comedy or tragedy. Whichever 
 alternative he chose he would have had the curiosity to run 
 down the contradiction, and to discover where the mistake 
 was located which made his life revolve about two centres in- 
 stead of one. Since he was not a philosopher, but merely a 
 matter-of-fact man, he cared for none of these things; 
 and instead of struggling to merge his antithetic selves into a 
 unity, he held them apart, dividing his time between them, 
 and turn for turn he wjis as conscientious about the program 
 of the one as of the other. 
 
 It was Mr. Lyon's habit to do hi.s routine work in the direc- 
 tors' room, in preference to his private office; and for two 
 reasons. In the first place, there wa.s the comfort and conve- 
 nience of the larger space. This was the reason which he gave 
 to others. In the second place, in the directors' room he could 
 more easily imagine himself reaching out to touch every dc- 
 
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 tail of the company's operations. He had more of the feel- 
 ing of the Captain on the bridge, and of the Commander at 
 staff-headquarters. He could fancy that all his heads of de- 
 partments were present. This was the reason which he gave 
 to himself. He would have been ashamed to confess it, for 
 it was the one intrusion of sentiment which he had not barred 
 from the premises. 
 
 The customary order of business filled the first part of the 
 forenoon, with no incident to show that anything unusual 
 was in the air. According to the newspaper, the program 
 predicted by Kissinger, and talked over by Mr. Lyon and 
 Logan after dinner the day before, had been endorsed by the 
 unions, and a delegation had been authorized to make formal 
 presentation of the demands to the Company. No directors' 
 meeting had been called, because the situation presented no 
 problem that had not already been settled in principle ; unless 
 it was the question whether an interview should be granted 
 to a delegation submitting such an unthinkable proposition. 
 As notification that an interview was desired had not been re- 
 ceived, there was no hurry to decide how it should be treated. 
 
 The special program of the day was to set in motion the 
 offensive and defensive plans which had been worked out in 
 anticipation of labor disturbance. Certain large orders for 
 material had to be suspended ; customers were warned that the 
 strike clause in their contracts was likely to become operative ; 
 pending arrangements with the banks were to be closed, and 
 in particular, the necessary steps had to be taken to put in 
 readiness the campaign resources of the different associations 
 that were pledged to maintain the employers' side of the 
 fight. 
 
 Until after business hours there had been hardly a moment 
 of relief from hard work for the administrative officers. The 
 lunch hour at their clubs had been nearly as busy as the floor 
 of the Board of Trade during a break in the market. The di- 
 rectors had been coming and going all day, and now, after the 
 doors were closed, half a dozen of them were gathered around 
 the long table to talk over the outlook at their leisure. 
 
 At this moment Mr. Lyon would have been an ideal pose 
 for Napoleon at Austerlitz, during the legendary twenty min- 
 utes when he held his Marshals in leash while the allies were 
 completing their false movement. He expected a terrific 
 
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 fight, but he had made his dispositions so carefully that he 
 was absolutely confident. He was so pleased with the day's 
 work that he had almost permitted his face to resume its 
 human version. 
 
 When the talk turned from' what had been done, to the 
 question of attitude toward the strikers' deputation, it was 
 quickly evident that this transformation was premature. At 
 mention of the defiance which was to be flung at the Com- 
 pany, with the underlying provocation of implied contempt 
 for business principles, Mr. Lyon's features instantly con- 
 tracted into a hard, stern, almost fierce expression, that would 
 have satisfied a rather rigorous conception of a headsman. 
 Bringing both fists down heavily upon the table, he exclaimed, 
 with a vehemence of which few knew him to be capable, "One 
 thing is certain ! You will never catch me demeaning myself 
 by a parley with these freebooters!" 
 
 Most of the group represented primarily the bankers', 
 rather than the employers' viewpoint, and they were inclined 
 toward a more conciliatory policy. 'They argued that it was 
 a mere matter of form anyway. They said it would do no 
 hurt to be polite to these men. They thought it might even 
 modify the animus of the struggle if the Company should 
 avoid insolence in the beginning. 
 
 Mr. Lyon came back at them savagely. "Is it insolence not 
 to ask a man to walk into your parlor, when he advertises in 
 advance that his errand is bribery or blackmail? Politeness 
 has its place, and some of it might be judicious if we were just 
 at present doing detectives' work. But I draw the line on 
 politeness to the man that asks me to be his accomplice in 
 crime. You propose to bandy words with an illegal conspir- 
 acy. That would give these bandits the advantage of being 
 treated as though they had a right to negotiate. It would give 
 away our whole case if we should admit that they are entitled 
 to a hearing. No! gentlemen. A burglar may break into 
 my house at his own peril, but he will never get a chance to 
 sit down before my fireplace and discuss terms of immunity. 
 The scouts of these outlaws may wave their flag of truce till 
 it rots. The only recognition they will ever get from David 
 Lyon will be a volley I" 
 
 Logan Lyon had been pacing slowly around the table, in 
 the rear of the animated circle. None of the talk had es- 
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 Kinzie ; and it was a relief from the grim tension of the day's 
 schedule to look at it in the sort of colored light that he just 
 at present associated with those persons. 
 
 So far as Lyon was aware, his object in turning from the 
 practical to what he regarded as the dilettantish, was amuse- 
 ment, rather than anything more serious. It was a part of 
 the "lighter touch" that he had mentioned to Barclay. It 
 was a novel sensation to assume an attitude of aloofness, and 
 to scrutinize business as an unbiased spectator. It gave him a 
 feeling of self-possession something like the triumph of first 
 ability to ride a bicycle without gripping the handle-bar. 
 That the horizon which the Company made for itself was not 
 the largest perspective in which it could be viewed without 
 taking in a section of cloud-land, was almost as novel a reve- 
 lation to Lyon as the fresh-air fund child's discovery that the 
 world contains groves, and streams, and meadows, as well as 
 pavements. 
 
 The new mood was an inclination to be coltish. From 
 pure mischief Lyon halted at the foot of the table, and for the 
 first time broke into the conversation. 
 
 "After all, Father, don't you think we're a little like the 
 Quaker whose conscientious scruples against war couldn't 
 keep him from firing just where the enemy stood?" 
 
 The blank look on all the faces at the table told Lyon that 
 he had not scored; and he acknowledged to himself that it 
 was a rather wild shot. After his father had answered, in a 
 slightly groping tone, that he didn't see the point, Logan 
 tried again. 
 
 "While you have been throwing bouquets at the Company 
 for its long-headed preparations, I've been wondering how 
 many of us had ever caught ourselves thinking that, win or 
 lose, the whole campaign is a dodging of the issue." 
 
 Probably no one present would have found anything new 
 in such a reflection from a literary man, or a social agitator, 
 but the source and the surroundings gave it the effect of a 
 cannon-cracker. Any remark, however unexpected, that 
 was to be taken literally in connection with a business propo- 
 sition, would have met ready enough answer in that group ; 
 but this suggestion from Logan Lyon was a complete sur- 
 prise. Every one was caught so off his guard that for several 
 seconds only a confused gurgle came of the spasmodic at- 
 tempts to articulate before thinking. The first to pull him- 
 
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 self together enough to sense the spirit of the query was Evans, 
 President of the Fidelity Trust Company, and nearest of the 
 number to Logan's age. He could contribute only the insin- 
 uation, "Does a hard day's work always rattle you, Lyon?" 
 
 "On the contrary," Lyon answered jauntily, "as the day's 
 work hasn't called on me to extend myself, I need the exer- 
 cise of playing the devil's advocate." 
 
 "If I was after that sort of exercise," joined in Snelling, 
 of the Home National, "I should wait until my client had a 
 case with at least a few technicalities in his favor." 
 
 "You may not be aware, gentlemen," continued Lyon, with 
 mock solemnity, and seemingly regardless of the comments, 
 "that I am considering the idea of employing my leisure in 
 writing a treatise on the vices of modern business." 
 
 "On the principle that it takes a rogue to catch a rogue?" 
 demanded Evans. 
 
 "Exactly," followed Lyon, "the confessions of a converted 
 capitalist." 
 
 Nobody in the room could make out what Lyon was driv- 
 ing at. Jokes were not good form in the Avery offices, even 
 after hours. The presumption neither of jest nor of earnest 
 offered a plausible clue. If Logan Lyon had not ranked as 
 one of the keenest minds in Chicago, the group would have 
 been disposed to think he was gibbering. As he was never 
 known to talk without saying something, the topic of the day 
 was dropped and the curiosity of the whole company turned 
 to the enigma he had sprung. 
 
 Semi-officially, rather than paternally, and as a caution 
 against crossing the line of levity, Lyon Senior offered the 
 tentative expostulation : — "It is to be presumed, Logan, that 
 the confessions will be strictly individual rather than repre- 
 sentative." 
 
 "I bad thought it would be a good plan to make them gen- 
 eral, for the sake of seeing how my fellow sinners would plead 
 to the indictment. For instance, the first chapter will begin : 
 'Everybody knows that the patriarchalism of modern busi- 
 ness is untenable.' " 
 
 "You might save making a show of yourself, by assuming 
 a verdict of not guilty on that count, and throwing it out of 
 the record," retorted Evans. He was quicker than the others 
 in tracking Lyon's moves, but he was an index of the temper 
 
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 of the rest. They all had the feeling that whatever Lyon 
 meant it was entirely uncalled for, and perhaps seditious. 
 
 Paying no attention to the disclaimer, Lyon continued : — 
 "The second proposition will be: 'Even the interested parties 
 now understand that the superstition of the divine right of 
 kings was merely a primitive form of the illusion of the di- 
 vine right of employers.' " 
 
 By this time the President of the Company was really un- 
 easy. Under any circumstances he would have regarded it as 
 beneath the dignity of the head of the legal department to in- 
 dulge in such extravagance. In a crisis like the present, it 
 pointed either to deficient sense of the gravity of the situation, 
 or to mental vagaries of which his son had never been sus- 
 pected. Not in anger, but certainly in sorrow, he undertook 
 to close the incident. "It strikes me, Logan," he interposed, 
 with a manner that was an unsettled compound of gentleness 
 and severity, "that it would be well to leave this sort of horse- 
 play to the socialists, and confine ourselves to business." 
 
 The young man's respect and affection for his father were 
 too genuine to permit trifling either with his opinions or his 
 feelings. With the other men Lyon might have continued on 
 the same line indefinitely. For his father's sake, he saw that 
 he must adopt a different tone. Still standing, with his hands 
 in his pockets, at the end of the table, and now and then walk- 
 ing a step or two in either direction, he took a new point of 
 departure. 
 
 "I'm neither an end-man nor a traitor. These things are 
 strictly between us, and I'm not likely to let them clog the 
 running gear. But, honestly, on the neutral ground between 
 jobs, I would like immensely to find out how many of us are 
 as satisfied as we think we are with the whole arrangement." 
 
 "You don't propose to quit the business, and get a place to 
 spin cobwebs down at the University?" This time it was Dex- 
 ter, of the Ninth National. He had hardly spoken since Lyon 
 disturbed the session. His face had been lowering, from the 
 first remark, and the innovation seemed to irritate him more 
 in its literal than in its facetious form. 
 
 "What do you mean by 'the whole arrangement,' Logan?" 
 asked his father. 
 
 "I mean this: — The Avery Company, for instance, is 
 a sample of the sort of thing that has grown up all over the 
 world. Nobody saw in advance just what was coming, but 
 
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 new sources of motor power, new types of machinery, new 
 markets, new legislation, new organization of economic 
 forces, have gradually put into the hands of a few of us a new 
 type of control over most of our partners in work. That is, 
 the great majority of the people who make a modern industry 
 have no more to say about the policy of the industry, or about 
 business standards in general, than the Russian moujiks have 
 about the constitution and laws of the empire. Our business, 
 like every other, is necessarily a cooperative process. Each 
 kind of labor, from thinking out the first steps in financing 
 the company, to the least skilled work in getting out the raw 
 material for our use, depends on every other kind. We 
 couldn't get along without the work in the coal yards, any 
 more than the coal yards could exist without the work in this 
 office. But 'the whole arrangement' that I spoke of gives a 
 handful of us relatively as much power over the great number 
 as the Russian bureaucrats have over the nation at large. This 
 is all very flattering to our vanity, and convenient for our side 
 of the arrangement, but if we were called upon to justify it on 
 grounds of good sportsmanship, we should have hard work to 
 come off very proud of ourselves." 
 
 "That's the talk of a quitter, Lyon," snarled Evans. "It's 
 always good sportsmanship to take what comes to you under 
 the rules, not to whine when you get the short end." 
 
 "It's a great deal better sportsmanship," returned Lyon, 
 "when everything has been coming our way, to be willing 
 to consider whether the rules haven't artificially favored our 
 style of play." 
 
 "If you'd get the muddle out of your rhetoric," sneered 
 Dexter, "There'd be no excuse left for your Miss Nancyism 
 about sticking to business. Come in out of the moonlight, and 
 you'll see that it isn't a partnership, nor a gentleman's game. 
 It's a fight. Every man for himself. It's all well enough 
 to pity your enemies after you've got them where you want 
 them, but if you give any quarter before, you will simply 
 exchange places." 
 
 "There would be millions, Mr. Dexter, in a comic opera 
 built around a national bank magnate blowing himself with 
 the hallucination that business is 'every man for himself.' " 
 
 Lyon had crossed over to Dexter's side of the table and be- 
 gan to talk about him rather than to him. His manner was 
 that of a lecturer demonstrating his subject upon a conve- 
 
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 nient piece of material. The specimen seemed to stimulate in 
 his mind a tantalizing mixture of curiosity and amusement. 
 
 "If it really were 'every man for himself,' Mr. Dexter, 
 where would the bankers be? Not one of them could ever 
 have got beyond selling newspapers on the street corner. But 
 they couldn't have got that far, because enough capital never 
 could have been collected or held together to publish a news- 
 paper. The banker who thinks he has fought his way to the 
 front without help, is capable of believing that he was born of 
 his own will. You are Exhibit A, Mr. Dexter, in a problem 
 of refutation that ought not to puzzle a schoolboy. Business 
 in general, and banking as a shining instance, is 'many men 
 for one another.' Not a business on earth could live a min- 
 ute if it didn't have the benefit of a public franchise in some 
 shape. When you look the facts square in the face, you find 
 that business is neither a game, nor a fight, nor a partnership, 
 but it is all three together. I see no reason to doubt that it will 
 always be a combination of the three. For all we know, how- 
 ever, the proportions of the elements will have to be changed 
 a great many times, before human affairs settle down in their 
 final adjustment. So far as we have gone, business is a scram- 
 ble to let in just enough friends, on the ground floor of a few 
 preferred partnerships, to secure them in a winning fight 
 with the rest of the world, the non-preferred partners in- 
 cluded. The people on the inside couldn't spin a thread if 
 a hundred times as many people on the outside didn't consent 
 to work with them on terms which the insiders find profitable 
 for themselves. Now my point is that there is always a ques- 
 tion whether these terms are fair, and whether the outsiders 
 have their share of influence in testing the fairness. Of 
 course the insiders mean to be fair, but we are all the time 
 fighting for the right to be our own judges of ourselves. We 
 dispute every inch of approach of the outside partners to pro- 
 portional representation in the controversy." 
 
 To tell the truth, Lyon was surprising himself more than 
 his hearers, by his excursion into theory. He had not fore- 
 seen where he would land when he slipped his moorings. 
 Without considering how seriously he would want to stand for 
 what he was saying, he was enjoying the effect, on himself no 
 less than on the others, of letting himself go and seeing what 
 would happen. 
 
 The other men seemed to have lost the connection. Lyon's 
 
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 line of thought was so far from their beaten track that it left 
 them with a safe "never-touched-me" feeling. They were even 
 recovering themselves enough to feel foolish for having al- 
 lowed Lyon to ruffle them by an argument that ended in the 
 air. Evans again gave the first sign of a changing mood. 
 "When we get this dust of words laid enough to see through 
 it, the bright particular moonbeam you seem to be chasing, 
 Lyon, is suppression of the fit, and turning control of things 
 over to the unfit." 
 
 "Lyon's conscience is troubled," chimed in Dexter, "be- 
 cause brains don't go to the bottom instead of the top." 
 
 "Whether there is any conscience in it or not," retorted 
 Lyon, "the assumption that brains and nerve to hog the situa- 
 tion are identical, is an overdraft on my sense of the ridicu- 
 lous." 
 
 "What remedy do you propose, Logan, for the evils you 
 have in mind?" asked his father. 
 
 "That question seems to me to be the chief defense we offer 
 for not hunting down the evils themselves," replied Lyon, 
 for the first time appearing to speak entirely without dis- 
 guise. "It turns out to be a defense that is no credit to us, 
 when we think what it implies. It is no excuse for shirking 
 today's work, that we can't predict how our great grandchil- 
 dren will finish it. We might just as well hold up the doc- 
 tors for finding cancer in their patients, because they haven't 
 yet learned how to cure it." 
 
 "If we must use comparisons," returned his father, "the 
 kind of sentimentality you are sampling seems to me more 
 like condemning the human body because the mind controls 
 the muscles, instead of the reverse." 
 
 When Logan was in good spirits, and completely at his 
 ease, he had a yodling laugh that was more persuasive than 
 argument. It had a wide range of expression, and it was es- 
 pecially effective when the ludicrous side of an idea struck 
 him as its vulnerable point. His regard for his father made 
 him use it now with subdued discretion, but even under re- 
 straint it gave edge to what he said. "The excruciating thing, 
 Father, is that one set of muscles can gravely declare to the 
 other sets of muscles, 'You are only muscles, we are mind.' " 
 
 "Suppose we drop the comparisons then," continued Mr. 
 Lyon, "and say just what we mean. Whether there are pre- 
 ventable evils in the world or not, they would soon be multi- 
 
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 plied a hundred times over, if we should start to cure them on 
 the theory that the average man knows how to do his own 
 thinking." 
 
 "The other half of that truth," responded Logan, "is a va- 
 riation of the 'many men for one another' proposition. 
 Neither the average man nor the phenomenal man is capable 
 of doing all his own thinking. I wonder if each man ought not 
 to have the right to do the fraction of his own thinking that 
 is within his capacity, and to make his own selection of people 
 to do the rest, up to the point where he begins to be a nuisance 
 to his neighbors." 
 
 "It is weak and dangerous," insisted Mr. Lyon, with a re- 
 vival of his previous energy, "to dally with the notion that the 
 ordinary man could go very far without a guardian. I have 
 no hesitation in saying that I know, better than people in gen- 
 eral, what they ought to think about things in general." 
 
 "Suppose we grant that, father," responded Logan gently, 
 "it doesn't touch the main question. The real issue is this : 
 How do you know that your better judgment hasn't usurped 
 more authority than it is entitled to as a dictator to men of 
 poorer judgment? Political tyranny has always justified 
 itself on the same ground. The argument of the few is: — 
 'The many don't know. We do. Therefore we have the 
 right to govern the many.' No one dares to say that in poli- 
 tics in the United States ; but we still say it in business. The 
 Kaiser thinks he knows better than his Germans what they 
 ought to think about things in general, and he consequently 
 maintains a government that regulates them, from the hiring 
 of servant girls to declaring war. On the face of it, the re- 
 sults are in the Kaiser's favor. As a pure matter of good 
 order we couldn't make a better investment than to call in our 
 democracy, and hire a competent emperor to run us on the 
 Kaiser's plan. But we think we are better off, all things con- 
 sidered, paying the penalties of our own incompetence as we 
 go along, and meanwhile learning by experience. Isn't it 
 conceivable that we should get more out of business too, in 
 the end, if we diminished its Kaiserism and increased its 
 democracy?" 
 
 "I suppose it is conceivable," mused Mr. Lyon, "that uni- 
 versal bankruptcy would usher in the millennium; but so 
 many things remain to be said in defense of solvency that I 
 can still oppose the experiment with a clear conscience." 
 
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 The abstract turn of the discussion had made every one 
 feel that it had passed out of the danger zone, and common 
 consent seemed to have been reached that the whole episode 
 was a natural reaction from the day's exertions. Although 
 Lyon wanted to point out that at least two questions were 
 begged in his father's reply, he preferred to accept the oppor- 
 tunity to allow him the last word. He was trying to withdraw 
 gracefully, with acknowledgments to the company for the 
 mental photographs they had contributed to his researches, 
 when Dexter gave a parting sign that he had been hit. 
 
 "Before your debating society adjourns, Lyon, let me give 
 you one bit of friendly advice. If you can still make people 
 believe you know a little law, hold on to that graft, and don't 
 take chances beyond your depth in political economy. You 
 would avoid a world of worry about social reform if you would 
 buy an economic primer, and learn the lesson that the only 
 way for employees to improve their conditions is to stop fight- 
 ing their employers and increase the productivity of labor." 
 
 As there was no time left for argiiment, Lyon merely ob- 
 served, with an exasperating affectation of humility: — "It 
 was a calamity to civilization, Mr. Dexter, that the primer you 
 drew your wisdom from was allowed to go out of print a third 
 of a century ago. Its enormous value was in the pointer it 
 gave to employers. They might have multiplied our pros- 
 perity by taking advantage of it. If organized labor is fight- 
 ing against fate, all capital has to do is to cut off the expense 
 of opposing the unions, let labor defeat itself, and declare 
 extra dividends from the savings. Of course motives of phil- 
 anthropy towards laboring men have been the only reason 
 why employers have not given themselves the benefit of that 
 paragraph in the primer long ago !" 
 
 If Logan Lyon had actually been settled in the role of a 
 dispassionate student, rather than of a partisan in social con- 
 flicts, he would have been aware that one era was dissolving 
 into another less in the fight between hostile social classes, 
 than in unconscious changes of views going forward in groups 
 like the one now dispersing. He did not know that his own 
 position had been shifted by the discussion. In fact, though 
 he had changed no specific opinion, he had virtually made the 
 decisive transition from the attitude of an attorney to that of 
 an inquirer. 
 
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 VIII 
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 'The ground plan of a democracy is that all shares in the 
 profits of the cooperation shall be paid for in work, and 
 that no one shall have any rights that he does not earn." 
 
 THE strike had been in full force for two weeks. 
 The Avery Company had promptly posted notice that 
 the plant would shut down six weeks for repairs. As there 
 was no work for strike-breakers, picketing was not needed, 
 and thus far there had been no violence of any sort that 
 could be charged to the strikers. 
 
 The newspapers, as a rule, seemed to be completely baffled 
 by the situation. It presented questions for which there was 
 no stereotyped answer in their libraries, and they had for 
 the most part confined themselves to platitudes. 
 
 The Freeman, which was making the most desperate at- 
 tempts to seduce the labor vote, was not sure whether the 
 present movement was an eddy or the main current. To 
 cover its vacuity of opinion, it avoided direct statements 
 about the merits of the particular case, and took refuge in 
 more than usually clownish abuse of capitalists in general. 
 
 The Courier, whose editorial page was without a rival as 
 a permanent exposition of the perfunctory products of subsi- 
 dized insincerity, was alternately unctuous and scurrilous in 
 its denunciations of the moral sin of entertaining beliefs not 
 dictated by the class bias of its owners. 
 
 The papers which were taken seriously by the intelligent 
 sections of the population made the most of the folly of 
 strikes in general, and of the failure of the strikers, in the 
 present instance, to bring specific charges against the Avery 
 Company. They were shy of the question of principle that 
 had been raised. While they were trying to decide how to 
 treat it, they affected to regard the whole struggle as a purely 
 theoretical issue, that had wandered out of its sphere and ac- 
 cidentally entangled itself with practical affairs. 
 
 The first mass meeting in the interest of the strike was in 
 the Armory, Sunday afternoon. John Graham was an- 
 nounced as the chief speaker. 
 
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 Upon EdRerly's dare, he and Logan Lyon were in the as- 
 sembly. For both men the excursion was a voyage of dis- 
 covery. Neither had very distinct ideas as to what the dem- 
 onstration would be like, but both decided to take the pre- 
 caution of wearing cast-off clothes, to avoid being conspicuous. 
 
 The meeting had already been called to order when they 
 arrived, but nothing that was taking place on the platform 
 was audible more than fifty feet away. The floor of the im- 
 mense building was filled with men who were densely packed 
 near the speakers, but beyond the range of the voices move- 
 ment was not very difficult. As they did not care for the foot- 
 ball practice that would have been necessary to get within 
 hearing distance, Lyon and Edgerly circulated through the 
 outskirts of the crowd, trying to gauge the composition of 
 the audience. 
 
 Their first impression was recorded in Lyon's remark t« 
 Edgerly, as they found an unoccupied spot under the bal- 
 cony, nearly opposite the rostrum. "Before we're in any 
 deeper, Ernest, it might be well to go home and change our 
 clothes. I wouldn't be so very much surprised if an usher in 
 uniform came and requested us to retire and dress ourselves 
 with due respect for the occasion." 
 
 The faces of both men testified that they felt a good deal 
 as though they had caught themselves offering a tip to the 
 manager of the Blackstone. 
 
 "We might as well own up," stammered Edgerly, with a 
 shamefaced substitute for a smile, "that we don't know our 
 Chicago as well as we thought we did. This lot averages 
 much better in looks than the grand stand rooters at a West 
 Side game." 
 
 "Why, in everything but size it might be a Board of Trade 
 crowd," answered Lyon. "It must he that most of them are 
 spies like us." 
 
 After another quarter-circuit of the floor, they stopped 
 again to compare notes. 
 
 "There are more different kinds than I made out at first,'' 
 began Edgerly, "but I haven't spotted a specimen yet of the 
 sort I expected to find in the majority." 
 
 "Yes, I've recovered my spirits a little," laughed Lyon, 
 "since I've rubbed against one or two fellows that looked as 
 seedy as we do ; but after taking my life in my hands to find 
 
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 out how a gang of bullies would act, I can't make myself feel 
 comfortable in such a ladylike collection." 
 
 "It's a model Sunday School," reflected Edgerly, "com- 
 pared with the last Republican convention in our district. 
 I expected to find a mob of fire-eaters, but most of them are 
 not taking it half as seriously as we do." 
 
 "I never got next to a more good natured jumble of des- 
 peradoes," assented Lyon. "These scraps of talk we hear are 
 pretty good samples of the ideas I suppose we mean by 
 Americanism. As I make out the sense of the meeting it's 
 about this: — There's the devil to pay, and it's time to get 
 busy settling the score. But there's no use getting hot about 
 it. "We've got means to burn when we get good and ready to 
 use them. The other fellows are well enough in their way, 
 but they're getting too fresh, and need to be called. After 
 the smoke clears we shall shake hands, and make up, and 
 like each other all the better ; but before it comes to that the 
 bosses are due for a throw-down that they'll remember." 
 
 "I've noticed here and there what looks like a bad man 
 prowling around," added Edgerly, "but they don't seem to 
 belong to the real push, any more than we do. On the whole, 
 it rather booms my self-respect to find out what a fine breed 
 of chaps are my fellow-citizens." 
 
 Suddenly a shout rose around the stage, in the middle of 
 one of the longer sides of the building. It spread in waves 
 till it seemed to fill floor and balconies. Graham had been 
 introduced. The reception settled all doubts as to the lean- 
 ings of the crowd. It was hard to find a man who was not 
 joining with the full power of his lungs, and holding his hat 
 at arm's length above his head, wriggling to swing it in spite 
 of the crush of his neighbore. Allowing for the contagion 
 of mob impulses, it was plain enough that the reception was 
 a fair index of the prevailing sentiment, and that it was due 
 to sympathy with the movement which Graham represented. 
 
 If the speaker had faced that multitude alone, his physique 
 might not at once have caused remark. The fifty men on the 
 platform were nearly all above medium stature ; and the chair- 
 man of the meeting had a figure that would have been nota- 
 ble in any ordinary company; but as they rose to lead the 
 ovation one might have suspected that they had been selected 
 for the purpose of making Graham look heroic by contrast. 
 
 Although Graham was tall, he was not a giant, and he was 
 
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 so well proportioned that his height was conspicuous only by 
 .<vu'h comparison. His presence had the pervasive quality 
 which at once opens communication with every man in an 
 audience. Before the cheering had begun to subside, nearly 
 everA' one was in the peculiar emotional st<ite which a few 
 men have the power to produce in a crowd. Each felt as 
 though he had a special understanding with the speaker. 
 
 The sheer absence of affectation in Graham's manner, as he 
 bowed his acknowledgments, with a look of almost boyish 
 pleasure, disarmed even the cold criticism of Lyon and 
 Edgerly. The grey Tweed suit, with neglige shirt open sailor 
 fashion at the throat, would have been an obvious makeup in 
 the case of many men, but the costume helped to strengthen 
 the credentials of Graham's genuineness. The careless mass 
 of wavy brown hair was in frank secession from custom ; but 
 the lawlessness kept so well within the limits of reasonable 
 independence that it had none of the marks of advertising. 
 There was strength without coarseness in everj' feature of 
 the face; and the olive skin, weather-bronzed but not hard- 
 ened, seemed peculiarly pliant to generous emotions. 
 
 "It's a handsome brute all right," growled Lyon in an un- 
 dertone. "A sure enough ribbon-winner in the stock show." 
 
 "Too athletic for an artist," murmured Edgerly, "and too 
 esthetic for an athlete. If he lives fifty yea.re longer, and lets 
 his beard grow, he'll be an easy ringer for Jove." 
 
 Graham's instinct seemed to designate the moment when 
 a gesture could bring silence. In place of the commotion 
 that had reduced the previous platform proceedings to pan- 
 tomime, and in transition from the paroxysm of welcome to 
 the new leader, there came a few seconds of quiet so expectant 
 that it was almost ominous. 
 
 Even to those nearest the platfonn, the first words did not 
 seem to be spoken in a loud tone, nor with noticeable effort, 
 but they reached every person in the hall. Graham had the 
 oratorical temperament, with the physical equipment to make 
 it effective. 
 
 "This celebration means that the soul of Abe Lincoln is 
 marching on ; we are here to ratify the vow that 'government 
 of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish 
 from the earth.' " 
 
 There seemed to be nothing forced about the outburst of 
 applause that greeted the familiar woi-ds. The psychology 
 
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 and logic of the situation were : — The man who can manage 
 this multitude must be a power: Whether we see it or not, 
 whatever such a man says must ha,ve a meaning. If we kept 
 still, it would look as though we didn't understand him, or 
 didn't go with him : Therefore we must back vip every word 
 he says. 
 
 "New times, new tasks! It has been moi-e than a genera- 
 tion since the people of this country asserted themselves. The 
 call is sounding now for a new exertion of the people's 
 power!" 
 
 Under cover of the cheers, Edgerly commented to Lyon, 
 "Whether he's going to say anything or not, you can't help 
 liking the beggar." 
 
 "He has the dangerous gift of making you feel like a sneak 
 thief if you don't intend to agree with him." Lyon was more 
 than half afraid he would agree with him, but he hoped he 
 would not be called upon to part with any of his choicest 
 idols. 
 
 "The earth is the people's and the fulness thereof!" 
 
 The sentiment struck a sympathetic chord, and there could 
 hardly have been more force and volume in the response if 
 it had greeted notice of an immediate cash dividend on the 
 equity. 
 
 "The next great task for the people is to make it impossible 
 for too few men to control too much of the earth !" 
 
 This time the agreement was equally evident, but less dem- 
 onstrative. The problem factor that haunted the proposition 
 dampened extravagant enthusiasm. 
 
 "Prescription for a revolution;" stage-whispered Edgerly, 
 heavy-villainously. "One truism, before taken, to be well 
 .shaken." 
 
 "I'm not sure that it's so far out of the way," soliloquized 
 Lyon. "A derelict truism is a mighty serious menace to navi- 
 gation." 
 
 "With all its resources," continued Graham, "the world 
 would be a wilderness without human labor. 
 
 "All the human labor that is concerned in turning the 
 wilderness to human use is entitled to pro rata influence in 
 controlling the results I" 
 
 The roar of approbation that greeted this sentiment was 
 more confident than any of its predecessors. Every one rec- 
 ognized the key note of the labor movement. As usual, the 
 
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 slightly varied statement affected those already convinced as 
 a conquest for their faith instead of a mere reassertion. 
 
 "The world is a castle, provisioned for the longest siege it 
 will ever have to endure. The officers have got control of 
 the supplies, and are turning them into dollars for them- 
 selves, instead of holding them subject to the needs of the 
 garrison." 
 
 Lame as it was, the figure caught the imagination of the 
 hearers. The jeers with which they greeted it showed 
 that their attitude toward the situation was more contemptu- 
 ous than bitter. Graham felt their mood and humored it by 
 adding: — 
 
 "It doesn't help matters much for the rank and file, to 
 know that the officers are mostly good fellows, and religiously 
 believe that the world is better off with more dollars pouring 
 into their pockets than with more goods going to the use of 
 the garrison." 
 
 "If the garrison were disposed to be ugly," muttered Lyon, 
 "that would be a nasty report to circulate. The safety valve 
 for that kind of over-pressure, however, is our American 
 fiction that we're only temporarily in the rank and file, and 
 in a day or two our turn will come to be officers." 
 
 For ten minutes more Graham fortified his standing with 
 his public by similar variations of familiar notions. Then 
 came the real test of his persuasive power, as he tried to give 
 the crowd working use of an idea slightly beyond their or- 
 dinary range of reasoning. 
 
 "Every democracy is a union of people working a certain 
 plot of ground on shares. 
 
 "Our nation is simply a big ranch started on the cooper- 
 ative principle, and branching out into diversified industries 
 whenever they are demanded by the needs of the ranchers. 
 
 "The ground plan of a democracy i.s that all shares in the 
 profits of the cooperation shall be paid for in work, and that 
 no one shall have any rights that he does not earn. 
 
 "Any ranchers that are content to stand by and see that 
 ground plan perverted, are not democrats but degenerates I" 
 
 Perhaps the words alone would not have made a strong im- 
 pression, but carried by Graham's personality they struck an 
 electric spark. It is not easy to tell when a thought is mak- 
 ing its way through a mass of people. Mere transfer of nerv- 
 ous stimulus is often mistaken for mental action. Graham 
 
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 was not sure that the shouting multitude before him actually 
 knew what he meant, but they were in a receptive temper, 
 and he believed he could succeed in lodging his idea. 
 
 "Let me sketch a picture. I will use neither the darkest nor 
 the brightest colors, but the lines will be drawn from real life. 
 
 "On that side are a brother and a sister. They were born in 
 a good home. Father and mother were industrious, virtuous 
 and happy. They did their best to give their children a start 
 in the world. They guarded their health, and fed them with 
 wholesome food and sent them to school, and taught them to 
 love fairness and fidelity. But these parents had to work 
 hard, and as soon as the children were of legal age it was 
 necessary for them to begin earning their own support. The 
 boy went into a trade. The girl began at the bottom in a big 
 store. They were good workers. They were always worth 
 more than they received. But to the end of their lives they 
 never had a right to the next day's work. Their employers 
 could discharge them if they pleased, and after they had 
 used up the little savings that they could lay by from their 
 meagre pay they would have only the right to take their 
 chances between employers and other competitors for the 
 same jobs. 
 
 "On this side of the picture are another brother and sister. 
 Before they were born their father had come into control of 
 enormous wealth. From babyhood they were watched and 
 served and amused and petted by relays of physicians, and 
 nurses, and governesses and flunkeys. They were supplied 
 with all the luxuries that money could buy. They were 
 housed in private palaces, and had private parks for their 
 playgrounds, and were carried in private cars, and entertained 
 on private yachts, and even favored by private legislation. 
 When they came of age they had never known a thought of 
 any one's comfort hut their own, and they had no intention 
 of expending effort except in catering to themselves. Yet, in 
 the same democracy, founded on the law of one and the same 
 justice for all, this useless and effortless brother and sister 
 are guaranteed life-long privilege. They have the vested 
 right of wasting on themselves every year as much as a thou- 
 sand brothers and sisters of the other type, working with all 
 their might, can ever earn as their annual wage. 
 
 "This double picture is a snap-shot of the whole labor 
 problem. 
 
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 "Every thing that capital and labor are fighting about turns 
 on the decision of one question. 
 
 "Capitalism asserts that these do-nothing spenders are 
 right. Democracy declares that these do-nothing spenders 
 are wrong. 
 
 "The conflict is eternal until we remove the contradiction I 
 
 "Organized labor is the attorney of Democracy bringing 
 action for adjudication of the question before the moral judg- 
 ment of the world !" 
 
 So far as the immediate assembly was concerned, Graham 
 felt that he had accomplished his purpose. He had stated 
 the issue in a form so simple that he did not see how it could 
 be made plainer. He had presented it as a conflict not of 
 jealousy but of justice. Whether or not his hearers appre- 
 ciated the difference, they showed that they were with him 
 for practical purposes, and he felt his confidence increasing 
 that the course of the campaign could be made to follow the 
 general lines of his plan. 
 
 Graham did not count much on mass meetings as means 
 of popular instruction. He said they were not the most eco- 
 nomical way of getting knowledge into people's heads, but 
 they were useful for putting people on better terms with ideas 
 already collec-ted. He did not think the total impression of 
 the meeting on the crowd itself would be strengthened by 
 anything he might say further. To set the movement right, 
 however, before the larger public which would be reached 
 through the newspapers, he had something to add. 
 
 "The campaign that we opened two weeks ago is along 
 entirely new lines. We have reversed the usual order. We 
 are not now fighting over spoils. We are fighting to change 
 conditions that raise all the questions of spoils. 
 
 "Both laboring men and capitalists have tried to prove that 
 we should fail because we were not fighting for anything tan- 
 gible, but merely for a theory. 
 
 "The shortest distance to a given point is a theory, if it is 
 only the right theory ! 
 
 "Organized labor has cheated itself too long by trying to 
 reach its aims without settling its theory. 
 
 "The present campaign is a labor-saving experiment. 
 
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 "After we have fought one or two fundamental questions 
 of theory to a finish, we can apply the results at our leisure. 
 
 "I said a moment ago that all labor problems run back to 
 one question. I want to explain that a little further. 
 
 "Business is the reign of capital. Democracy is the reign 
 of people. 
 
 "Underneath all the details of the labor problem is this 
 radical issue : On the one hand, Capitalism decrees that cap- 
 ital shall fix the destinies of people; on the other hand De- 
 mocracy demands that people shall fix the destinies of capital. 
 
 "Between these two principles the conflict is as irrepressible 
 in modern society as war between the principles of state sov- 
 ereignty and nationality was in American history. 
 
 "There never can be peace between these two principles 
 till one has surrendered to the constitutional supremacy of 
 the other. 
 
 "In the clash of arms, neither fighters nor observers may 
 always be able to see the whole meaning of every minor move- 
 ment. If we ever lose our bearings in this campaign, we 
 shall find them again by going back to first principles. Or- 
 ganized labor has enlisted for the war, and so long as the war 
 holds on, and whatever its shifting fortunes may be, our ob- 
 ject, first, last and all the time, is to suppress the sovereignty 
 of capital, and to establish the sovereignty of people !" 
 
 The unfailing encouragement that came from the crowd 
 made Graham feel guilty for questioning either its interest 
 or its capacity. After illustrating the last point in ways that 
 put it into everyday pictures, and restated it in familiar con- 
 crete terms, he passed to the last point that he intended to 
 present. 
 
 "What I have said is a final answer to the charge that we 
 don't know what we are fighting for. We know what we are 
 after, as clearly as the United States government did when it 
 warned the Spaniards out of Cuba. The last point I have to 
 make today is that our plan of campaign is just as definite 
 as the purpose which we mean to win. 
 
 "Modern business is a vast system of taxation, without rep- 
 resentation. The hard working brother and sister labor and 
 pay tribute to the do-nothing brother and sister, and have no 
 
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 chance to get a hearing for their side of the argument that 
 the arrangement is unequal. 
 
 "The Avery Company directors are held within certain 
 limits by the possible competition of other corporations. 
 Within those limits they have the power every year to dis- 
 pose of profits that run into the millions. They can make 
 presents of bigger salaries to themselves as officers, or bigger 
 dividends to themselves as stockholders, or future bonuses to 
 themselves and fellow stockholders, in the form of undivided 
 surplus. Labor was a partner in making those profits. Our 
 campaign will not end till labor has a proportional partner- 
 ship in distributing the profits I 
 
 "Our fight is not with selected persons, nor with a particular 
 corporation, hut with, a system I 
 
 "We are not contending for any petty changes of policy ; 
 but for destruction of the system which damns its best policies 
 by making them the dictates of despotism instead of the deci- 
 sions of Democracy. 
 
 "Capitalism make? a farce of Democracy! 
 
 "Capitalism is disfranchisement of the hardest working 
 partner in the business ! 
 
 "Capitalism makes dollars domineer over men 1 
 
 "Democracy demands that men shall be masters over dol- 
 lars! 
 
 "Our fight is for recognition of the principle that all the 
 different kinds of men who share in producing the dollars, 
 shall share in the same proportion in disposing of the dollars! 
 
 "When we attacked the Avery Company, we merely opened 
 fire on the most exposed outpost of Capitalism I 
 
 "Whatever happens at this point, we shall fight it out on 
 this line till labor comes to its own as a recognized part of 
 every business. If it turns out to be a hundred years' war, 
 or a thousand years' war, there can never be permanent peace 
 with Capitalism, till labor has its proper voice in the man- 
 agement of every business, and in enacting the laws that gov- 
 ern all business ! 
 
 "In a word then, the aim of organized labor is the triumph 
 of Democracy over Capitalism. The system by which we shall 
 fight to suppress the tyranny of Capitalism will be removal 
 of the resiricted representation dictated by Capitalism, and 
 substitution of proportional suffrage of all the interests con- 
 cerned ! 
 
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 "We refuse to cooperate any longer on terms that give the 
 lion's share of benefit to the men whose hardest work is water- 
 ing the kind of stock they breed in Wall Street I 
 
 "The world belongs to the workers! We are fighting for 
 the Democracy of merit! He shall rank highest among us 
 who does the best work!" 
 
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 IX 
 
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 'But what's the use? The only difference between me and 
 the rest of the Company is that they don't believe a word 
 of these things, while I subscribe to them in the abstract 
 but don't believe they are available." 
 
 IT was an item of Halleck's fixed program to spend a part of 
 Sunday afternoon with working men. If he was not at 
 regularly appointed meetings, he would drop in at one of the 
 headquarters, where large numbers were sure to be found ; or 
 he would accomplish the same thing by a couple of hours with 
 the patrons of his "Casino." 
 
 It would have been neither necessary nor easy for Halleck 
 to disguise himself. With the exception of one or two priests, 
 no clergyman in Chicago was intimate with so many promi- 
 nent labor leaders, and probably there was no man in the city, 
 except some of their own representatives, who would have 
 been recognized in so many labor groups. 
 
 Halleck went to the Armory meeting, not to get acquainted 
 with Graham's ideas, but to observe their effect upon the 
 crowd. Halleck and Graham had gone over the ground so 
 often together that they thoroughly understood each other. 
 Probably neither was aware how much he had been influ- 
 enced by the other. Of the two, Halleck represented 
 thought, and Graham action. So far as mere abstract ideas 
 went, they did not differ very much. The antithesis between 
 them was that between the philosopher and the man of affairs. 
 Compared with most men of his class, Halleck was precipi- 
 tate. Contrasted with men of Graham's type, he was reac- 
 tionary. In principle, the difference was that the one put the 
 virtue of thoughts foremost, the other the efficacy of deeds. 
 
 If Halleck could have had his way, social progress would 
 have been through stages of mental capillary attraction. New 
 thoughts would have been taken up by new strata of people, 
 and society would have assimilated new forces, and accom- 
 plished evolutionary transformations, without shock or catas- 
 trophe. 
 
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 Grahiiiu would have been at a loss for particulars, if he had 
 been called upon to give an account of any study he had ever 
 made of possible alternatives. He had never approached the 
 subject by a philosopher's method. He had a practical man's 
 conviction, however, that if an interest isn't getting what it 
 wants the only way i.'^ to go after it. He had no faith in the 
 policy of correcting abuses by submission of the abused. He 
 would not, if he knew it, do evil that good might come, but 
 he believed that suffering a wrong was a gi'eater evil than 
 fighting it. 
 
 In ,<trict jusiice to Halleck, the contrast should be quali- 
 fied. The two men differed not so much in policy, or in fun- 
 damental belief, as in choice of fulcrum for their effort. They 
 would hardly be found opposing each other if a sufficiently 
 long view were taken of final aims. Under a given provoca- 
 tion, however, Halleck would persist in trusting to reason 
 long after Graham had decided that nothing remained but 
 resort to force. 
 
 Halleck had no doubt that John Graham was much nearer 
 than David Lyon to a correct vision of the final order of the 
 world. He could not understand how an intelligent person 
 could disagree essentially \\nth Graham about what should be 
 and must be in the course of time. Yet he could easily ex- 
 plain Mr. Lyon's obstinacy in the present instance. A town 
 meeting government would so surely and so soon wreck the 
 Avery Company, that it was perfectly natural to give short 
 shrift to any proposition which looked in that direction. At 
 the same time, Mr. Lyon's inability to question the finality of 
 present social arrangements seemed to Halleck less excusable 
 than Graham's incontinent idealism. 
 
 Halleck's problem was to lay off a middle ground that 
 might be occupied as a ba.«is of compromise between the pol- 
 icy of perpetuating conditions and the policy of forcing pre- 
 mature application of theories. 
 
 At present Graham wa* telling the truth in this sense: — 
 Thi.s i.« the way the people of the world will work together 
 when they have become adapted to working together in this 
 way! At the same time, David Lyon was telling only a half 
 truth, even if it was a less impotent platitude in form, when 
 he insisted that Graham was inflating his balloon with non- 
 sense, because people are not ready to work together in that 
 way now. 
 
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 The directions were plain enough in which the two parties 
 must move, if they were ever to meet on common ground. 
 The Company must give some recognition to the principle 
 that business should not be autocracy but partnership. Labor 
 must concede that transition from the present system to more 
 democratic methods must be by shorter steps than the ulti- 
 matum to the Company demanded. 
 
 Halleck had not expected Graham to say anything which 
 they had not fully discussed more than once, but he had 
 hoped that something might occur to furnish a clue to a prac- 
 tical suggestion. He had been disappointed. He saw no 
 immediate prospect of conciliation. There was no reason to 
 believe that either party would at present modify its views. 
 
 Kissinger had been a hearer of another sort. He had come 
 early, and had stationed himself almost' within touch of the 
 platform. He was convinced in advance of much that Gra- 
 ham would say, and of more that he might not say. His 
 problem was, can it be made real? Is there a transformation 
 of energy by which unworkable truth may be substituted for 
 workable error? 
 
 Neither intellect nor will was decisive in Kissinger, but 
 each was a menial to his sentiments. The strike had rudely 
 awakened him to his situation. He had never been compelled 
 before to recognize the ugly facts. For a week the truth had 
 been staring him in the face that the section of life which 
 interested him most was practically a beggar's auction. 
 Neither his thoughts nor his actions could bid anything 
 which would tend to secure the things that his sympathies 
 desired. 
 
 If actuality may be measured by degrees of assent and dis- 
 sent, the Utopias which Kissinger knew by heart were more 
 real to him than the business system in which he earned his 
 living. They enlisted his affection, while business merely com- 
 manded his obedience. But the better societies, in which his 
 imagination sought refuge, seemed to him to be separated 
 from the literal world by a chasm as impassable as the spaces 
 between the planets. 
 
 From the literature of social aspiration Kissinger had ab- 
 sorbed the poetry of prophecy without the logic. The brighter 
 the visions the more the pity, as he brooded over them, that 
 there was no means of merging them with our social system. 
 
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 Graham's contrast between people and capital as the stand- 
 ard of social value, and his distinction between autocracy 
 and democracy as principles of business management, af- 
 fected Kissinger as original discoveries. They seemed to 
 point out a practical path from the unreal actual world to the 
 impossible real world. At the same time they gave him such 
 a sense of vindication and of power as Adams and Leverrier 
 may be supposed to have felt, after probing the heavens at the 
 point they designated had resulted in the discovery of 
 Neptune. 
 
 But more important still for Kissinger, although he was 
 not yet aware of it, was the effect of Graham's personal 
 equation. If the logic that Graham used had come to Kissin- 
 ger's attention in some other way, he might simply have 
 woven it into the tissue of his dreams, without suspicion that 
 it closed the circuit of reality. The fateful fact was that 
 Graham seemed to be a working demonstration of the validity 
 of his reasoning. He incarnated the principles. He was 
 actually moving on the world with the force of the new ideas, 
 and the world's resistance proved the energy of the impact. 
 Graham's role was not impotent yearning. It was grappling 
 the world with a kind of strength able to cope with its own 
 power. For Kis-singer, Graham was the Word made flesh. 
 
 Instead of starting directly towards home, Lyon and 
 Edgerly turned north in State Street for a stroll through a 
 section of the town which they seldom visited. They had 
 no special interest in the surroundings, but the very dreari- 
 nes8 was a magnet, and they wanted to avoid a route in which 
 they might meet acquaintances. 
 
 They had been jostled apart by the swaying of the crowd 
 during Graham's address. Each had indulged his own re- 
 flec-tions, and at first, after reaching the open air, neither 
 seemed inclined to talk. When they had walked far enough 
 to have a comfortable area of sidewalk to themselves, Edgerly 
 began, more in the manner of soliloquizing than of speaking 
 to Lyon : — 
 
 "It had two chief effects on me. In the first place, I never 
 get over my wonder at the homeopathic quantity of thought 
 that can be made to go with a crowd ; and then, if there is any 
 nourishment in that sort of baby food, what keeps all the 
 world from building up on it at once?" 
 
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 Lyon did not reply for a moment. There was nothing to 
 show that he had heard Edgerly. He seemed to be turning 
 over thoughts of his own. When he spoke, it was in such an 
 absent tone that Edgerly suspected he had dismissed the 
 subject of the meeting altogether, and was thinking about 
 something else. 
 
 "You don't realize the apartness of the academic world, 
 Ernest. You jobbers of ideas axe sorting over the whole stock 
 a season before it gets to the retailers. Of course everything 
 you see in the show windows the day of the Spring openings 
 looks out of date." 
 
 "If you'd make it bargain counter remnants," laughed 
 Edgerly, "I might be willing to stand corrected." 
 
 "I couldn't honestly say it seemed to me like shopworn 
 goods," objected Lyon. 
 
 "Of course I don't look for announcement of the latest 
 scientific discoveries in a stump speech," explained Edgerly, 
 "but it seems like a hideous waste of opportunity to have the 
 ear of so many people, and send them away with two or three 
 primary school proverbs that are as plain to everybody as the 
 nose on your face." 
 
 "You learned folks flatter yourselves that your abstractions 
 furnish the go-round for the world." Lyon's indifference 
 had changed to animation. "The fact of the business is, 
 primajy school proverbs are the real pillars of civilization. 
 Just think why we spend millions every year on our public 
 schools. It isn't to manufacture advanced thinkers. It's 
 mostly to convince the latest accessions to the world's igno- 
 rance that 'three from two you cannot take.' When they 
 have had so much beaten into their heads, the majority of 
 the newcomers have to leave school and hustle for a living. 
 If they ever learn anything more, that their job doesn't teach, 
 they have to catch it on the fly." 
 
 AH the more reason why they should not be put off with 
 cheap talk when they line up for a lesson." 
 
 "No matter who you are," insisted Lyon, "you have to pull 
 off a certain amount of sleight-of-hand to make a crowd 
 listen. That ought not to count against him." 
 
 "I'm not condemning what he said, but simply regretting 
 what he didn't say." In judging Graham by an impossible 
 standard, Edgerly was at least partially sincere. He merely 
 assumed his own personal demands as a measure for the pub- 
 
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 lie. He said what he would have stood by if his own kind 
 had composed Graham's audience. While he was thus, to a 
 certain extent, betraying his ignorance of the contrast be- 
 tween the mental needs of the many and those of his own 
 class, he was intentionally overdoing the matter, for the salce 
 of drawing Lyon out. The brothers-in-law had debated social 
 questions enough to understand each other's prejudices. 
 Edgerly's sympathies were with Graham, but he Avas experi- 
 menting to see whether a little opposition would bring Lyon 
 to the rescue. The plan worked better than he expected ; but 
 it was less because Lyon was caught by the trick, than be- 
 cause he had been trying to think how he would conduct the 
 case, if he had accepted a retainer from Graham. 
 
 "Suppose you had listened for Father, Ernest, not for your- 
 self ; would it have seemed so very commonplace?" 
 
 "Do you mean to say that he hasn't heard every one of 
 those things a thousand times over?" 
 
 "That doesn't tell the story. We've all heard a thousand 
 things a thousand times over, that we have no idea of putting 
 into practice, except in a Pickwickian sense. AVe should have 
 had the New Testament under life sentence to solitary con- 
 finement long ago, if it had got freedom enough to assert itself 
 literally. There's no disturbance in the folk-lore that God 
 is the Father of us all, so long as the rest of the legend runs 
 that God hands out all the good and evil of our lot, just as 
 they come. There's nothing to do but submit. It's an en- 
 tirely different affair if we read between the lines that not 
 the justice of God but the cussedness of man gives some of 
 the children the apple, and the rest the core. With that 
 version before the public, to remind ourselves that we are all 
 one family spells revolution. The startling thing about these 
 platitudes of Graham is that he means them. They are not 
 mythology. They are items that he proposes to figure into 
 future Avery Company contracts. When they are pious 
 figures of .sjieech they are bread pills. As straight business 
 propositions they are bombshells. It remains to be seen 
 whether they have force enough to break into the system." 
 
 Edgerly could not afford to go beyond objection to Gra- 
 ham's choice of weapons. Criticism of the purpose for which 
 he ased them would be a confession that he was playing a 
 part. To hold Lyon as long as possible on hi.s present course, 
 Edgerly merely varied the form of his previous comment: — 
 
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 "I wish I could see any prospect that toy-pistol practice would 
 develop the necessary penetration." 
 
 "Well," responded Lyon sharply, "he hinted at two or 
 three kinds of attack that we could'stop only by brute force. 
 If either of them ever got a footing inside our lines it would 
 mean radical reorganization of business. 
 
 "For instance," continued Lyon, "take his illustration of 
 the brothers and sisters. The idea that men are equal in 
 earning powers is too silly to talk about, but he didn't make 
 any such claim. On the other hand, I don't believe there is 
 one business rnan in a thousand who wouldn't endorse the 
 abstract proposition that people ought to have only what they 
 earn. We tumble over ourselves when we try to justify 
 everj^body's holdings so long as they are legal. If we couldn't 
 run a steel plant without unloading on our customers a per 
 cent of defective rails equal to the ratio of good for nothing 
 spenders that our beautiful system has produced in the last 
 generation, we should say we were dubs at the business. In- 
 stead of insisting that defective rails have as good claim to 
 acceptance as perfect ones, we should admit that we had still 
 something to learn about processes, and we should give our 
 experts no peace till they had told us how to improve our 
 output. We know perfectly well that thousands of people are 
 flourishing without earning anything at all, and other thou- 
 sands earn various fractions of what they get. Of course 
 that means so much taken indirectly from the earnings of 
 other people. We refuse to admit it, because we can't see 
 how far the admission might carry us. Any one who has his 
 brains with him must sooner or later discover that such a 
 position is a logical and moral stultification. We say it is 
 business to learn how to keep flaws out of steel rails, but it 
 is not business to learn how to keep flaws out of the justice 
 due to the men that make the rails! It may be a nursery 
 amusement to turn the light on such an absurdity, but it will 
 be revolution number one when business gets honest enough 
 to acknowledge the contradiction." 
 
 Edgerly was ready to hold his breath for fear of stumbling 
 into an interruption. His innocent concession, "I see that, 
 of course," was offered less as a minor retraction than as a 
 query about the rest of the argument. 
 
 "Then," Lyon went on, "it would be revolution number 
 two if we should take literally the proposition that business 
 
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 is essentially partnership. Business today recognizes the 
 partnership element only at the stock end. In its ownership 
 and operation it is a few men making plans and using a great 
 many more men as tools. When we get down to the real 
 facts, we find that these men who rate as tools of the trade 
 have a lai-ger stake in the business than most of the men who 
 own the stock. For the operatives the business is life. For 
 the stockholders the business is only an incident of life. Yet 
 the stockholders or the financiers behind them have the long 
 end of the rights, while the workers have chiefly duties. It 
 turns out that business is occupying the castle in the air today, 
 while theorists like Graham are getting their feet planted on 
 the ground. There is neither rhyme nor reason in a few 
 people taking possession of the world's opportunities, and is- 
 suing notice to the great majority, 'You may stay on the earth 
 just as long as you can make yourselves useful to us by obey- 
 ing our orders.' Exploiting the opportunities of the world is 
 a cooperative process. The scale of title to the results of the 
 process is bound to be wrong, if it is calculated on the idea 
 that some of the people engaged in the process have proprie- 
 tary rights in the process while others have not. If we were 
 not doing business imder an optical illusion, we should see 
 that ownership of opportunity in the world is usurpation, 
 unless it is universally distributed. Every man born is an 
 authentic copy of nature's passport to join in the processes of 
 life, and to enjoy all the rewards and emoluments in the ratio 
 of his own contribution to the common enterprise. The only 
 just limit is the right of every body else to share on the same 
 basis." 
 
 Edgerly was too much astonished to make any further at- 
 tempt at concealment. He drew away to the edge of the side- 
 walk, eyeing Lyon as though he had sudden suspicions of 
 mistaken identity. "Give me time to collect myself, Logan," 
 he stammered. "Are you stringing me, or is this the latest 
 variation of 'Saul also?' I can imagine Wall Street pulling 
 for free silver, and the Steel Trust lobbying for repeal of the 
 tariff, but there must he a mental aberration somewhere when 
 I .seem to hear you outgrahaming Graham." 
 
 "My death of strangulation will be on your conscience," 
 warned Lyon melodramatically, "if you stop me again before 
 I have had my say. There remains revolution number three. 
 Whether we had one and two in their proper order, or started 
 
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 with three, would make no difference in the end. Either 
 would bring the other two as necessary riders." 
 
 Lyon hesitated a moment, with the proviso that he had not 
 scouted the ground quite as far ahead in this case as in the 
 others. Then, as though he had found his reckoning, he pur- 
 sued the argument : — 
 
 "The fact is, since we are all men together, and not some 
 men and some things, I can see no maintainable reason why 
 putting ourselves into the making of a business doesn't 
 create, for all of us alike, a right of suffrage in the manage- 
 ment of the business." 
 
 "Do you mean," broke in Edgerly, in spite of the warning, 
 "that John Smith's work in the power house entitles him to 
 an equal voice with your father in the Company's affairs?" 
 
 "I certainly do not mean that John Smith's work in the 
 power house entitles him to equal voice with the President of 
 the Company, and more than that, I know that God Almighty 
 couldn't make their voices equal, unless he reprocessed both. 
 What I mean is that manhood suffrage, for all it is worth, 
 belongs to John Smith of the power house, in his relation to 
 the Company, by the same right, and in the same sense in 
 which it belongs to him in the state." 
 
 Lyon seemed to be casting about for a clearer way of ex- 
 pressing his thought. His next approach was indirect. 
 
 "Our ideas of democratic government are four-fifths fiction 
 anyhow. 'That Russian Jew in the doorway has probably 
 got his naturalization papers, and unless he forfeits his rights 
 by crime no one can expatriate him. He is an American 
 citizen as much as we are, and the whole power of government 
 may be invoked to keep any one from depriving him of his 
 rights under the law. That's one side of it. Now what share 
 has he in the government? Why, we say he has the same 
 share that I have, and it is represented by one vote apiece. 
 That's where our hallucination begins, and where it fondly 
 lingers. Instead of being the crowning glory of citizenship, 
 that vote represents an irreducible minimum of political in- 
 fluence, which grades up to the boss rule or the popular idola- 
 try by which one man sways the nation. The ballot is merely 
 a 'clumsy device for registering the public opinion which is 
 formed by other means. Freedom to exert oneself com- 
 pletely in shaping opinion is the substantial democratic asset. 
 A hundred members of a woman's club of the right sort may 
 
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 do more to decide the next election than a hundred thousand 
 masculine nonentities with votes in their hands. Our Rus- 
 sian friend back there may cancel my vote, but he can't out- 
 weigh my influence till he gets a thousand means of making 
 himself felt that I can use and he can't. I'm not jealous of 
 him, because the interests that I represent are able to form 
 combinations enough to maintain a fair equilibrium with the 
 interests that get his support." 
 
 After considering a moment, Lyon drew his conclusion. 
 "That comes pretty near furnishing a model for industrial 
 equity. John Smith of the power house can never weigh as 
 much in the business as any one of a thousand other men all 
 the way along up the line, not to speak of those at the top ; 
 but his share in the work gives him a perfectly good claim to 
 make his suffrage felt precisely one John Smith's worth in 
 the Company; and perhaps a thousand John Smiths ought 
 occasionally to combine and defeat the head of the concern. 
 A few trifling questions in arithmetic will have to be worked 
 out, to be sure, before the claims are adjusted; but we shall 
 simply be hanging on to a semi-barbarous makeshift, instead 
 of arriving at an enlightened organization, so long as a few 
 dozen of us are the Company, and the thousands mere casual 
 hirelings." 
 
 They had wandered west, almost to the river, then north, 
 and were now sauntering east on Monroe Street. As they 
 reached the corner of La Salle, the deserted brokers' high- 
 way, in the dusk of the Sunday evening, was as gruesome as 
 a prison corridor. Edgerly stopped, and with a sort of 
 crossing-policeman's gesture halted Lyon. The place had 
 prompted a ghoulish thought. "What's to hinder me from 
 turning an honest dollar, Logan, by dropping into one of the 
 newspaper offices and selling them your interview? I reckon 
 'twould be a scoop that would crowd Graham's stuff out of 
 the morning edition." 
 
 The conceit tickled Lyon's fancy too, for a moment. 
 "Wouldn't it scorch the sheets !" he chuckled. Then the asso- 
 ciations of the region seemed to recall him to reality. "But 
 what's the use?" he muttered, with a long breath that might 
 have meant either regret or resolution, ""rhe only difference 
 between me and the rest of the Company is that they don't 
 believe a word of these things, while I subscribe to them in 
 the abstract but don't believe they are available. It comes 
 
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 to one and the same thing at last. Graham gets it harder 
 from me tomorrow morning than from any one else in the 
 bunch." 
 
 "If they are true," shifted Edgerly, "how do you know they 
 are not available?" 
 
 "Simply because the ordinary man's expectation of com- 
 bining knowledge with a saving sense of proportion isn't an 
 insurable risk. The same truth makes one man a good citi- 
 zen and another a dangerous crank. We can't admit these 
 things within the range of working influence, because there 
 is no guarantee that they wouldn't be carried to the extreme 
 of upsetting everything. I hadn't thought of it till this 
 moment, but it just occurs to me that I might as well schedule 
 myself as incipient revolution number four. You can't make 
 yourself surer of a practical man's contempt than by telling 
 him he has obligations to truths not yet available. I find I'm 
 drifting into the class of suspects who would have it the most 
 important business of business to make truths available, in- 
 stead of ruling them out of consideration till brought to terms 
 by outside force." 
 
 They called a taxi at the Palmer House, and arrived at 
 David Lyon's just in time to calm the first stages of panic. 
 The family party had nearly persuaded itself that the ab- 
 sentees were victims of violence. 
 
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 X 
 THE MORALIST 
 
 "The key to the social struggle in its present stage is the 
 question : — Shall the social aim be to use men for the sake 
 of capital, or to use capital for the sake of men?" 
 
 SOCIALLY the Patriarchs' Club still ranked first among 
 the commercial organizations of Chicago. There had 
 been a time when no local enterprise of large scope was sure 
 of success until it had received the stamp of the Club's ap- 
 proval. During this period, little of the work that made Chi- 
 cago the metropolis of the Middle West was finished without 
 the active aid of the Club, or some of its members. If its 
 prestige had declined, it was not because the average char- 
 acter of the Patriarchs had changed, but because growth of the 
 city necessarily distributed leadership over a wider area. 
 
 When the original members were in their usual places at 
 the Club dinners, everything that occurred had the impor- 
 tance of a public event. Whether the Club endorsed opinions 
 expressed by speakers, or merely listened without committing 
 itself, or repudiated the views, the fact was always consid- 
 ered worthy of report and usually of editorial comment. 
 
 If the smile or the frown of the Patriarchs was no longer 
 as decisive as formerly, there was still no equal number of 
 men in the city whose collective opinion of a business propo- 
 sition would carry greater weight. They were the bulwarks 
 of Chicago's most conservative financial traditions. 
 
 The last meeting of the Club for the season was to have 
 been addressed by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor. 
 Illness had compelled him to abandon the trip at Pittsburg, 
 and his regrets had reached the Club Secretary only a few 
 hours before the time of the banquet. Quick work by the 
 executive committee had induced Edgerly to stand in the 
 
 gap. 
 
 It had been thought best not to advise the members of the 
 disappointment, and they were present in nearly full num- 
 bers, each with the guest that the rules allowed. Under any 
 circumstances it would have been a formidable array. While 
 it could not have been truthfully described as the brains of 
 
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 Chicago, nearly every man in the company was in the front 
 ranks of his specialty; and between members and guests all 
 the principal divisions of business and the professions were 
 represented. 
 
 To be perfectly at ease in talking to such a body, one should 
 have a subject so remote from the ordinary interests of the 
 hearers that immunity of prepossession might be assumed. 
 Even then, to rob the ordeal completely of its terrors, time 
 for ample preparation would be indispensable. 
 
 Edgerly could take refuge in neither of these conditions. 
 Indeed, he had partly consented and partly proposed to dis- 
 cuss a subject with respect to which it was safe to reckon every 
 man present as both suspicious and sensitive. It was a sub- 
 ject, too, with which all his dealings had been purely schol- 
 astic. He had an ample supply of raw material for its treat- 
 ment, hut if he had allowed himself more time for reflection 
 he might not have risked the imprudence of trying to work 
 it over, on the spur of the moment, into publishable con- 
 clusions. 
 
 Although Edgerly had never been accused by his univer- 
 sity colleagues of over-weening self-distrust, his first inventory 
 of the social authorities grouped at the tables had dampened 
 his assurance into limp fear that his undertaking was both 
 farcical and imprudent. He could not remember mat he had 
 ever had a more thoroughly miserable time with himself than 
 during the earlier stages of the seemingly interminable 
 process of serving the dinner. 
 
 On the other hand, Edgerly was one of a half dozen men 
 at the University who were adepts at a peculiar art of linguis- 
 tic legerdemain. It was a manipulation of polysyllabic dic- 
 tion, and rapid-fire elocution, that might not be admired, and 
 might even be resented, but it could not be resisted. Its ef- 
 fectiveness in compelling a hearing increased with the gen- 
 eral intelligence and self-importance of the public on which 
 it was practiced. It kept the most blase audience taking 
 notice. It piqued suspicion that, for better or for worse, it was 
 not just what it seemed. The higher the hearers rated them- 
 selves in the scale of sophistication, the more they were bound 
 to watch out not to miss a trick. It was a species of audible 
 puzzle-picture. At one moment it was apparently an en- 
 durance test of verbal and vocal acrobatics. At the next, it 
 had turned the assembly into involuntary clinical material. 
 
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 for measuring capacity to distinguish between opulence of 
 thought and resounding permutations of the vocabulary. 
 Again it was provocative implication that the stylistic pyro- 
 technics were merely incidental excitements, to pique the 
 ennui of the undiscerning ; while the occult thread of esoteric 
 wisdom would manifest itself throughout to those of elect 
 understanding. 
 
 Edgerly was in doubt how much of this section of his 
 equipment it would be safe to unlimber for use upon the 
 present company ; but the sense of having it in reserve offset 
 some of his compunctions, by affording the prospect of a par- 
 tial means of escaping the full penalties of extemporaneous- 
 ness. , 
 
 Yet this was not the whole case. Edgerly had never flat- 
 tered himself that he was cast in an heroic mould ; but when 
 accident thrust on him this opportunity, the decisive factor 
 was the feeling that he would be showing a yellow streak if 
 he did not make the most of it. He frankly believed it was 
 plain rawness in business men to bar his kind from their 
 councils. He cherished no conceit that the world would be 
 better off under an autocracy of theory ; but he was sure that 
 more cross-fertilization between theory and practice would 
 improve both. He had never been guilty of the pedantic ar- 
 rogance which assumes that practical men are an inferior 
 caste. On the contrary, his acquaintance with Chicago bus- 
 iness men had taught him to admire and envy the superiority 
 of certain powers in them which usually remain rudimentary 
 in the scholarly type. At the same time, he had no doubt 
 that the two kinds of people needed each other, and that all 
 the world's work would be done better after they had ar- 
 ranged a more intimate division of labor. 
 
 A precocious approach to this view had determined 
 Edgerly's choice of a career. His father was a prominent 
 New England cotton manufacturer who had hoped that his 
 eon would succeed him in the business. Edgerly had left 
 Yale, however, with the uppermost thought that it did not 
 call for the whole of a man to deal with the problems of 
 things, especially since we had scarcely made a decent be- 
 ginning with the problems of people. The only net gain 
 upon this conclusion that he could credit to the years of his 
 apprenticeship as tutor, was the conviction that he had never 
 yet learned anything worth knowing. Without a distinct 
 
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 notion of what the Germans might do to make his previous 
 abortive studies fruitful, he got the idea that they were nearer 
 than anybody else to the sources of knowledge; and he re- 
 solved to make a pilgrimage to them in quest of a scientific 
 method and program. 
 
 Shortly after their arrival in Berlin, while each was trying 
 to convince himself that he was not desperately homesick, 
 Edgerly and Halleck had met one Sunday morning at the 
 American chapel. Although they had never competed in 
 the same events, they recognized each other as former mem- 
 bers of rival athletic organizations. Under the circumstances 
 this was an immediate bond of union. They soon discovered 
 deeper congenialities, and the upshot was that they became 
 almost inseparable during their whole stay in the city. Al- 
 though the one made theology and the other philosophy his 
 center of operations, they found that their specific interests 
 led close to the same path. With the exception of a semester 
 which Edgerly devoted to experimental psychology with 
 Wundt in Leipsic, there was no time when they were not 
 hearing one or more courses together. If they did not reach 
 identical opinions, common factors in establishing their 
 methods of thinking were the lectures of Pfleiderer, and 
 Weiss, and Paulsen, and Harnack, and Schmoller, and Wag- 
 ner and Simmel. 
 
 The two men left Berlin with the feeling that they had 
 learned to look at the ranges of truth which it would be their 
 business to study, through the best instruments that had been 
 constructed up to date. In some respects they were more 
 oppressed by their own ignorance than when they left Amer- 
 ica, but by the same token they were in less danger of ob- 
 session by other people's presumed knowledge. They had 
 become acquainted with the rules of evidence, and with the 
 state of the testimony at present in hand, and they believed it 
 would be their own fault if they did not give a good account 
 of themselves as independent thinkers. They felt strong in 
 acquaintance not only with their own powers and limitations, 
 but also with the resources of other specialists, and how both 
 to consider their opinions with due reserve and to draw on 
 them for reinforcement. 
 
 There was nothing of the transcendentalist or the ascetic 
 about Edgerly. He was an honest feeder. He kept himself 
 trained as fine as a Fort Sheridan trooper. He could play 
 
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 as lustily as he could work, and he had never let himself go 
 stale by skimping his quota of amusement; but he made no 
 pretense of not taking himself seriously when he was on 
 duty. 
 
 Not in his class room only, but whenever he was called 
 upon for opinions in public or private, Edgerly was governed 
 by modest assurance that he had a mission. He did not im- 
 pose himself as an oracle. He did not whine if the world 
 failed to dance to his piping. He simply compelled himself 
 to be genuine. He put his best into his tale of work, and 
 turned it into the common stock, without wondering that 
 the world seldom took it at his own appraisal. He believed 
 that .every piece of real work is a part of the world's struc- 
 tural material ; but he was cheerfully resigned to the economy 
 which consumes most of the material without awarding in- 
 dividual credits. 
 
 It was in this spirit that Edgerly consented to act as emer- 
 gency man for the Patriarchs. He was certain that he saw 
 some things truer than they did, and that it would promote 
 social progress if they could be convinced of their error. Not 
 that he ever expected anybody to be convinced of any- 
 thing by one argument. But these men were symptoms 
 of social conditions. He would apply a first treatment to 
 the symptoms, and as it was sure to be followed up from time 
 to time by other men, along with treatment that went un- 
 derneath the symptoms, the appropriate effects might ap- 
 pear in their sons' or their sons' sons' generation. The tor- 
 ments that he endured early in the evening were real enough, 
 but it was only half true that he took them as the proper 
 penalty of his presumption. That was his cynical version of 
 the incident. In reality, after recovering from the dispiriting 
 effects of the first impressions, he did not dread his task. He 
 was sinxply tortured by the pains of inhibition while waiting 
 for the work to begin. 
 
 After the intermission of ten minutes following the coffee, 
 the company rearranged itself at the call of the gavel. 
 
 The President was one of the younger members of the Club, 
 and was rather exceptional in his fluency of the sort of speech 
 which makes a successful presiding officer. The circum- 
 stances of the change of program had of course been thor- 
 oughly discussed, and it only remained to make formal an- 
 nouncement of the withdrawal and of the rearrangement, in 
 
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 terms as considerate as possible of the feelings of the substi- 
 tute. The President's tact was equal to the occasion. His 
 expressions of sympathy for the expected speaker, and of re- 
 gret that he was unable to be present, were no more com- 
 plimentary than his references to the courtesy of the gentle- 
 man who had consented to act as alternate. After facetious 
 felicitation of the company upon the superfluity of going out- 
 side of Chicago for enlightenment upon any subject, he con- 
 cluded : — "I have therefore great pleasure in presenting one 
 of our numerous exceptions to the rule that remoteness is 
 necessary to reputation: — Our fellow townsman Professor 
 Edgerly, who will speak on the topic: 'An Academic View of 
 Labor Problems.' " 
 
 Because the President had especially emphasized the in- 
 debtedness of the Club to the speaker for his acceptance of 
 the invitation upon such short notice, his reception was as 
 cordial as though he had been a first choice. In restless re- 
 lief from restraint, Edgerly started at once with a partially 
 chastened sample of his volubility. 
 
 "Mr. President and Gentlemen : — The diplomatic but dep- 
 recatory deliverances of the amiable presiding genius of the 
 evening, reduced to relatively intelligible terms of the ver- 
 nacular, advertise the unterrified local opinion that it would be 
 treason to Chicago to admit that a casual half hour's stroll, in 
 any precinct of the city or its suburbs, would fail to encounter 
 one or more average citizens qualified to assume at a mo- 
 ment's notice, and to adorn indefinitely, the position of a 
 cabinet officer. 
 
 "While subscribing without reservation to the general per- 
 tinency of this equally patriotic and perspicacious sentiment, 
 a decent respect for the opinions of mankind constrains me to 
 present my humble commiserations that Providence has cast 
 your lot in such facile proximity to a population of telephone- 
 order duplicates. 
 
 "Though this is demonstrably not my fault, it is unde- 
 niably your misfortune, and I am painfully conscious of my 
 incompetence to mitigate its severity. Indeed, I have grave 
 fears that my obligations as a faithful friend will require me 
 to accentuate the calamity. 
 
 "At the outset I have encountered evidence that my first 
 well meant endeavors to forestall embarrassment have gone 
 wrong. After the importunity of your representatives had 
 
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 partially overcome my reluctance to function as the active 
 agent of your present discomfiture, my final surrender to their 
 insistence was conditioned upon a single stipulation. It was 
 nominated in the bond that I should be free from every actual 
 or implied restraint upon proclamation of the truth, the whole 
 truth, and nothing but the truth, as the spirit might give me 
 utterance. 
 
 "That this covenant affected your committee as sinister in 
 motive and portentous in prospect is patent in their unusual 
 precaution of excluding the representatives of the press. My 
 first use of the liberty guaranteed under the terms of our 
 agreement must be in protest against the superfluous and re- 
 grettable innovation. If it should be adopted into the perma- 
 nent policy of the Patriarchs' Club, its effects would be mourn- 
 fully deleterious upon the high and civilizing art of after- 
 dinner speaking. Ever foremost among the spurs to achieve- 
 ment in this laudable field of endeavor, is the promise of 
 learning from the morning papers what unsuspected poten- 
 cies of variation, and inversion, not to say of gyroscopic ter- 
 giversation, are latent in the most laboriously lucid periods, 
 when quickened by the magic touch of repertorial and man- 
 agerial amplification ! 
 
 "Let me, however, hasten to relieve your minds, gentle- 
 men, of any apprehension which you may share with your 
 committee, that I come to you with inflammatory intentions. 
 On the contrary, I would if possible warm your hearts with a 
 breath from that atmosphere of serene seclusion, of sterilized 
 segregation, of judicial deliberation, of imperturbable repose, 
 of catholic comprehension and of pacific moderation, which 
 every one who conjures his facts from a perfervid imagina- 
 tion recognizes as the calm perpetual environment of life in 
 the up-to-date university. 
 
 "Proceeding then without dilatory preliminaries directly 
 to the topic of the evening, I have no doubt you have already 
 remarked the nice discretion with which, in marking off the 
 boundaries of my discussion, I have employed the definitive 
 capabilities of the indefinite article. By the phrase "an aca- 
 demic view," instead of "the academic view," the subject is 
 lifted at once from the low plane and petty province of prac- 
 tical politics, to the high altitude and large scope of broad 
 generalization. Indeed, gentlemen, such a phrase as "the 
 academic view" would be not only solecistic in effect, but it 
 
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 would be still more inaccurate in fact. If a conjunction of 
 opinion corresponding to the phrase should ever supervene, 
 it would indicate either concurrent paralysis of academic in- 
 dividuality, or such wholesale conquests of the hitherto un- 
 discoverable that the occupation of universities would hence- 
 forth be gone. At the present moment, no subject under the 
 sun occurs to me, from the nebular hypothesis to denatured 
 spelling, in connection with which such an omen as unanim- 
 ity among academicians is conceivable." 
 
 If he had been talking to the Commercial Travellers' Asso- 
 ciation, Edgerly would have given freer rein to verbal exuber- 
 ance. In deference to the dignity of his present audience 
 however, he had kept within the requirements of compara- 
 tive circumspection, and he was approaching transition to a 
 more serious manner. 
 
 "Yet, I must call your attention in the first place, gentle- 
 men, to the paradoxical fact that there is nevertheless an 
 academic point of view, which deserves your unremitting 
 consideration. This is the first plain truth which I reserved 
 freedom to expose. It is radical enough, when all its impli- 
 cations are reviewed, but still not so instantaneously subver- 
 sive that it could not safely have been intrusted to the re- 
 porters. 
 
 "During the recess a few moments ago, your President re- 
 marked to me that I did not appear quite like myself this 
 evening; that I betrayed symptoms of nerves. I admitted 
 it, and pointed out that the thought of addressing such a com- 
 pany as this was a legitimate excuse for nervousness. 'Pooh!' 
 he replied, 'there's no call to be nervous here. It's the most 
 ignorant crowd you could get together. Not a man of them 
 knows anything but his owm business!' 
 
 "At first shock I was blinded by the irreverence of this 
 apparent slander, and I could not have been induced to make 
 myself an accomplice after the fact by repeating it, if I had 
 not presently detected its subtle symbolism. It was a pain- 
 less method of giving me my finish by a stab that could not 
 be parried. The cold steel was so adroitly thrust into my 
 soul that at first I did not know I was hurt. But my eyes 
 were opened and I saw the worst. Even on this plane of 
 amenity, the President could not repress his impulse to glorify 
 
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 hig own class at the expense of mine. Translating the sinu- 
 ous irony into direct declaration, this was what he said: — 
 'Well may a man of your class tremble here. These are the 
 really learned men. They know enough to know their own 
 business. They do not pursue the academic folly of trying 
 to know everybody's business beside their own.' 
 
 "Let us not misunderstand each other, gentlemen. We 
 are equally aware that among practical men a proposition 
 is damned, beyond hope of probation or purgatory or re- 
 demption, the moment it is branded with the defamatory epi- 
 thet 'academic' Yet I venture before you, gentlemen, with 
 the confident affirmation that this customary resort to lin- 
 guistic lynch-law is neither intelligent nor moral nor re- 
 spectable. 
 
 "A practical proposition is merely small change of the cur- 
 rent legal tender; while an academic proposition is a first 
 mortgage on the property, and a long time investment. 
 
 "An academic proposition is like government two's, or still 
 more like a title to growing timber ; perfectly good, but in a 
 panicky market not always convertible. A practical proposi- 
 tion is perishable goods. It is worth what it is worth, but its 
 value can be realized only through immediate consumption, 
 or transformation into more permanent capital. 
 
 "A practical proposition is a stake driven at a given spot. 
 An academic proposition is a survey of the continent. 
 
 "Now there is one large academic view which controls, if 
 it does not harmonize the confusion of variant views. This 
 comprehensive academic view is that we must all consent at 
 last to run our line fence not solely with reference to the stake 
 we have driven, but also with due respect to the general 
 survey. 
 
 "Dropping metaphor, and speaking straight to the point, 
 the one essential idea which it is the inalienable duty of aca- 
 demic life to project into practical life, is that we do not put 
 the whole of our mind or our conscience into our work until 
 we are able to fit that work loyally into the whole range of re- 
 lations, the whole system of cause and effect, in which it plays 
 a part. 
 
 "To explain fully what this means would require a com- 
 plete treatise on the whole modern conception of life. In a 
 word it means this: — No man's place in life belongs to him 
 in a sense that can be covered by a calculus which makes his 
 
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 own private interests the decisive factor. Each of us deserves 
 or does not deserve his place and his fortune, whether it is 
 high or low, nnich or little, according to the ratio of his con- 
 tribution in that place to the developing interests of the en- 
 tire human family. 
 
 "Putting this in terms of labor problems, for illustration, 
 no man is loyal to the logic of life, who allows his position in 
 a conflict between capital and labor to be decided beyond ap- 
 peal by the probable effects upon himself or his class. No 
 man has a right to act as though he and his class were privi- 
 leged to be the weighers and gangers, applying their own 
 standard to the interests of others. On the contrary, life is 
 the measure, and we and our interests are material to be 
 measured. 
 
 "The last estimate we can reach of the total effect of alter- 
 native courses of conduct upon all the interests of present and 
 future generations, is the rightful arbiter of our attitude in a 
 labor quarrel. It is not this year's nor this decade's wages or 
 profits alone ; it is not alone a possible modification of business 
 policies, or redistribution of managerial responsibility; it is 
 not alone the probable influence upon the permanence or 
 proportions of industrial classes. It is all of these together, 
 calculated to their last discoverable effects. The only cri- 
 terion worthy of a man of brains and conscience, is the most 
 disinterested judgment that can be formed of the probable 
 influence of his conduct upon the common human enterprise 
 of clearing the way for general progress in material and men- 
 tal and moral well-being. 
 
 "Yes, gentlemen, I am perfectly conscious of the magni- 
 tude of my offense. In spite of everything, I have made com- 
 mon cause with that despicable and preposterous pretender, 
 the academic proposition. I have done it deliberately, and I 
 have gloried in it ! 
 
 "I remember that it is more than archaic, in these incredu- 
 lous days, to a^ume the minatory office of the prophet; but 
 for good mea.'5ure, to assure my conviction in case there may 
 be some loop-hole for escape on technicalities from the mer- 
 ited penalties of my previous guilt, I repeat and reaffirm. 
 There will be no secure industrial peace till the conflicts of 
 classes abandon the policy of settlement by clash of hostile 
 force, and substitute the arbitrament of dispassionate inquiry 
 into the conditions of human progress. 
 
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 "Every truth of any consequence that we now regard as 
 settled, has had to fight its way up from the despised and re- 
 jected status of an academic proposition. The human race 
 had stumbled through much the larger part of its elapsed 
 time before the multiplication table was adopted into the cate- 
 gory of useful knowledge. It was only at a relatively recent 
 stage of growth that people recognized the necessity of be- 
 lieving that twice two are always four. For a long time be- 
 fore they finally went into practical operation, Magna Charta, 
 and the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence 
 and the Emancipation Proclamation, were academic proposi- 
 tions in the mouths of visionaries and fanatics. Men but lit- 
 tle past middle life remember when antiseptic surgery was 
 an academic proposition too ridiculous to be treated decently 
 by conservative practitioners. Today we do not even dare to 
 have ourselves manicured or barbered, unless previously guar- 
 anteed that conformity with the prescriptions of chemistry 
 and bacteriology has rendered the operation innocuous. The 
 day will come, and I do not believe it is in the remote dis- 
 tance, when this academic view of labor problems will be com- 
 mon knowledge. A conflict between capital and labor is never 
 simply a question of dollars and cents, or of immediate ways 
 and means, between employers and employees. A conflict 
 between capital and labor is a re-examination of the validity 
 and the virility of our whole underlying system of thinking ! 
 
 "But I have in a way anticipated a later consideration. 
 Microscopic analysis of my plan of argument would discover 
 that at present these applications to labor problems are merely 
 incidental and illustrative. The substance of my first point 
 may be recapitulated in a sentence: — Judged by the stand- 
 ards of civilization, and not of classes, business in general to- 
 day is short of the academic collateral necessary to support its 
 circulation !" 
 
 The men surrounding Edgerly were not of a type likely to 
 betray by outward signs any conclusive evidence of assent or 
 dissent. If they had been bored, their manner would have 
 told it, and Edgerly's worst fear had been that he might not 
 be nearly enough equal to the occasion to hold attention. 
 Approval or disapproval was a quite secondary matter, if in- 
 terest enough could be maintained to keep thought on the 
 subject. 
 
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 So far, however, there was no doubt about the listening; 
 and the general appearance of settling into comfortable posi- 
 tions, and of surmise about what was coming, assured Edgerly 
 that he was at least not yet counted out. At the same time the 
 quizzical expression on most of the faces left him uncertain 
 how attention was divided between his thought and his per- 
 formance. 
 
 In the moment's pause before he took up his second point, 
 Edgerly could not help wondering how far he ought to com- 
 pare himself with the violinist whose bravura execution ex- 
 torts ambiguous applause, although the semi-assured artistic 
 insight of the audience suspects that an exhibition of tone- 
 taming technique is trifling with its demand for real music. 
 But having whetted interest, he was prepared to rest his case 
 less on the manner and more on the matter. His main pur- 
 pose was not to win credit for himself, but to blaze a path for 
 the conclusion that other ideas are abroad in the world, be- 
 side those prevalent in business, about the relations of busi- 
 ness to life ; that these ideas are backed not merely by the spirit 
 of selfishness, but also by the spirit of truthfulness ; and that 
 the ideas are bound sooner or later to win their share of in- 
 fluence upon the course of social change. When he resumed, 
 his tone, if not his choice of language, was in striking con- 
 trast with that in which he had begun. It was deliberate and 
 colloquial, but it was quite as carefully calculated. 
 
 "So much for the first point. The second is like unto it. 
 Yet there are differences which justify a doubt whether in this 
 connection the absence of reporters is an unrelieved disaster ; 
 not on account of anything I shall actually say, but because 
 the efflorescence of their poetic license might be over-stimu- 
 lated by the associations. 
 
 "The second proposition is this: — If there exists, in the 
 conservative index expurgatorius of things prohibited, a term 
 of reproach more irrevocably foreordained to rouse the wrath 
 and fiery indignation of the practical man than that long 
 and innocently suffering adjective 'academic,' it is the in- 
 famous epithet 'socialistic' 
 
 "Before commenting on this proposition I must claim the 
 privilege of my promised freedom of speech, for a word of 
 personal explanation. I am not a socialist. I do not believe 
 in socialism. I have no intention of undertaking, here or else- 
 
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 where, a defense of socialism ; but I am obliged to say, gen- 
 tlemen, that from the point of view which I am representing 
 this evening, if there is anything in the shape of social men- 
 ace less defensible than socialism, it is the typical business 
 man's attitude toward socialism! Your peremptory ostra- 
 cism and outlawry of the subject either impeach your good 
 will, or they demonstrate your woeful deficiency of infor- 
 mation. 
 
 "If the modern lords of business could command the 
 services of the Bourbon lettres de cachet, metaphorically at 
 any rate socialism would forthwith be immured in the deep- 
 est dungeons of the Bastille, to be released only by the Revo- 
 lution! If your capitalistic class-prejudice can once force 
 upon a proposition the convicts' garb of that attainting at- 
 tributive 'socialistic,' you go on your way rejoicing that there 
 is not enough left in favor of the idea to warrant a hearing 
 by the Board of Pardons !" 
 
 Under other circumstances, in spite of the bespoken free- 
 dom of speech, the Patriarchs would have set down this plain 
 language as an abuse of liberty. They would have denied 
 that they objected to calling a spade a spade, but their posi- 
 tion was that it turns liberty into license to denounce an hon- 
 est spade as an instrument of oppression. Edgerly's relation 
 to David Lyon however, made him in a sense one of them- 
 selves, and although he had at a stroke put himself under 
 suspicion, his eccentricity could be considered by the Patri- 
 archs with less heat than if it had been wholly an attack 
 from without. Edgerly's strategy was to do just enough jolly- 
 ing to insure attention, with realism enough in his allusions 
 to facts to show that the nonsense also carried a literal argu- 
 ment. After a pause to allow the indictment to take effect, 
 he returned to his text, with no sign that he was aware of 
 having transgressed the commonplace. 
 
 "Judged from the academic standpoint, the behavior of 
 the typical business man toward socialism is on a level with 
 the child's fear of the dark, or the hysterics of the farmer's 
 horse at meeting an automobile. The horse indeed has the 
 better excuse. The auto is a real menace, while socialism is 
 a bogy. 
 
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 "It is absurd, in the first place, to shy at the word socialism, 
 because it means so many things that it means nothing. 
 
 "If you should put all the current definitions of socialism 
 into a hat — by the way, to hold them it would have to be big 
 enough to fit the Sphinx — and draw out a dozen, the chances 
 are that they would be as irreconcilable with one another as a 
 like number of definitions of orthodoxy, selected by the same 
 method. The world is girdled by an alternating current of 
 conflicting orthodoxies, from the Mikado's priests of Shinto 
 to the apostles of Brigham Young. You have an orthodoxy 
 or a socialism wherever you have a defender of any faith who 
 cares to use either name. The consequence is that when you 
 have said 'orthodoxy' or 'socialism' you have merely appUed 
 a general name to a heterogeneous diversity of things which 
 can no more be disposed of in one wholesale judgment, 
 than you can treat all corporations as uniformly good or bad, 
 or all laws as equally wise or foolish. 
 
 "For his philanthropic efforts at the town which bears his 
 name, Mr. Pullman would have been entirely within his 
 rights if he had called himself a socialist ; and he could have 
 made out a much stronger claim to justify his appropriation 
 of the term than many species of everything and nothingists 
 who apply it to themselves. On the other hand, there is a 
 socialism which in its practical effects is in no way distin- 
 guishable from anarchism. By your treatment of the word 
 'socialism' therefore, you damn with a common label a vast 
 variety of ideas and efforts between these wide extremes, some 
 of them more good than bad, some more bad than good, but all 
 containing a residuum of saving grace. And you are uncon- 
 scious of anything wrong, until you consent to take a look at 
 the anomaly from the academic point of viewl Although 
 there are orthodoxies and socialisms that outrage all reason, 
 it is pitiable logic, and still more pestilential policy, to taboo 
 all religious and social inquiry not mortgaged in advance to 
 our own conclusions." 
 
 The knitted brows, and the alert watch which his hearers 
 were keeping on him, showed Edgerly that they at least 
 thought he was worth notice. He had deliberately used up 
 the bulk of his time guarding his approach, in the hope that 
 the way would be open for a single sharp attack. It was now 
 a question of making the most of the time that remained to 
 
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 deliver his real message. He made another change to a di- 
 rect, staccato manner, which said even more plainly than his 
 words, "So much for side issues, now to the point." 
 
 "But, after all, these two propositions were merely to muz- 
 zle inconvenient watch dogs at the gate, before I could enter 
 your premises on my main errand. The really important out- 
 look upon labor problems, from an academic point of view, 
 is indicated in my third proposition, namely: — 
 
 "It is the presumption of business that its duty is done 
 when it has played tiie dollar game for all it is wrorth. On 
 the contrary it is the business of business to help mark the 
 limits where the game ceases to be worth the candle, and to 
 discover how so much of the game as is worth playing may be 
 improved in the interest of general welfare. 
 
 "Everything that I have said so far would be equally in 
 order, with slight changes of details, if I were talking to an 
 audience of labor leaders. The present proposition also has 
 its applications to the labor side of the problem ; but it would 
 be a waste of time to devote any attention in this presence to 
 that aspect of the case. You surely need no help from me in 
 detecting the sins of organized labor. I am not now con- 
 cerned with motes in the eyes of the absent, but with beams 
 in the party vision represented by the present company. 
 
 "If I were asked to pass judgment upon the merits of the 
 particular issue that embarrasses Chicago today, and to de- 
 clare an opinion about the respective duties of the contending 
 forces, I should most emphatically decline. A third party 
 could properly pass upon the specific questions involved only 
 after full presentation of the case by both contestants had 
 furnished the means for a judicial decision. In what I am 
 saying I am in no sense prejudging the balance of right and 
 wrong between capital and labor in the present instance. I 
 am exhibiting certain universal features of labor problems, as 
 they appear from an academic point of view. The question 
 arises at your post of duty, not at mine. What consideration 
 do these general factors deserve in the pending conflict? 
 
 "Viewed then not merely in the perspective of the day's 
 work, nor as measured by the interests of a given investment, 
 but as an incident of the universal conflict of class-interests, 
 every labor problem is a test of the strength of the presump- 
 tion that human institutions are subject to change. 
 
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 "It is not invariably true, but with certain exceptions cap- 
 ital today stoutly maintains the negative of that presumption. 
 The exceptions are partly accidental, partly special cases of 
 aggressiveness, and partly exceptions only on the surface. 
 
 "The suUenness and the stubbornness of labor conflicts 
 cannot be accounted for by the value of the prizes immedi- 
 ately at stake. These are usually mere trifles in themselves. 
 The real issue is the ultimate shifting of the balance of power, 
 in case ground should be gained in the direction of more in- 
 fluence by the labor factor. 
 
 "Capital does not usually care a rap about a mere matter of 
 a few cents more in the pay envelope, or a few minutes less 
 in the working week. If laborers would accept such conces- 
 sions as acts of grace by employers, and therewith an end of 
 it, these sops could often be tossed to employees and expensive 
 struggles avoided. 
 
 "The persistence of labor and the resistance of capital are 
 for far deeper reasons. Whether intelligently or instinctively, 
 each side is aware that something much more important is in 
 the balance, namely, gain or loss of right to share in the con- 
 trol of the capital, and in distributing its profits. 
 
 "The instinct of employees is to distribute, and of employ- 
 ers to centralize the control of capital ; and there will always 
 be labor problems until a permanent balance of these two 
 forces is established. 
 
 "The trouble which I took at the outset to challenge the 
 letters of marque and reprisal under which you are accus- 
 tomed to use those sharp-edged weapons, 'academic' and 'so- 
 cialistic,' was entirely a precautionary measure with reference 
 to the present point. All the different species of social move- 
 ments, from the most inoffensive to the most dangerous, which 
 you attempt to put out of commission by force of that oppro- 
 brious epithet 'socialistic,' have one characteristic in com- 
 mon. Their fundamental position is directly contrary to 
 that of capitalism. They frankly maintain the affirmative 
 of the presumption that human institutions are subject to 
 change. 
 
 "You justify the traditions of your class by pointing to the 
 foolishness of many of the changes proposed. But until Avis- 
 dom and skill have been gained by honest experiment with 
 the conditions to be controlled, stupidity is the common lot 
 of mankind. 
 
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 "Whatever may be the merits or demerits of the particular 
 issues involved in a given case, either party to a labor con- 
 flict puts itself in the wrong, if its position virtually antago- 
 nizes the principle of social change. Readjustment of social 
 conditions is not violence of life, but the law of life. 
 
 "Progress is the net outcome of life simply because the in- 
 ertia of vested interests cannot resist the momentum of hu- 
 man destiny. My argument is that it is the business of bus- 
 iness men not simply to hold things as they are, but to be 
 leaders in adapting social institutions to changing conditions. 
 
 "To give my third proposition its full force, I must ask you 
 to consider it a moment from another angle. Everj^ labor 
 problem runs back not only to the question. Is there any thing 
 new to do about social organization ? but to the still more rad- 
 ical question, Is there any thing new to think about our in- 
 herited institutions? 
 
 "Here too, as a rule, we find capital defending the negative, 
 and labor contending for the affirmative. The visible possi- 
 bilities of new thought range from plaintive pleas for transla- 
 tion of the primary rules of homely honesty into the practices 
 of business, to philosophies that in a generation or two would 
 turn the world back to savagery. This is the peculiar oppor- 
 tunity for the other of the two weapons of extermination to 
 which I have referred. Business intolerance jumbles these 
 miscellaneous propositions under indiscriminate suspicion, 
 invokes its own peculiar 'law of reinforced defense,' and de- 
 crees their banishment to the hopeless region 'academic' 
 
 "But frankly, gentlemen, there has never been an age of 
 the world whose prepossessions have not been revised by its 
 successors. There is not the faintest probability that our era 
 will be an exception to the rule. On the contrary, the change 
 from the tallow dips and fluid lamps of half a century ago, 
 to interior and exterior electric illumination, is but a feeble 
 analogy for the intellectual light that has been shed, mean- 
 while, upon every subject of human knowledge. The aspect 
 of the world and all it contains is presenting more rapid and 
 radical transformations to our minds than to any previous 
 generation. The man or the class that pins faith upon petri- 
 fying society in its present forms, is due for as impotent a 
 bout with fate as though he staked his hopes on keeping the 
 face of nature as it is in January unchanged through the 
 month of June. 
 
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 "Nor are we at a loss for indications of some of the changes 
 immediately to come — indeed the modifications have already 
 gone so far in men's thoughts that we could hardly be over- 
 taken by surprise at any speed of transmuting them into 
 action. 
 
 "To cite a single instance, closely related to our subject: 
 The world is rapidly rediscovering its superiority to its wealth. 
 For three hundred years we have been forgetting that wealth 
 iti for the sake of life, and falling under the illusion that life 
 is for the sake of Avealth. We have created artificial legal 
 persons incorporating the abstract principle of accumulation. 
 These artificial persons inevitably assert their supremacy not 
 only over their servants but over their masters. They become 
 ends in themselves, to which all men must be tributary. The 
 fight of labor against capital in corporate forms appears to 
 be a fight of one group of men against another. In its deeper 
 reaches it turns out to be a fight of laboring men for manhood 
 in general, against the devouring power of capital. 
 
 "When capital is made into a legal person, the only possible 
 attitudes of natural persons toward it are for and against. 
 There can be but one crime against capital ; namely, conduct 
 tending to dimini.sh its quantity or its value. 
 
 "Behind all petty or important incidents of labor conflicts, 
 therefore, is the antecedent question of choice between ruling 
 conceptions of life. The present social situation confronts 
 men of thought with the moral dilemma: — 'Choose ye this 
 day whom you will serve. Shall it be men or capital ?' One 
 of these aims must slave to the other. They are not, and 
 never can be coordinate, because the one is personal, the 
 other impersonal. The strategic point in the whole social 
 struggle is at the parting of the ways, the one leading to more 
 capitalization, the other to more humanization, as the termi- 
 nal of .social effort. Expressed more literally, the key to the 
 social struggle, in its present stage, is the question: — Shall 
 the social aim be to use men for the sake of capital, or to use 
 capita] for the sake of men ? 
 
 "I am not impugning motives. I am not making a parti- 
 san plea. I am not catering to the popular demand for sen- 
 sations. Under present conditions especially, and even under 
 ordinary circumstances, I should not feel at liberty to say in 
 public precisely what I am saying here. As a privileged 
 communication, however, I am confiding to you one of the 
 
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THE MORALIST 
 
 aspects which our social problems present from an academic 
 point of view. In spite of the apparent egotism of the claim, 
 I venture to add that our society does not at present afford a 
 standpoint more favorable than the university outlook to just 
 and penetrating judgments of social tendencies. 
 
 "In a word then, gentlemen, my message to you, as wield- 
 ers of power in business, is that you have not well read the 
 signs of the times which indicate the function by which you 
 might best serve your fellow men. In a world whose law is 
 change, and in an era in which the operation of the law is 
 gaining accelerated motion, there is peculiar demand for your 
 friendly cooperation with the principle of progress. 
 
 "Whether we like it or not, the world is every hour generat- 
 ing a higher pressure of ambition to architect its own fortune. 
 So far as we can see, the era that we are entering is to be dis- 
 tinguished by the dominance of a distinctly modern temper 
 toward human conditions. It is to be an era of determina- 
 tion not to be content with such improvement as accident 
 may bring, but to create improvement by inventing means to 
 satisfy social demands. You may antagonize this tendency, 
 but it will surely triumph over you. It has the strongest im- 
 pulses of humanity behind it, and they cannot be perma- 
 nently arrested by the interests of a class. If you will work 
 with the social movement, you may do more than any other 
 fraction of society to insure a maximum of wisdom and a 
 minimum of foolishness in future programs of improvement. 
 
 "The type of men endowed with the most splendid talents 
 for bringing things to pass must sooner or later discover that 
 the largest scope for their powers cannot be found in the para- 
 mount service of capital ; there is a wider radius of action in 
 higher loyalty to the general weal. 
 
 "The manhood suffrage of this new era of social adapta- 
 tion will be universal freedom of investigation. 
 
 "Nb dominant interest has ever permitted investigation 
 which questioned the rightfulness of its domination. 
 
 "Vested interest is vested prejudice; but where prejudice 
 is law truth is an outlaw. 
 
 "Whatever the immediate issues of labor problems, they 
 are incidents in the process of repealing the common law of 
 the passing era, that it is treason to society to question the jus- 
 tice of the constitution and by-laws of capitalism. 
 
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 "In the new era it will be common law that no interest may 
 estop investigation of anything that is affected by a public 
 interest. In the new era it will be common law that the whole 
 force of society shall guarantee investigation of every condi- 
 tion which obstructs general progress. 
 
 "The day on which the leaders of business unite with the 
 leaders of labor to promote the incorporation of these two 
 principles into the fundamental law, with pledges to abide by 
 the results, will mark also the final end of industrial wars. 
 
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THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 
 
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THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 
 
 XI 
 
 THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 
 
 "Everything that the gentleman said about capital would 
 have been equally true in itself and equally irrelevant to 
 the question at issue, if it had been alleged of the atmos- 
 phere and the sunlight, instead of capital." 
 
 THE slang dictionary has no phrase for the effect of Ed- 
 gerly's talk upon the Patriarchs, unless we summon the 
 aid of mixed metaphor and call it a heated frost. 
 
 If Goliath had been surrounded by an atmosphere that 
 changed pebbles to soap-bubbles before they hit, the shep- 
 herd boy would probably not have cut much of a figure in 
 subsequent history. 
 
 While a pelting with vapor pills may not jeopardize life, 
 liberty nor estate, it tends to compromise the dignity and agi- 
 tate the sensibilities of the victim. 
 
 Even an experienced literary critic would have been puzzled 
 if called upon to sort out and apportion the different ele- 
 ments of Edgerly's talk, from permissible to proscribed 
 sarcasm, from solid argument to excursions of fancy, and 
 from innocent matter-of-fact to offensive insinuation. The 
 Patriarchs were not prepared for such classification. It was 
 a question of total impression. If their composite reaction 
 had reported itself in the most guarded form, the terms would 
 have been "ill-judged" and "inappropriate." An unedited 
 version of the feelings of the majority would have declared 
 that the speech as a whole was an exhibition of idiotic con- 
 ceit, and a gratuitous insult to the Club. 
 
 Responsibility for the decencies of the occasion fell rather 
 heavily upon the guests. However their opinions may have 
 been divided, they felt indebted to their hosts for a unique 
 entertainment, and when Edgerly was done they furnished 
 applause enough partially to cover his retreat.^ 
 
 It was an awkward moment for the President. He had 
 never faced a more delicate situation. He had to guard the 
 proprieties toward the guest, and yet he must represent the 
 dignity of the organization. He even feared that his effort 
 to preserve the balance might move some irascible member 
 
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 to make a scene. If he had not been in the chair, he would 
 himself have been disposed to break a lance with Edgerly, and 
 he had no doubt that others might be more accurately de- 
 scribed as ready to break the offender with a lance. The 
 faint demonstration as Edgerly finished left the chairman 
 little time to adjust, his reflections, and he rose without feel- 
 ing quite sure what he was going to say. He began in the 
 manner of a man testing thin ice : — 
 
 "As the chief guest of the evening intimated, at the open- 
 ing of his remarks, he gave our committee fair warning that 
 what he was likely to say would tax the tolerance of the Club. 
 As to the occa.sion for this warning, I take it that no one is 
 inclined to accuse him of not making good. While the opin- 
 ions which the speaker has expressed are not altogether unfa- 
 miliar, it could not be expected that men who are acquainted 
 with the world should find themselves able to regard them as 
 conclusive or even plausible. Indeed, we cannot ofi'er higher 
 praise than by expressing our regret that the admirable skill 
 which the speaker has exhibited in advocating untenable be- 
 liefs is not enlisted in the service of a better cause. While I 
 am sure that the members of the Club are not convinced by 
 the eloquence to which they have listened, it is possible that 
 they are temporarily silenced. I wait your pleasure there- 
 fore, gentlemen, with reference to further discussion." 
 
 Mr. Dexter was on his feet instantly, and although the 
 chairman was doubtful whether Dexter could keep his tem- 
 per, he was glad to yield the floor, and to enjoy a reprieve 
 from responsibility. 
 
 Both in business and in politics, Dexter had an honorably 
 earned national reputation. Nobody rated him as a broad 
 man, but he was fiercely dogmatic in all his opinions. He 
 was known by his more intimate acquaintances as careful 
 rather than safe. His views were so restricted that his judg- 
 ment was never reliable except within the range of well estab- 
 lished precedent. In another age he might have been a martyr 
 to any cause that he espoused. His loyalty to his principles 
 was beyond suspicion, but the sources of his convictions were 
 so confined that he often weakened his own side of a con- 
 troversy more by furnishing grounds for the charge of fanat- 
 icism, than he could injure the other side by the strength of 
 his attacks. 
 
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 If Edgerly had been in collusion with fate to furnish point 
 to his argument, he could not have been better served than 
 by the presence of Dexter. The same provocation would not 
 have worried any other man present into betraying ocular 
 proof of the partiality of the capitalistic point of view. 
 
 The Patriarchs were by no means exceptionally narrow 
 men. On the contrary, in comparison with the average of 
 their fellow citizens they were eminent for intelligence and 
 catholicity. They were simply cases under the universal law 
 that all men are affected by the bias of their peculiar interests. 
 Edgerly's whole argument might have been compressed into 
 the theorem that the bias of the capitalistic interest needs 
 watching more than any other single factor in present social 
 problems. 
 
 If all the members of the Club except Dexter had spoken 
 in their usual manner when addressing the public, the total 
 effect would have gone far toward shifting the burden of proof 
 back upon Edgerly. Their tone would have been so calm, 
 their form of statement so fair, their references to the higher 
 motives of life so sympathetic, that it would have seemed like 
 malicious aspersion to suspect them of undue influence by 
 anti-social interests. Edgerly had implied no lack of respect 
 for the good intentions and high character of the typical 
 business man. His argument had dealt with the compelling 
 power of capitalistic standards. He had pointed out that capi- 
 tal must either command or obey, and he had claimed that 
 wealth, not manhood is the dominant interest in our present 
 social system. 
 
 It was at once evident that Dexter was having difficulty in 
 controlling his emotions. His face was tense. His eyes had 
 the far-away look of a man in a trance. At first his breath 
 was caught in hasty gulps. His voice was husky, or rather 
 sibilant. His arms were bu.sy with clutching, swinging, 
 pushing motions, which had no meaning as gestures, but 
 were merely involuntary means of discharging inconvenient 
 nervous force. After the first few sentences his pitch trans- 
 posed itself into a piercing falsetto, and then his gestures be- 
 came the beating and slashing sort that naturally accompany 
 violent emotion. 
 
 "I regret extremely," he began, "that there is any necessity 
 for replying to the speaker of the evening. The circum- 
 stances under which he came entitle him to our considera- 
 
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 tion. If he had failed to give forcible expression to his ideas, 
 it would have been our duty to overlook his weakness, in view 
 of the brief time at his disposal to collect his thoughts. I 
 need not say that there has been no occasion for sympathy on 
 that score. Rarely has a speaker before this club seemed so 
 able to say precisely what he meant. 
 
 "If the address to which we have listened had been con- 
 fused, and if the doubtful views were merely implied in refer- 
 ences that might have been misunderstood, it would be the 
 dictate of courtesy to ignore them. Nothing of this sort is 
 the case. The opinions to which we have listened were not 
 incidental. They were the substance of the argument. Nor 
 could they have been improvised for the occasion. They were 
 evidently premeditated and deliberate. 
 
 "Since this is the situation, there can be no impropriety in 
 using the same freedom of speech which the gentleman re- 
 served for himself. He has told us that business men have 
 no use for academic ideas. Even after the sample of academic 
 ideas which he has presented to our astonished gaze, I pre- 
 sume he will wonder that we are of the same opinion still. 
 He has ridiculed business men for not wasting their time on 
 people who think they are serving the real world by telling 
 what a glorious world it would be if wishes were horses, and 
 if pretty sentiments were food, clothing, shelter and pin 
 money. And yet I suppose he would think it very imperti- 
 nent if we should ask him why academic men refuse to listen 
 to inventors of perpetual motion, and people who demonstrate 
 that the world is not round after all, and mind readers, and 
 fortune tellers, and fakirs in general. 
 
 "He has intimated that capital is the most suspicious char- 
 acter outside the rogues' gallery. Capital has fed him all his 
 life, capital has given him his education, capital keeps him, 
 just as it directly or indirectly furnishes the support of every 
 other man in the world, and now it is the final deliverance of 
 academic wisdom that it is time for humanity to turn and 
 smite its best friend 1 
 
 "Since the same penetrating perception that has given us 
 this inspiring discovery has issued an injunction against tak- 
 ing the name 'socialism' in vain, because it doesn't mean any- 
 thing in particular, I will confine myself to language which 
 we shall all understand. Whether it is the brute violence of 
 the Chicago thug, who kills for gold, or the mystical blood- 
 
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 thirst of the Russian terrorist, who murders to shame the 
 devil, or the pedantic egotism of the academic theorist, whose 
 artful phraseology undermines respect for the fundamental 
 institutions of society in order to advertise the superior qual- 
 ity of his own intelligence, in each case alike this wanton, 
 stupid, wicked assault upon social order is nothing polite nor 
 tolerable that can be imagined. It is simply and solely despic- 
 able and damnable anarchy I 
 
 "There is always an explanation, if not an excuse, for the 
 brute who commits a crime of violence. He is merely an 
 animal, with none of the restraint of reason. But when the 
 high priests of reason itself, the men who pose as arbiters of 
 logical science and sanity, the men who are constantly rebuk- 
 ing all the rest of the world for not taking lessons of them in 
 thoroughness of investigation, and fairness of judgment, and 
 caution of utterance — when these men join forces with the 
 outbreaking enemies of society in propagating the most in- 
 sidious incitement to destruction of the whole fabric of social 
 order, then excuses vanish, and imagination exhausts itself 
 in search for palliation, and language refuses to lend relief! 
 
 "For our own sake it would not be necessary to notice the 
 fantastical and fatuous doctrines on which the changes have 
 been rung in our ears this evening. They can do us no more 
 hurt than scratching parlor matches on the sides of our battle- 
 ships. But these ideas are scattered broadcast among people 
 who do not know how to protect themselves from the evils 
 they produce. These pernicious parodies of truth are making 
 honest labor irksome ; they are chasing contentment from the 
 homes of prosperity; they are breeding vipers of class jeal- 
 ousy ; they are teaching men that agitatore and revolutionists 
 and destroyers are the only good citizens. 
 
 "We have been silent too long. Business men must enlist 
 as crusaders to counteract the propaganda of confusion which 
 ordinary criminals and extraordinary academic perverts are 
 conspiring together to spread. We owe so much at least to 
 our patriotism, our morality and our religion ! 
 
 "Where, outside of the ravings of maniacs, do these accus- 
 ers of business men find any presumptive grounds for their 
 calumnies? What is this capital, which we have been informed 
 this evening is the most dangerous factor in society? In the 
 face of such detraction, shall we who know what capital is, 
 and what inestimable services it renders to mankind — shall 
 
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 we be silent, and allow these poisonous falsifications to cir- 
 culate without protest? If the men who claim to be the 
 guardians of truth, and the umpires of fairness, systemat- 
 ically malign us, if they will not tell the people what they 
 owe to us for making human comfort and happiness possible, 
 then, not in the spirit of boasting, but in all sincerity and 
 humility, we must instruct the people about the indispensa- 
 ble part which we perform in making the conditions and in 
 maintaining the processes that are necessary to human well- 
 being and progress ! 
 
 "What then is the plain truth about capital? The falsifi- 
 cations which the tortuous imagination of these mischief- 
 mongers has foisted upon the facts make people in general 
 blink, and squint, and grow watery-eyed before they can bear 
 the clear light of the truth. Capital is the beneficent fostering 
 mother of all desirable human effort. Capital feeds the 
 farmer while he is extracting from the soil food to insure the 
 next campaign of human advancement. Capital supports 
 every other wrestler with nature for new supplies of raw ma- 
 terial for the myriad uses of mankind. Capital is the patient 
 beast of burden, bearing nature's treasures to and fro, first 
 to the points where other capital carries on human industry, 
 in its labor of transformation, and then to other points where 
 human needs are eager to satisfy themselves by consuming 
 these products. Capital builds houses and cities, and subdues 
 wildernesses, and explores the remote regions of the earth. 
 Capital sends the messengers of commerce that unite widely 
 separated peoples in the mutually beneficial bonds of trade. 
 Capital girdles the earth with means of communication, and 
 makes the sea and sky a continuous sounding board, to serve 
 for instant exchange of news between the remotest men. Cap- 
 ital organizes our systems of maintaining order, of preserving 
 peace, of guaranteeing individual rights. Capital is the con- 
 servator of the arts, the promoter of science, the sustainer of 
 religion. Capital provides means for the ordinary man to 
 earn his livelihood, and opens avenues for the careers of 
 genius. Yes, I am compelled to say, capital is so unstinted 
 in her benefactions that she even endows the contemptible 
 ingrates who convert her bounty into u corruption fund, to 
 mislead and betray their fellow-men 1 
 
 "It will doubtless always be necessary for us to maintain 
 hospitals, to alleviate the ills to which liesh is heir. We may 
 
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 never outgrow the necessity for asylums, for ministration to 
 feeble minds. Among the burdens of the weak, which the 
 strong may never escape the duty of helping to bear, we may 
 cheerfully assume the obligation of patience and kindly tol- 
 eration toward unavoidable ignorance. But, in the name of 
 all the gods at once, it is our duty to unmask the treachery 
 and the ignominy of those blind leaders of the blind who are 
 the pampered agents of society to conduct gymnasiums for 
 mental strength, and to guard the search lights of human 
 understanding, but who prostitute their office and their op- 
 portunity, who spread the contagion of depravity and law- 
 lessness, who deny the truths and defy the obligations of 
 civilized society I Free thought is one thing. Cultivated im- 
 becility is quite another thing. This incident ought to con- 
 vince us that we have reached the boundary line where pa- 
 tience ceases to be a virtue. There is no inheriting the earth 
 for the sort of meekness that sits dumb, while flaunting false- 
 hood triumphs over us. The men who are the main leverage 
 of civilization must lift their voices loud and long enough to 
 silence the betrayers of society !" 
 
 Dexter sat down to the accompaniment of a silence still 
 more void than the perfunctory punctuation of Edgerly's 
 number in the program. Although Dexter had in a way voiced 
 the opinions of the Patriarchs, he had not represented them, 
 and the situation was much less satisfactory than if no reply 
 had been made. The President was in more desperate straits 
 than before, but he hailed it as a sign of hope when Joseph 
 Morrison addressed the chair. 
 
 In nine out of ten lists of the half-dozen leading merchants 
 of the city, Mr. Morrison's name would be included. His ap- 
 pearance would mark him as a scholar rather than a man of 
 affairs. He seldom volunteered many words, either in public 
 or in private, and this gave importance to the present excep- 
 tion. He was much in demand for addresses on occasions 
 that invited the utterance of ripe and successful experience. 
 Although he protested that he had no qualifications for such 
 duties, and although there was hesitation and almost diffi- 
 dence in his manner whenever he undertook them, he never 
 failed to impress his hearers as having spoken wisely and well. 
 His own shyness, along with his reputation for unerring judg- 
 ment in practical matters, was in effect a certificate of good 
 faith. It appealed to the confidence of people who would have 
 
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 been repelled by a man who exposed his consciousness of 
 power. When he spoke there was a contraction of the muscles 
 of the lips, that might have been from mere embarrassment, 
 but it seemed to be also a playful and kindly smile, which was 
 a further commendation to his hearers. Even in this com- 
 pany of his friends, none of whom would have been credited 
 with more fitness to speak for all, he spoke as cautiously as 
 though in doubt whether he were really entitled to the 
 privilege. 
 
 "I have nothing to add," he began, in a scarcely audible 
 voice, "to either side of the argument. I simply thought it 
 might help me to get my bearings, and perhaps incidentally 
 afford space for all of us to take soundings or a solar observa- 
 tion, as the case might be, if I occupied a few moments, with- 
 out preventing the thoughts of the other gentlemen present 
 from being better employed." 
 
 The irenic effect of this quaint self-depreciation was visible 
 at once. The dubious looks began to relax, and it was evident 
 that there was a returning sense of security. 
 
 With but slightly increased force in his voice, Mr. Morrison 
 continued : — 
 
 "While our friends have been speaking, my thoughts have 
 turned to the feelings I have sometimes had in the theatre, as 
 I watched a transformation scene. I have never been able to 
 give myself up to the deception. Perhaps if I had begun to 
 go to the theatre when my mind was more nimble, the case 
 would have been different. Probably we do not get our 
 money's worth unless we put our imaginations in the hands 
 of the stage carpentere. It is the proper thing, I suppose, to 
 accept fairyland for the time being, and to forget hard facts. 
 I have never learned the knack of doing it. I always remem- 
 ber that if I don't keep my coupon, I may be called upon to 
 give up my seat. I never forget for a moment that I am sur- 
 rounded by folks just like myself, and that the strange look 
 of things hasn't made a particle of difference in the world 
 where our lot is cast. 
 
 "During the last few minutes especially, I had begun to 
 wonder whether I hadn't at last been caught by a stage car- 
 penter's trick. Before the talking began, I had a comfortable 
 feeling that the people present, even those at the spealcers' 
 table, were all fairly good fellows. We had every appear- 
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 of the world. Then came this play of words. It threw such 
 a mist over us all that no one seemed to keep his everyday 
 shape. To tell the truth, I had to grip my chair, and the edge 
 of the table, and then I pinched myself to make sure that my 
 senses were in working order. Now that you are taking on 
 your natural looks again, and nobody seems quite so bad nor 
 quite so good as we were pictured, the net result of the argu- 
 ment foots up in my mind about like this. So far as I can 
 take account of stock, we have on hand a working exhibit of 
 the kind of rumpus that may be kicked up by a couple of 
 highpower word-machines if they get beyond control. 
 
 "The discussion has reminded me of a dream which I had 
 several times when I was a boy. It probably started with a 
 last look at the bed-post. In my dream I was looking at that 
 bed-post. But it didn't stay a bed-post. Something was the 
 matter with it. First it grew to the size of a tree. Then it 
 was a steeple. Then it filled the whole sky. At last it sucked 
 up everything in sight, and burst with a terrific crash. When 
 things got to that pass I woke up, and found myself sitting 
 bolt upright, staring at the same bed-post. 
 
 "I wonder if that dream wasn't something like what hap- 
 pens when we turn words loose. Our differences of opinion 
 are bad enough, but the men who hold the opposite views 
 would be much less likely to take on the appearance of bogies, 
 if they could be satisfied to refer to each other in unfertilized 
 language." 
 
 Hosts and guests together forgot their dignity, and took 
 the opportunity for a good rest in jjoisterous enjoyment of the 
 gentle caricature. When quiet was restored, Mr. Morrison 
 began once more in his most cautious manner. 
 
 "This was all I had intended to say ; but while I am on my 
 feet it may not be out of place to add a single remark. 
 
 "The more I think of how many different kinds of people 
 it takes to make a world, the more I am inclined to com- 
 pare the condition of each one of us with that of the practical 
 astronomer. He has the use of a very expensive plant. The 
 instrument may be the most powerful in the world ; but after 
 all it is pointed out through a narrow slit in the dome, and 
 the observer may spend night after night, and at last his 
 whole working life, in studying a patch of sky too small even 
 to attract the passing notice of the average unscientific man. I 
 can very well understand that such an observer might get so 
 
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 absorbed in his special interest that he would be intolerant 
 toward other scientists who were observing other parts of the 
 heavens, and csi)ecially toward investigators of other facts 
 of nature, which tended to weaken the theories he had formed 
 from his particular point of view. 
 
 "Now, while I am unable to see that there is any such case 
 against capitalists as has been intimated this evening, I can 
 easily imagine that, if our telescope were pointed through 
 the opposite side of the dome, we might discover facts which 
 would modify our present calculations. 
 
 "Probably none of us have a right to assume that our out- 
 look settles the truth for the universe. In my judgment we 
 all ought to be willing, and I believe the great majority are 
 willing, to take account of all the facts from every quarter, 
 whenever they are properly presented. More than that, if 
 we can be sure that we are in the way to correct hasty con- 
 clusions, and reach fuller information, and arrive at juster 
 theory and practice — if we can be reasonably sure that we 
 are doing this, and not merely making a magic lantern of 
 our telescope, and pulling the observatory down over our 
 heads in our excitement, I believe there would be an over- 
 whelming vote of business men in favor of encouraging every 
 sort of investigation." 
 
 This was the first good opportunity for the Patriarchs to 
 express themselves without restraint, as to the real situation. 
 Their endorsement of Mr. Morrison's remarks was unmis- 
 takable. There was a general feeling that peace had been 
 restored. In the changed humor several of the members were 
 mi.«ehievous enough to call for Mr. Lyon. The suggestion 
 caught the fancy of the whole company, and the call became 
 so in.sistent that he was obliged to make a show of response. 
 He was glad the test had not come immediately after Edgerly 
 had spoken, for he would have had no escape from the quan- 
 dary. He was now all smiles, and entirely self-possessed. 
 
 The assembly worked off more of its pent-up feelings by 
 vigorous applause after he had risen. His reply was con- 
 tained more in his beaming countenance than in his words. 
 
 "I duly appreciate this delicate attention, gentlemen," he 
 began, in his most courtly manner, "and I need not assure 
 you that the occasion has been one of deep interest to me. 
 The only contribution which I feel moved to make to the dis- 
 cussion, however, is the safe remark that, for me at least, 
 
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 silence is golden. It has been one of the rules of my life to 
 exclude business discussions from my family circle. The 
 working of the rule the other way forbids me to recognize 
 any of my family skeletons in public. They will have to be 
 dealt with in their proper place. At present I am glad to 
 subscribe to the remarks of my friend who has just taken his 
 seat. I do not know how we could better express our attitude 
 toward so-called social problems." 
 
 _ The President felt that the psychological moment had ar- 
 rived for giving the leading speaker the usual opportunity to 
 close the discussion. 
 
 Edgerly had by this time lost all feeling of embarrassment, 
 and he spoke as freely as he would in a faculty meeting. 
 
 "I realize," he said, "that it is presuming upon your pa- 
 tience to reopen the subject, after the admirable statement of 
 our friend who has given us such an effective object lesson 
 in the use and abuse of fig-urative language. At the risk of 
 boring you, however, I venture to sum up my case as directly 
 as possible. It would be a misfortune if this occasion should 
 pass without a better understanding of different views of 
 social conditions which we all in a certain way find puzzling. 
 On the other hand, I should feel that I had not lived in vain 
 if I could be sure that I had got before this company a dis- 
 tinct view of the point which the gentleman who followed me 
 utterly misapprehends. 
 
 "Everything that the gentleman said about capital would 
 have been equally true in itself, and equally irrelevant to the 
 question at issue, if it had been alleged of the atmosphere and 
 the sunlight, instead of capital. They too are 'the beneficent 
 foster mother of all desirable human effort.' They support 
 the farmer and the artisan and the transporter, and the mag- 
 istrate. They conserve every thing useful to the human race. 
 I have no more quastion about these facts in the case of capi- 
 tal than I have in the case of air and sunshine. But they 
 do not come within striking distance of the point. 
 
 "In order to approach the real issue we must suppose that 
 someone has invented machines which can collect all the air 
 and the sunlight of a city or a county, and store it in tanks. 
 We must suppose too that patents have been granted upon 
 the machines ; that the laws protect the owners in using them ; 
 and that they propose hereafter to deprive their fellow citi- 
 zens of the use of atmosphere and sunlight not drawn from 
 
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 their tanks and paid for according to their own tariff. We 
 must suppose further that this monopoly of the air and sun- 
 light franchise is handed down to their children and chil- 
 dren's children. How many generations do you suppose it 
 would be before the heirs of that monopoly would be heard 
 eulogizing themselves for conferring upon their fellow men 
 the inestimable benefits of air and sunshine? 
 
 "Now, gentlemen, I am not taking liberties with the argu- 
 ment that has been submitted in reply to mine this evening. 
 I am not putting any farcical element into it. I am pointing 
 out the literal absurdity that constitutes the whole problem. 
 
 "The only difference between the case of capital and the 
 one I have supposed is that while we cannot possibly appro- 
 priate any credit at all to ourselves for the atmosphere and 
 the sunshine, each of us may, by due exertion, have a share 
 in the creation of capital. But the share that the ablest of 
 us may contribute to capital is but a minute fraction of all 
 the work of other men that goes to make up that same capital. 
 
 "The panegyric of capital to which we have listened de- 
 serves to become a classic in the history of human error. I 
 doubt if any man has ever gone on record with a more spec- 
 tacular begging of the whole question. The argument confi- 
 dently assumes that the men who now, under the laws of 
 society, control capital, have themselves, and themselves 
 alone, created the capital, and endowed it with its beneficent 
 qualities, and that the heirs of these men will have an incon- 
 testible right, to the end of time, to draw revenues from the 
 same capital. There has been no more arrogant blunder 
 since King Canute imagined that the royal prerogative in- 
 cluded the tides of the ocean. 
 
 "I am ready to grant for the sake of argument if you 
 please, that every man in any way connected with property 
 deserves some credit for the benefits that inhere in capital. 
 If you demand it, I will concede that the man whose business 
 activity consists in -watching a ticker and wiring his broker 
 to skim off a margin when prices go his way, is entitled to a 
 microscopic tablet in an obscure corner of the Westminster 
 Abbey of capitalism. I say I will concede it for public con- 
 sumption, whatever my private opinion may be about his 
 proper place in the Potter's Field of pauperism. I will agree 
 with you, without any mental reservation whatever, that 
 there are capitalists whose organizing and constructive origi- 
 
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 nality entitle them to all the rewards of merit that are due 
 to the world's great inventors and discoverers. Between these 
 extremes there are capitalists who have done everything that 
 is in the power of one man toward producing the larger or 
 smaller capital they control, while there are others who are 
 the legal owners of capital, who have rather less claim to 
 credit for the existence of capital, or for the benefits it confers, 
 than the man who washes the bank windows has for the 
 sunrise. 
 
 "Still further, the most meritorious service that is ever 
 performed by the ablest man, in producing or employing 
 capital, starts with the endowment left by all the previous 
 generations, and yet he would amount to nothing if he did 
 not work in harness with hundreds or thousands or millions 
 of fellow laborers. Whether it is the head of the house of 
 Rothschild, or Number 999 in the shovel gang, he enters a 
 world already fitted out with the arts, and sciences, and laws 
 and technologies, and stock and good will that the cooperative 
 work of the ages has accumulated. 
 
 "If the best of us were left strictly to ourselves, without the 
 use of the accumulations and support of other men, we should 
 never be heard from, any more than if we were infants 
 abandoned in our cradles. 
 
 "All this gives edge to the distinction that the fact of cap- 
 ital and its benefits is something as different from the system 
 of human contrivances for handling capital as the existence 
 of air and sunlight is from a concession of a right to tax peo- 
 ple for the use of these natural agents. Some men actually do 
 work without which capital would not be produced, or if pro- 
 duced would not be useful, and yet they have no legal claim 
 to a dividend from capital. Other men enjoy the honors and 
 emoluments of capital who no more deserve them, than credit 
 for the gifts of nature belongs to the men who make them- 
 selves rich by befouling and beclouding the air and sunlight 
 that belong to their neighbors. 
 
 "There is no question at issue then about the benefits of 
 capital. The whole social problem turns on differences of 
 opinion about the fairness of the artificial code which we have 
 devised to guard property rights in capital. 
 
 "In a word, the point is this : — It is not a matter of abridg- 
 ing anybody's rights, but of verifying titles to rights. Our 
 institutions have grown up in such a haphazard way that the 
 
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 adjustment of rewards and merits which they secure is irreg- 
 ular, inconstant, and inconsistent. This leaves an open prob- 
 lem of improving our system in the direction of reducing these 
 anomalies to a minimum. 
 
 "Instead of committing an assault on the structural princi- 
 ples of society, therefore, I have simply taken this occasion to 
 state facts which are just as real as those reported by the 
 weather bureau. You, of all men, should have a clear view of 
 these facts. If you will, you may do more than any other 
 class of men to insure wise action in view of the facts. I be- 
 lieve that your class is to develop the leaders of the future, 
 who will find their chief occupation in solving the problems 
 which the facts involve. In the whole range of practical 
 business there is nothing more certain than that we are face 
 to face with open questions at once of practical adjustment 
 and of pure morals, touching the principles of distributing 
 control of economic force. We cannot dodge these questions. 
 They will open wider and wider, and will never be closed until 
 the terms of settlement command the assent of the sense of 
 justice alike of the man without a dollar and the man with his 
 millions." 
 
 After the meeting was declared adjourned a dozen mem- 
 bers of the Club came to Edgerly to say that they were glad 
 he had spoken his mind. Each was careful to say either that 
 he did not agree with him, or that he was not sure whether 
 he agreed or not ; but they said it was a good thing to have his 
 side of the case presented. 
 
 Halleck was among the guests. On the way to the coat 
 room he caught Edgerly's arm and hastily half-whispered, 
 "You never did a better day's work in your life, old chap! 
 There'll be nothing to show for it, of course, but it's all to the 
 good. You deserve a pension for your fight tonight as much 
 as any veteran that fought for the Union !" 
 
 Logan Lyon was present on his father's invitation, and his 
 auto was at the door. It was but a few minutes' run to Mr. 
 Lyon's house, and on the way no reference was made to the 
 discussion. As the car stopped to leave the older man, he re- 
 mained sitting a moment, as though there was something on 
 his mind of which he wanted to speak. Apparently he dis- 
 missed the idea, however, for his manner as he changed his 
 position seemed to say, "But we will let that pass." His only 
 
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 words were, as he laid his hand on Edgerly's shoulder, while 
 one foot rested on the step, "Good night, boys. It was an ex- 
 tenuating circumstance, at any rate, Ernest, that you had 
 something to do with keeping the reporters out." 
 
 The two younger men rode in silence several blocks, until 
 Lyon, reaching for the lamp over his head, and turning the 
 button, peered into Edgerly's face, as he quoted : — " 'I never 
 get over my wonder at the homeopathic quantity of thought 
 that can be made to go with a crowd.' " 
 
 Edgerly did not at once make connections, but felt around 
 a few seconds, till he picked up the clue, and answered out of 
 a rather sour smile, "You mean can not be made to go with 
 some crowds !" 
 
 Lyon gave full vent to his yodle. He felt like a boy that 
 had been obliged to keep still in church, getting all the noise 
 he could out of his freedom. " 'Twas as improper as a mon- 
 key and hand-organ in the Supreme Court! You couldn't 
 have shocked those fellows more if you had told them it was 
 their duty to take turns playing the clown in the circus ! It'll 
 take most of them the rest of the year to find out whether 
 their champagne was doped, or it all happened! 
 
 "Seriously though," he continued, after the spasm had 
 passed, "some time or other that sort of thing has got to come, 
 as sure as the old earth keeps on turning." 
 
 Then, as they stopped in front of Edgerly's house, Lyon 
 added : — "But you don't get ahead arguing with an iceberg. 
 It's only a question of how long it will take it to melt." 
 
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 XII 
 THE DOOR OF HOPE 
 
 "Whether the world is getting closer together or pulling 
 wider apart, depends upon the number of us that shake 
 ourselves free from handicaps, so that we can count for 
 all we are worth in the common interest." 
 
 FOR the first three days following the Armory meeting 
 Kissinger was in the state of mind of a life-long pros- 
 pector who had at last struck pay dirt. The future was in 
 his hands. It was simply a matter of detail. 
 
 A German restaurant not far from the Avery building was 
 a rendezvous for men after Kissinger's own heart, and he 
 usually dropped in on his way home from the office for a 
 stein of Bairisches, with an incidental flyer in philosophy. 
 He burst upon the group Monday evening, with such a con- 
 fident program of practical politics, in place of the usual 
 transcendental poetry, that his change of base had some of 
 the same effect on them which Graham had exerted upon 
 him. Instead of talking abstract theory, he gave them a 
 prophetic description of the necessary workings of Graham's 
 plan. He had its application figured out as a sure geometrical 
 progression, both in time and space. 
 
 Kissinger did not usually set the pace in these cross-plane- 
 tary runs. He was rather more used to the position of time- 
 keeper or referee. The surprise was not chiefly, however, in 
 his taking the lead, nor in his^sanguine tone. 'The indicative, 
 or the imperative, never the subjunctive, was parliamentary 
 in these symposiums, and the unwritten law contained an- 
 other clause, seldom honored in the breach ; namely, the less 
 demonstrable the proposition the more dogmatic the asser- 
 tion. 
 
 But accustomed as they were to course at will over every 
 field of human speculation, these enthusiasts were not pre- 
 pared to hear Kissinger read the specific doom of his own 
 company. There had always been a sort of tacit understand- 
 ing that if particulars had to be used as terms of the argu- 
 ments, they were merely algebraic signs, and did not mean 
 that anything invidious was to be alleged of an individual 
 
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 X or y; nor that, if there had been, any intermeddUng with 
 other people's private affairs was contemplated. 
 
 Obernitz, a reporter on the Volksblatt, was the first to draw 
 the practical moral, and to throw it back upon Kissinger as 
 a personal problem. "That sounds all very well. It's the way 
 we long have sought, so far as words go. But if you believe 
 it, Kissinger, what business have you any longer with the 
 Avery Company? You are Adjutant of the regiment that is 
 holding the first line of defense. You put in your whole fight- 
 ing time and strength defeating your own wishes and princi- 
 ples and predictions. If you mean what you have been say- 
 ing, you're an infidel till you act accordingly. It's up to you 
 to quit this treason to your own cause, and get out and hustle 
 the rest of your life with Graham." 
 
 Happily for Kissinger the sparring was lively, and two or 
 three of the group at once countered on Obernitz with the 
 same argwmentum ad hoTninem. The Volksblatt had a large 
 circulation among working people, but it was never known 
 to support a proposition which employers in general opposed. 
 It was doing its best to discredit the Graham movement. 
 That very morning it had run an editorial which the debaters 
 denounced as final proof that it was an enemy of democracy. 
 It was betraying the people's cause to work for such a paper. 
 
 Along this line Obernitz was pushed so hard that Kissin- 
 ger was forgotten, and unobserved he presently went his 
 way. 
 
 At the same time, this rude awakening marked a longer 
 step toward self-discovery than the exhilaration which the 
 Armory meeting had stimulated. As he boarded his train 
 Kissinger was saying to himself: "I have only been in a 
 parachute after all, dangling a little lower in the clouds than 
 I was before. It isn't terra firma till it will bear one's 
 weight." 
 
 The reaction did not carry him quite back to his former 
 fatalistic position. He had got beyond acquiescence that 
 nothing can be done. Though the element of resolution was 
 entirely lacking in his new ideas, though they did not con- 
 verge upon a change of his own actions, they brought into 
 focus a picture of feasible general action, in which, however, 
 he could not yet find a place for himself. 
 
 Unsupported by a stronger will, Kissinger was hesitant and 
 helpless. He could execute another's plan. He could pro- 
 
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 pose one for another to adopt. Every detail would be prompt 
 and clear. He often submitted to Mr. Lyon alternative 
 schemes, each carried out with such minuteness that his chief 
 would choose between them instantly, and would have little 
 occasion to modify the specifications. To assume the respon- 
 sibility of decision, however, was another matter. 
 
 Kissinger had so long acted only upon orders, that he dared 
 not trust his own judgment until it had been endorsed by a 
 higher authority. He had gone so far as to profess his faith 
 in a pohcy and a program. He accepted it as concrete truth, 
 not merely as abstract principle. He even welcomed the half- 
 clarified perception that it was no truth for himself until he 
 could do some of it ; but here the light failed. 
 
 Kissinger did not admit that he had argued himself to a 
 standstill. He would have been more at odds with the world 
 than ever if he had recognized a deadlock. Although the new 
 insight made an end of ignoring the collision between his 
 occupation and his ideals, and although nothing was visible 
 that promised a change in his position, yet he somehow felt 
 that he was making progress. He thought of Bunyan's hero, 
 after he had seen the way but had not resolved to start. He 
 thought of the rich young man who was directed to find eter- 
 nal life by giving all he had to charity, and casting his lot 
 with the wandering teacher. He thought, with suddenly in- 
 spired worldly-wise shrugs and sneers, of the smug doctrine of 
 the mobility of labor ; but on the whole he reassured himself 
 that he would move, and was moving, and that his rate of 
 movement was rather commendable, or at all events that his 
 detection of the traditional under-estimate of the difficulty of 
 moving entitled him to credit for the equivalent of moving. 
 
 On the other hand there was no escape from two facts : — 
 the Avery Company represented everything that the new 
 democracy opposed, and he was the Company's servant. Yet 
 he was less baffled by the problem of finding a position not 
 open to the same objection, than by the difficulty of recon- 
 ciling himself to separation from the Company. His case 
 against it was thoroughly impersonal. Kissinger admitted to 
 himself that if Graham's ideals could be realized tomorrow 
 he would ask from the Company nothing better for himself 
 than he had enjoyed from the beginning. Pie was interested 
 in improving his own condition only in the sense that, as he 
 saw it, the prime minister of a king was inferior, other things 
 
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 being equal, to the prime minister of a tribune of the people. 
 He frankly confessed to himself that it would be not only 
 out-of-date bombast, but out-of-character pretense, if he should 
 affect toward his old employers any of the fabulous Roman 
 sentiment, "What's banished, but set free from daily contact 
 with the things I loathe I" 
 
 AA'hatever might have been the chances that Kissinger would 
 resolve the situation alone, he was not left to the experiment. 
 For the twentieth time Obemitz went to Graham next morn- 
 ing in search of a "story," and in the course of the interview 
 Graham's allusion to his need of helpers led up to the mention 
 of Kissinger. There might be nothing in it, but they agreed 
 that no harm could be done by a talk \nth him. When the 
 suggestion was first brought to Kissinger, however, his obli- 
 gations to the Company seemed to veto his personal inclinar 
 tions. He said that such a meeting was impossible unless he 
 first resigned his position. He could hardly enter and leave 
 the strike headquarters without being recognized, and there 
 was little probability that in the present state of public sen- 
 timent the incident could be kept from the newspapers. 
 Whether he was supposed to be a spy, or an informer, or the 
 bearer of a feeler from the Company, the complications would 
 be too serious to be risked. 
 
 Graham had not intended to be understood as proposing a 
 meeting at his office, but on some neutral ground, and under 
 circumstances that would seem accidental. Through further 
 mediation of the reporter, whom both knew to be reliable, 
 they agreed later in the season to be on the path bordering 
 the lagoon inlet south of the German building in Jackson 
 Park, at two o'clock of a Saturday afternoon. There was 
 safety in such publicity, as there was only the remotest chance 
 that either would be recognized, and none whatever that both 
 would be known by the same people. Besides, a few min- 
 utes' casual conversation in such a place, even if it were ob- 
 served, would have no significance. 
 
 Graham not only remembered Kissinger, from chance en- 
 counters in groups of labor leaders before the strike, but in 
 advance of Obernitz' latest reports he had been sufficiently 
 informed to schedule the Avery executive as border territory. 
 Graham divided the business population into three groups; 
 first, those who do no thinking outside the routine of their 
 
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 occupations ; second, those who rate business as grab, and take 
 the game as it is, on the chance of sometime being among the 
 lucky ones to get the rich pickings; third, those who are on 
 principle disgusted with the system, and would quit it or re- 
 form it if they could. He had no doubt that Kissinger was 
 in the third class, but he realized that it would be a much 
 harder problem to get effective action out of this last class 
 than to make theoretical converts from the first to the third. 
 
 Kissinger was so wedded to habit, and so loyally conscien- 
 tious, that after they had stopped in a secluded spot on the 
 sunny slope of the terrace, and had stretched out on the turf, 
 he made the first approaches to the vital question. He began 
 by protesting that it must be considered a purely personal in- 
 terview, with no bearing whatever on the campaign between 
 the strikers and the company. 
 
 Graham met him quickly with the response, "We won't 
 misunderstand each other, Mr. Kissinger. I take it to mean 
 simply that if we were astral bodies we should hover in the 
 same plane?" 
 
 This way of putting it was neither quite direct enough, nor 
 in a figure sufficiently familiar, to suggest a proper reply. 
 Graham was one of the men, however, who accelerate other 
 people's mental action, and make them surprise themselves 
 with unexpected conclusions. Seeming to take agreement for 
 granted, he assumed the initiative without waiting for an 
 answer. "In other words, you must remember, Mr. Kissin- 
 ger, that I could no more afford to have our talk misinter- 
 preted than you could. If it should be known that we had 
 approached each other, it might easily be said that I was 
 weakening, and trying to find a way to hedge. I need pro- 
 tection against that thought in your mind too, as much as 
 you do against the possibility that I may suspect you of will- 
 ingness to give the Company away. Now let us put both 
 these ideas aside. Let us say nothing about the strike at all. 
 If I believed you were the kind of man who would betray 
 your employers, I should have no use for you ; and if I were 
 looking no further than the mere issue with your Company 
 it wouldn't be worth my while to talk about any goods that 
 you have a right to deliver. I am after something much more 
 important than that, and I will come to it in a minute." 
 
 The man's genuineness was even more transparent in such 
 a face-to-face talk than when he addressed an audience. Kis- 
 
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 singer did not need to be disarmed, but he was immediately 
 reassured, and had no more compunctions about waiting for 
 developments. 
 
 "It would be mere guesswork to talk about numbers," con- 
 tinued Graham, "until we have some way to make an actual 
 count ; but every body who has taken the trouble to keep his 
 eyes and ears open knows that discontent with our economic 
 system is not confined to wage-earners. There isn't a rank in 
 the business or political scale, from bank messenger to Chief 
 Magistrate, which hasn't its quota of representatives who 
 might be loosely termed socialists. That is, they knuckle to 
 the present order of things because they can't help it. They 
 have all sorts of grievances against it, from superficial to 
 radical ; but a lot of them believe it is a pretty virulent case 
 of blood poisoning. Some of them have no theory of a way 
 to better things, beyond demanding the general rule of the 
 square deal. Others see that new principles have got to be 
 injected into the system before it will be very much im- 
 proved. But with all these men, except one in a thousand 
 perhaps, bread and butter have the last word. If these people 
 could follow their own instincts they wouldn't let things alone 
 another minute. They would ask no better occupation than 
 social surgery. But they have got to live, and that's the end 
 of it. I figure that there are thousands of first-rate men who 
 are reformers at heart, but they can see no way to finance their 
 affiliations. If the dollar question could be disposed of, it 
 wouldn't take them very long to make the proverb read, 
 'Where there's a way there's a will.' I count you in that class, 
 Mr. Kissinger." 
 
 With more ring in his voice than usual, Kissinger answered 
 promptly, "If you had asked me that question within forty- 
 eight hours after the .Vrmory meeting, I should have said 
 yes, without turning a hair; but now I am not so sure of 
 myself. It would cost me a. good many different kinds of 
 wrench to break away from the connections I have made in 
 more than twenty years. I know just what to expect where 
 I am. I fit there. Perhaps I can make as much impression 
 after all in the line of my social theories in my old place as 
 I could anywhere el.se. Perhaps it is impractical to count on 
 reforming business in one man's lifetime, and after all I'm 
 not sure that a man is best placed to help reform when he's 
 on the oul.^ide. Suppose I could get into a business that was 
 
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 run according to my ideas. Wouldn't the same reasoning 
 that pushed me into it drive me to look for further trouble 
 bucking against the deeper evils of the world? If we should 
 get our economics on a moral basis, there would still be all the 
 other pains, and sorrows, and accidents, and disappointments 
 of life, that we can't touch. Wouldn't it be just as practical 
 for me to retire to a desert, and flock all alone by myself, or 
 commit suicide, because the world is a crazy affair anyhow 
 and I can't help it, as it would be to throw up the work that 
 I can do well and launch out on a doubtful experiment? Sup- 
 pose I have another twenty years of work ; is the world likely 
 to be any better, at the end of that time, for anything I can 
 do in another place, than it would be if I kept on with the 
 Company?" 
 
 "That's easy," Graham answered, in his most energetic 
 manner. "The world is always better off when one more man 
 concludes peace with himself. No single one of us is going 
 to star in the United States Census, whatever he does or leaves 
 undone. He can make neither a mountain nor a cavern of 
 himself. But the world is composed of these minute units 
 after all, and whether the world is getting closer together or 
 pulling wider apart depends on the number of us that shake 
 ourselves free from handicaps, so that we can count for all 
 we are worth in the common interest. From nine o'clock till 
 four every day you do more to perpetuate the system of ex- 
 ploitation than you can offset for democracy in the rest of 
 your twenty-four hours. We don't ordinarily consider it 
 much of a puzzle to fix the standing of a man when he is run- 
 ning behind at that rate." 
 
 Because Kissinger was convinced but not persuaded, he 
 could find nothing more to say. Graham waited long enough 
 to satisfy himself that it was not a case for argument, but for 
 impulse, and then he rapidly sketched his plans for putting 
 his democratic propaganda on a permanent basis. He de- 
 scribed an educational undertaking that combined features of 
 a press bureau, and university extension, and correspondence 
 study for wage earners. He explained that he had intended to 
 develop this work regardless of the results of the Avery strike, 
 and to continue such strikes for their educational value, what- 
 ever the economic outcome. He showed how the plan of in- 
 structing working men was to be combined with systematic 
 pressure upon employers, on the one hand, and upon the poli- 
 
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 ticians on the other, to make room for labor's share of repre- 
 sentation both in business and in law-making. On its active 
 side it was to be a clearing-house of labor interests. It would 
 not set up a theory of social organization, beyond the funda- 
 mental principle that wage-earners have interests which are 
 not sufficiently protected at present, and that concerted action 
 by wage earners is the only means of getting fair recognition 
 for their share in the economic ])rocesR. The bureau must 
 have branches for half a dozen different nationalities which 
 could be reached effectively only in their mother-tongue. The 
 enterprise was not a mere temporary expedient, but was to be- 
 come a fixture among our economic and political institutions. 
 
 Then Graham stated briefly the financial standing of the 
 project. He would himself guarantee the working capital, 
 and expansion of the scope of the bureau would be provided 
 for by holding and increasing the present membership. The 
 small fees would secure the publications and pay the expenses 
 of local organization. 
 
 "Now, Mr. Kis.>^inger," he concluded, "neither of us is in 
 a position to commit hininelf absolutely on a matter of this 
 importance. I simply want to put before you a tentative 
 proposition. Entirely apart from this democratic crusade, I 
 must have a permanent Chicago office for my western busi- 
 ne.-s. I see no reason, however, why the agent in charge of 
 that office could not at the same time be the executive officer 
 of this bureau. He could then have his share both in experi- 
 menting practically mth the principle of labor representation 
 on the business side, and he could spread the theory in the 
 educational campaign. He would not be responsible for the 
 plans in either case, except as one among many; but chiefly 
 for carrying out policies which I should adopt with my di- 
 rectors. In that respect it would be very much like your pres- 
 ent position. Your experience with the Avery Company, and 
 your direct touch with the Germans, are the two elements that 
 would make you valuable on the basis of your fundamental 
 social theories. I am starting east tonight for a few speeches 
 in the Ma.ssachusetts campaign. I may be gone two weeks. 
 I simply a.sk you to decide in that time whether you would 
 consider a proposition to take one or both of these positions, 
 provided I could satisfy you that you would lose nothing 
 financially by leaving the Avery Company." 
 
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 Very little more was said on either side, and with the un- 
 derstanding that they would arrange through Obernitz for 
 another meeting after his return, Graham hurried away 
 through the amphitheatre toward the Sixty-first street station. 
 
 Kissinger crossed the boulevard, and walked south along 
 the lake front. He was not the first theorist whose fine-spun 
 systems had buckled when tested by the weight of a trial. He 
 believed still, but he was shaken in his assumption that his 
 beliefs had the carrying power he had supposed. He began 
 to compare himself with a man who had spent his life design- 
 ing trusses to span a stream, but had paid no attention to the 
 piers. The call to risk himself upon his own constructions 
 forced attention to the subject of adequate supports. 
 
 It was one of those plausible Spring days which would as- 
 sure a stranger to the capricious climate that Summer had 
 taken possession. Kissinger stopped on the bridge by the side 
 of the Caravels, seating himself on the parapet and dallying 
 with the query whether Columbus' adventure was really more 
 precarious than Graham's proposal. Then he wandered 
 shoreward along the boulevard to the extreme park limit. 
 While hesitating whether to return by the same route, or to 
 circle the lower end of the park, he stood inviting the gentle 
 fanning of the breeze from the lake. He gradually reversed 
 his position, till the broad stretches of awakening verdure 
 made the half of the picture on his left, while the pall of 
 smoke that filled the upper quarter on the right took from im- 
 agination all excuse for effort in construing the harbor en- 
 trance as the jaws of the pit. 
 
 A few days earlier Kissinger would have felt that he was 
 doing a man's part if he had poetized the contrast into a sym- 
 bolic expression of the difference between life as it should be 
 and as it is. With Graham's realness still clutching him, he 
 hadn't the face so to dignify child's play, and his more virile 
 thought kept breaking into his passive contemplation with 
 the impish question, "Yes, but what does it mean for me?" 
 
 It was not true that Kissinger was hiding behind his wife. 
 He was too much of a man for that. He knew that if he 
 could manage himself, he could easily take care of the other 
 obstacles. Still he frankly dreaded the unavoidable family 
 discussion, in case he should decide to take the plunge. He 
 did wish that he could have his wife's help in settling his 
 mind, but he had long ago given up that recourse. They 
 
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 could talk only about utterly indifferent or perfectly obvious 
 subjects. 
 
 Kissinger would have respected his wife's differences from 
 him in opinion if he could have tolerated the grounds on 
 which her opinions rested. The fact that nothing which he 
 regarded as important had a similar rating in Mrs. Kissinger's 
 mind, and that the things which seemed to her essential had 
 for him simply the value of trifles, left as alternatives either 
 constant friction or exchange merely of the most colorless 
 and commonplace ideas. He always felt humiliated when- 
 ever he and his \vife disagreed, and even more so when he 
 was obliged to insist upon his own view than when he yielded 
 to hers. In neither case did the outcome represent arrival 
 at a common judgment. It was a mere giving way by one 
 to the other, for no reason that was regarded as sufficient by 
 the acquiescing party. Kissinger was too chivalrous to be 
 comfortable in requiring concessions from his wife, and in 
 their case, therefore, the law that without concessions there 
 can be no partnership had resulted in reducing their married 
 life to a drearily empty alliance. 
 
 From babyhood Elsie had been their one effective bond of 
 union. However their own interests were drawing them 
 apart, their common devotion to the child had always been a 
 stronger factor. Their views of life necessarily converged 
 upon very different ideas about Elsie's interests, yet Kissinger 
 had usually been able to convince himself that a mother's 
 judgment about a daughter has the better claims, and he had 
 seldom felt bound to go far in urging his dissenting opinions. 
 
 Although Elsie had been absent for several weeks on an 
 eastern visit with Hester Kinzie, she unconsciously helped her 
 father to tide over a difficult evening. The incident of the 
 afternoon embarrassed him as though he were harboring a 
 guilty secret. Mrs. Kissinger was not at home when he re- 
 turned, but she arrived just at the dinner hour, and her prat- 
 tle about Elsie's visit, and the letter that had come from her 
 after Mr. Kissinger had left home that morning, was a wel- 
 come cue for dismissing less agreeable things and getting all 
 the sunshine possible out of their one common interest. 
 
 After dinner, instead of turning to the evening paper, Kis- 
 singer insisted that his wife should read the letter aloud. She 
 assented, on condition that he would hear it to the end with- 
 out comment, and would discuss it as a whole afterwards. He 
 
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 accepted the terms, and after he had lighted his cigar Mrs. 
 Kissinger read with as much sympathy as though she had 
 written the letter herself : — 
 "My best beloved Ones: — 
 
 "Hester says it's only the Boston altitude, and I would get used to it 
 in time; but looking inward at any rate I'm growing wilder-eyed the 
 longer it lasts. 
 
 ' ' We have scratched the surface, from the Cambridge elms to Plymouth 
 Rock; and we have had some deeper glimpses too, for there is no doubt 
 that the family altars of the Arlingtons and the Beacons, as well as the 
 Hartleys, are safely within the Holy of Holies. 
 
 ' ' Of course the mysteries are not solemnized very elaborately between 
 seasons, but that leaves the neophyte with a little self-assertion, instead of 
 completely overawed, as would surely be the case under sudden introduc- 
 tion to the full ritual. 
 
 ' ' We have been in the presence of all the extant antiquities and local 
 peculiarities celebrated in song and story, from Old South Church to baked 
 beans, and codfish, and clams in a dozen lightning change characters. The 
 ruins are as authentic as restorations ever dare to be, but the menu is no 
 longer much more to the manner born than a shopping procession in front 
 of Marshall Field 's is made up of aborigines. So far as things go, half a 
 dozen pairs of contrasts that I can think of between different parts of our 
 piebald Chicago, are as extreme as any difference I have noticed between 
 the two cities as a whole ; but it 's the people ! The hysterics of streets in 
 the old part are really something to be grateful for. They afford me 
 instant relief. They seem to be saying, in the only unstudied language one 
 finds, that once upon a time the inhabitants did as they felt, and the 
 thought that the same may happen again sometimes lasts nearly back to 
 Commonwealth Avenue. 
 
 ' ' The folks keep up a mental action that would register large figures on 
 the cyclometer, but it doesn't seem to be thinking. It is more like a 
 machinery for automatic selection of predigested foods, and the tableware 
 to match. I am sure the confirmation questions must start with the danger 
 of falling into mortal sin by serving vegetables in the soup tureen, or 
 drinking hock and claret from the same kind of glass. I infer, too, that 
 when spiritual unction is nearly ready to descend, the moral chasm sepa- 
 rating a Websterian from a Worcesterian pronunciation is opened up in 
 its whole appalling breadth and depth ; and at last, when the sensibilities 
 are in their most plastic state, the veil is lifted and the novice is given a 
 vision of the fall from grace that would be involved in an ungoverned 
 exclamation of surprise, when a vaguely questioning contraction of the 
 optic muscles would convey the precisely adequate degree of attention. 
 
 "The day's program doesn't seem to leave any place for yourself. 
 You are merely a celebrant reading the appropriate offices. It reminds me 
 of the Delsarte system of expression. It is all right if your breeding has 
 predisposed you to associate postures and sentiments in that way; but 
 what if the Avaunt-and-quit-my-sight passages, for instance, suggest to 
 you only a deaf and dumb lady who has washed her hands and doesn't 
 find a towel? 
 
 "Living on cold-storage emotions doesn't remind me of the upper 
 ether, but of a diving bell and breathing through a tube. Hester and I 
 have developed a set of private signals. When she slowly deflects her chin 
 
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 in my direction till a straight line to the tip of her nose would run at an 
 angle of 25 degrees with her shoulders, and when in that attitude she fixes 
 on me a heart-stirring look of mingled warning and appeal, which the spec- 
 tators are too polite to notice, but which they take in all the same, as say- 
 ing plainer than words, ' Child of wrath ! Let us beware lest we fail to be 
 duly impressed by the profound import of all this propriety! ' — when she 
 does all that, it means a wink. The rest of the code is equally elaborate. 
 
 ' ' On the outside, Hester fits into the function as though she didn 't know 
 any better, but I see now why she wanted me. When we can let each other 
 know by wireless that we are throwing hand springs in spirit, we take 
 courage from the recollection that we have lived through other similar 
 days and that there will be respite presently in our kimonas. 
 
 ' ' We have seen fifty Boston girls that are the real article. I like them 
 too, and shall take their part hereafter no matter what people say. They 
 can 't help it. They 're genuine inside at the start. They have good blood 
 and could be counted on to better the record of their ancestors if they had 
 a chance, but it's the environment. They're perfectly healthy modern 
 girls, and to cramp them into their deportment must hurt in the beginning 
 as much as it does when they stuff their physical culture bodies into the 
 fancy ball costumes of Louis-Quatorze beauties. By watching specimens 
 at the different stages, from sixteen to forty-five, I have decided that the 
 asbestos veneer spread on by their education is carnivorous. It eats its 
 way in from the outside with greater or less rapidity according to circum- 
 stances, till at last the arteries are encased in it, and it acts like the ice on 
 the coil of tubes in the water-cooler. 
 
 ' ' There 's another side to that, too. Something that I haven 't stumbled 
 on must upset that calculation when these girls marry, because they do 
 make perfectly fine husbands out of the most depressing material. I have 
 turned with fond recollection to our letter carrier and gas inspector as 
 antidotes for these youths in their twenties. Some of them are said to 
 have been the delegates to take their year's beating from Yale in various 
 events, but they appear to be too far out of training now for anything 
 more strenuous than selecting haberdashery. If they were as precocious 
 as the stories say, perhaps nature evens up matters by exacting a lifeless 
 decade or so before they recover their grip. At present they seem to have 
 no surplus left over from the preoccupation of retouching their own men- 
 tal photographs. 
 
 ' ' The Hartleys are dears. They show what all tliis was when it was in 
 the making, when it came from the inside, when it didn't have to be put 
 on like blinders on a thoroughbred. They are interested in everything, 
 from Bible classes to prize fights, — at least I accidentally discovered that 
 he goes that far in the way of keeping up his information, — but every 
 thing about them seems to be in the only proper proportion to everything 
 else. If they are serious, they are gay, and studious, and sportive, and 
 sympathetic, and restful, and busy and affectionate enough to make each 
 part of it seem just perfect. They never make me uncomfortable, yet 
 whenever I am with them I have a feeling that it would be nice to repent 
 of something, if I only knew what. They keep me thinking that perhaps 
 people will all sometime learn to make life as beautiful as they do. 
 
 ' ' I don 't know whether I understand at all what architecture means, 
 but the other day as I was looking at the original drawings of Trinity, the 
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 design, it would be a true picture in stone of the Hartleys as I have seen 
 them. 
 
 "But we have only to make the short run to Channing's in Brooklin© to 
 see the father undone in the son. In looks he will be his father 's double 
 at the same age, but unless he mends his ways that will be the end of the 
 resemblance. He might as well be a grub-staker burrowing for gold ; only 
 in his case it 's politics. He says he is practicing law merely to keep him- 
 self out of mischief when he can't be laying wires that will end in the 
 Senate. I call him an instance of the reclaimed incorrigible, but his wife 
 says he is no better than a Chicago man. 
 
 ' ' Two or three letters ago I began to tell you about the other half, as 
 we had seen it from the Settlement. We are not through, but it's a long 
 story, and I don't believe you would care to have me put more of it on 
 paper. 
 
 "It is getting to be second nature with me to think, talk, dream and 
 scribble philosophy — if that is what you will call this letter. I feel it 
 coming stronger. I will let you off with this much now, but I have caught 
 the infection, and just as likely as not it will become chronic. You must 
 expect progressive worse. 
 
 "With lots of kisses to my dear both ELSIE." 
 
 Following the reading, for seconds that may have run into 
 minutes, the father and mother merely met each other's si- 
 lently inquisitive smiles. Mrs. Kissinger's patience first 
 reaching its limits, she prompted her husband with the gentle 
 spur, "Tell me what you think, Walther." 
 
 "You know," he hesitated, "Boston means little to me but 
 State Street. I wouldn't risk an opinion beyond that." 
 
 "Yes," persisted Mrs. Kissinger, "but on general principles, 
 does it sound as though the visit would be of any use?" 
 
 "Why, she is evidently getting some new ideas," Kissinger 
 reflected. "Whether she is right or not in her estimates, she 
 has got her mind on discriminations that are worth making. 
 I have no doubt it will help her look with sharper eyes on 
 Chicago people." 
 
 "But that wasn't what I meant exactly," returned his wife. 
 "Will it help her socially? Will she be any more likely to 
 take advantage of her chances? You know a girl can't afford 
 to keep on too long regardless of her prospects. I had thought 
 she might meet some one in Boston who would impress her 
 more than any one seems to have here." 
 
 Although Kissinger was not often humorously inclined, 
 he could not refrain from recurring innocently to the very 
 strong impression that Mr. and Mrs. Hartley had evidently 
 made upon Elsie I 
 
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 "You are too exasperating, Walther," Mrs. Kissinger 
 pouted. "You ought to realize that it makes no difiference 
 what Elsie thinks of the present generation of pilgrim grand- 
 fathers. You are never willing to admit that we are taking 
 our duties too lightly about getting her a husband." 
 
 "^ly observation has been," Kissinger submitted, rather 
 tangentially, "that in this country at any rate, the less the 
 parents show their hand before they hear from the young 
 people the safer they are from putting their foot in it." 
 
 Kissinger was aware that this reflection would touch a ten- 
 der spot, but he had not much hope that his wife would be 
 decoyed from pursuit of its substance by the provocation it 
 gave to her jealous zeal for form. He g-uessed that Mrs. Kis- 
 singer was looking for an opening to introduce a conference 
 about several men who were within the radius of her hopes or 
 fears. He was not only in a partially contrite mood for the 
 errant conduct of the afternoon, but he foresaw that he would 
 not remain constant enough to block off further temptation. 
 Acting as his own confessor, and assuming occasion for both 
 absolution and indulgence, he resigned himself to the unwel- 
 come discussion, as the most convenient form of penance. 
 
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 XIII 
 
 THE RENEGADE 
 
 "AH the men whose brains are not thicker than their necks 
 will come to it sooner or later. Some of them still get their 
 fun going West to kill bear, but as a pure sporting propo- 
 sition coming East to rescue the unconscious rich from 
 themselves has a sure shade." 
 
 AT first Hester Kinzie's interest in Elsie had been merely 
 a renewal of obligation under a debt of gratitude in- 
 curred in his early manhood by her father. When young 
 Kinzie came a stranger to Chicago, Mrs. Kissinger's parents 
 had been timely and effectual friends. Not only had they 
 smoothed his way to social recourse from the dismal isolation, 
 or more dreadful promiscuity, which would have been the 
 alternatives in those earlier days, but the business connections 
 which enabled Kinzie in a few brilliant years to take his place 
 among the richest men of the town would hardly have been 
 formed without the help of Mr. Wells. When the reverses 
 came which hastened his benefactor's death, Mr. Kinzie was 
 in Australia, and he knew nothing of the difficulties till it 
 was too late to offer assistance. After his return he was able 
 to be of more service than he permitted Mrs. Wells to know, 
 in recovering something from the ruins of the property ; but 
 his sense of obligation was quickened by the incident, and 
 he later cultivated the sentiment also in his daughter. 
 
 During their irregular visits to Chicago, in her childhood, 
 Hester gravely took for granted a partnership with her father 
 in a sort of formal protectorate over Elsie. The difference in 
 their ages favored this juvenile affectation. Only within the 
 last few years had the two girls begun to be drawn together by 
 mutual attraction. Neither was fully aware that a change 
 was going on, but in a short time the stilted acquaintance was 
 merged into spontaneous affection. 
 
 Superficially Elsie was the active, virile element in the 
 friendship, and a compensation for Hester's negative gentle- 
 ness. The precise contrary was the underlying truth. Elsie 
 was buoyant, and vivacious and insatiably interested ; but in- 
 stead of proving constancy of will and steadiness of purpose. 
 
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THE RENEGADE 
 
 her animation merely reflected her guileless vagrancy, and 
 her tractability by any sort of alluring stimulus. 
 
 Hester was externally placid. She had only rare moments 
 of effervescence. This was not because she was dull or tired 
 or cold. She had tested a range of reactions far beyond El- 
 sie's experience, yet there M'as not a sated fiber in her body. 
 For her own consciousness every nerve was an e string; but 
 although a beginner she was too well trained to permit a note 
 to be strident. From her outlook upon life not an Autumn 
 tint was in sight. Even the storms were benisons. But some- 
 where she had picked up the clue that life is a palimpsest, and 
 that the surface readings are mere minor flourishes upon the 
 deeper lines that all say "Problem!" and "Mystery!" She 
 had found a life centre for herself in the implied challenge. 
 She had no desire to be known as learned, and she did not 
 care to delve very far into the lores that had made the reputa- 
 tion of scholars, but she found her animus in the incessant 
 provocation to pry beyond accepted versions into the re- 
 moter meanings of familiar things. Her appetite for life was 
 undoyed simply because she was not dependent for variety 
 upon a succession of new tastes. None of the old sensations 
 had lost their zest. If she was not constantly detecting fresh 
 flavors, she was sure they were playing hide and seek with 
 her. Instead of finding the world in herself, she was trying 
 to find herself in the world. Her manner of mildly amused 
 serenity was not passiveness. It was merely a decorous, if 
 withal a coquettish veil for vigilant scrutiny of life, and for 
 the resolved unwomanliness of forging toward a fulcrum for 
 moving life, instead of submitting without recourse to the 
 decrees of tradition. 
 
 Hester's mental attitude was not apparent, because its be- 
 trayals were mostly inquisitive rather than assertive. If she 
 ventured to express secessionist ideas, they were usually in 
 the form of questions, or at most of playful satire. In Johna- 
 than Edwards' time her skepticism would no doubt have been 
 charged to belated childish forwardness. It was in reality 
 one of the active phases of her maturing sense of responsi- 
 bility. 
 
 Without her knowledge or consent, Hester had been fore- 
 doomed to the vocation of wealth. While her father had 
 never caught other views of the social basis of morality than 
 the detached rays which real life perforce refracts upon the 
 
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 most opaque individualistic philosophy, he had done his best 
 to teach his daughter all that he himself understood about 
 the duties of wealth. As she was about to become her own 
 agent in performing these duties, she found herself reopening 
 the questions, What are they? and Why are they? 
 
 Hester was so much a child of the' present that, without 
 recognizing many of the sources from which she drew the 
 opinion, she had reasoned out for herself that "ought" is 
 merely a guide-post to the directions in which our actions 
 might do other people good, while "ought not" is a warning 
 of directions in which our actions would do other people harm. 
 When she had gone so far, it was a short step to the inference 
 that the duties of wealth must be discovered by finding out 
 just how different kinds of actions connected with wealth 
 affect, well or ill, near or remote human beings. She was not 
 aware that she had worked her way back close to the founda- 
 tions of social philosophy. Not as a technical scientific pur- 
 suit, however, nor as a mere intellectual fad, but as a conscien- 
 tious preparation to act her part with the most good and 
 least harm to others, she was quietly practicing the art of 
 tracing cause and effect in all sorts of human actions. 
 
 If this search was worth while for herself, Hester thought, 
 why would it not be the proper initiation into life for every- 
 body? She did not believe that people generally took very- 
 long views about the consequences of their acts, nor that they 
 cared so very much about the consequences, except for them- 
 selves. For this reason she was forewarned when she found 
 in the legal, or moral, or social codes, or the economic systems, 
 or the religious doctrines that people had built up, greater or 
 lesser elements which provoked her active doubt. What else 
 could be expected of the narrow and selfish people that we find 
 ourselves to be? For the same reason, she reflected, the 
 sophisticated attitude, both toward our own individual im- 
 pulses and toward public institutions, is not standing in awe 
 of them but in judgment over them. 
 
 All this reasoning was a sort of by-conscious process in 
 Hester's mind, and it rather stimulated than retarded her 
 complaisant avidity of life. She divulged her speculations, 
 even to Elsie, only in the concrete ; but two people cannot be 
 constantly saying to each other, "This is better or worse, truer 
 or falser than that," without gradualljr coming to an open 
 agreement or disagreement about the implied standards of 
 
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 judgment. Since resigning her precocious protectorate over 
 Elsie, Hester had neither in thought nor in act assumed the 
 more priggish role of proselytizer ; yet the mentor and the 
 guide were rather privileged than submerged in the friend. 
 The two girls could not have selected each other if their kin- 
 ship of spirit had not been on a high level. Hester did not 
 try to persuade herself that no mission was concealed in her 
 affection for Elsie. It was not a project of conversion, how- 
 ever, but of rescue from perversion. Hester read Mrs. Kissin- 
 ger like an open book, and was sure that Elsie's instincts 
 were truer than her mother's turgid ambitions. She accord- 
 ingly had never a compunction about plotting like a terrorist 
 to secure for Elsie liberty to be herself. 
 
 It was merely a consistent detail in this program for Hester 
 to claim Elsie's company on her latest visit to her father's 
 only sister. Between the houses of Hartley and Lyon there 
 had long been amicable feud over Hester's first allegiance. 
 She did not know in which family she felt the more at home, 
 and she tried to divide her time so evenly between them that 
 no preference would appear in the comparison. 
 
 Channing Hartley advertised no altruistic motives for his 
 share in politics. He neither coined pious phrases, nor pro- 
 tested superior principles. He simply joined a new crowd 
 that settled down to business with the blunt notification to all 
 concerned, "We're in the field to stay until we down the fel- 
 lows who have been 'it' so long they suppose they own Massa- 
 chusetts for good and all." Any one who knew Hartley would 
 be sure that in his own mind there were finer sentiments be- 
 hind this coarse profession of policy ; but he accepted the fact 
 that politics, to amount to anything, must be rough riding, 
 not a Spring review ; and he thought it would be ample time 
 to check up moral values after actual results were in evidence. 
 
 Hartley was entering his auto Sunday evening, after a few 
 moments at his father's, when he recalled something and re- 
 turned to the house. Following their voices to the music 
 room, where Hester and Elsie, in deference to the day, were 
 attempting some passages from the Messiah, he interrupted : — 
 "It just occurred to me, girls, that in the course of your re- 
 searches into the impending poor and the impenitent rich you 
 might care for a side look at politics. I am to preside at a big 
 meeting in Mechanics' Hall Tuesday evening, and your Chi- 
 
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 cago trouble-maker, Graham, will be the chief speaker. If 
 you are interested, Clara will add the matronly dignity, and 
 I will provide seats and escorts." 
 
 The suggestion was caught up so promptly that Hartley 
 was further inspired, "If the species should turn out to be 
 worth studying under the microscope, as well as through the 
 opera glass, come to breakfast with us Wednesday morning. 
 Graham will be there, and may be you will be able to persuade 
 him to be good when he returns to the seat of war." 
 
 "My impression is that he is not a native product," cor- 
 rected Hester. "He is said to be an exotic of rare variety. It 
 would be unwise to miss him though, don't you think, Elsie?" 
 
 "Irrespective of the question whether there are imaginable 
 contingencies in which a Chicago man of high or low degree 
 could fail to afford temporary mitigation in Boston," rumi- 
 nated Elsie aloud, "I should like to shake hands with a real 
 anarchist. Unless his teeth and claws have been drawn, it 
 will be too exciting for anything. Nothing could keep me 
 away Mr. Hartley." 
 
 The personal note was clearest to both girls until the chair- 
 man had finished his opening address. The hall was simply 
 one among many halls, and the audience merely a duplicate 
 of other audiences. The particular issues of the campaign 
 were rather indistinct to Hester and Elsie, but the chairman 
 was a dashing speaker. He evidently knew how to reach his 
 hearers, and if his special guests missed any of the fine shad- 
 ing of his allusions, they more than made up for the failure 
 by their zeal in applauding every winning of applause, and 
 by their prompt signals of congratulation to Mrs. Hartley 
 at each of these passages of her husband's success. 
 
 There was no time to exchange interest for indifference be- 
 fore Graham's personality began to make its own appeal. 
 The vague expectations of a ruffian or a freak were forgotten 
 until the talking-over after reaching home ; and the surprise 
 of a presence so incongruous with reputation enforced atten- 
 tion. 
 
 The speech was in substance the same that Graham had 
 delivered at the Armory meeting, with variations adapted to 
 the local situation. Although the thought did not escape 
 Elsie, it was again the personal that affected her chiefly. To 
 her the speech was an exploit, and the speaker a champion. 
 
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 A mere exhibition of impulsive, dare-devil defiance of hia 
 class-traditions would have been amusing as a spectacle, but 
 not convincing. Graham's apparent plane of action, however, 
 threw the usual motives of men into such sordid shadow that 
 the contrast in his favor was splendid. 
 
 If this personal aspect did not make the chief impression 
 upon Hester, it was not because she observed it less, but be- 
 cause she attended to the wider meanings more. Not that she 
 heard anything strictly new, but impersonated in Graham 
 mere thoughts became vital and spiritual as conviction and 
 effort. The world had predestined this man, like herself, to 
 service in the livery of wealth. He was resisting subjection to 
 the service and seizing its control. He was promoting the 
 service from serfish to knightly. Was this merely a tempo- 
 rary individual digression from the straight and narrow path 
 of general necessity, or had he broken an arbitrary tether, 
 and recovered a liberty that would help others to freedom? 
 Was there anything in his solution that might fit as a key to 
 her own problem ? The question came to her : — If the work- 
 ing of the world's machinery frees some people, without ac- 
 tion of their own, from all concern about the necessities of 
 life, why isn't it the first duty of such people to invest their 
 freedom in working on the problem of ways and means to 
 endow everybody with the necessities of life? 
 
 The breakfast table was under an awning near the west- 
 ern veranda, and Mr. and Mrs. Hartley waited for their guests 
 in a markee, flanked by silver birches, toward the foot of the 
 lawn. Hester and Elsie arrived but a moment in advance 
 of Graham, and after he had been presented Mrs. Hartley, 
 leading the way with Graham toward the breakfast tent, be- 
 gan to furnish conversational pointers by adding that their 
 cousin was at home in Boston, but Miss Kissinger was from 
 Chicago. 
 
 Elsie was ready with the expected demurrer, and main- 
 tained the claim of Chicago to Hester. After a skirmish that 
 was rapid and general, Mrs. Hartley triumphantly appropri- 
 ated the results of its inconclusiveness : — "So you see, Miss 
 Kinzie is not only altogether a Bostonian, but Miss Kissinger 
 herself is almost naturalized." 
 
 "I miLst still beg your pardon, Mrs. Hartley," Elsie re- 
 sisted loyally, "I am neither naturalized nor even domesti- 
 
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 cated. You have no idea of the main force it requires every 
 minute to protect all these decencies of civilization from the 
 scandal of my savage instincts." 
 
 "While we have our logic in working order," interposed 
 Hartley, "we might as well clean it all up in one job, and 
 prove Mr. Graham a Bostonian." 
 
 "If taking the precaution to be born in Ohio, then in a 
 moment of over-confidence risking one's birthright by com- 
 ing to Harvard, and in the nick of time getting back to 
 reality via the crags and peaks of Idaho proves it, there is no 
 need of a contest," was Graham's quick confession. 
 
 "Then you surely know many Boston people?" encouraged 
 the hostess. 
 
 "Whole white-robed choirs of them, Mrs. Hartley," Gra- 
 ham asseverated solemnly. "At least I did, but I fear their 
 faculty of forgetfulness knows what is expected of it. I 
 should probably run into a sharp fall of temperature if I 
 ventured to presume on the past. It is a long way back to 
 '95. Even two fairly serious years in Law would have quite 
 a record to show in the way of effacing eligibility, but the 
 dubious meanwhile leaves no margin for doubt. If anyone 
 dared to admit by-gone acquaintance with such a renegade, 
 the limit would not go beyond your husband's venture ; that 
 is, recognition for politics' sake only." 
 
 In the few hours the two men had been together, they had 
 found a common footing which put them on easj'^ terms. They 
 had agreed on such fundamental matters that they had been 
 able to chaff each other rather roughly over differences about 
 somewhat important details. Even before his display of skill 
 with an audience. Hartley had decided that Graham had in 
 him the material for a national leader. Graham's independ- 
 ence of thought, and courage in action, were no stronger con- 
 firmations of that judgment than his modesty and his playful 
 humor. Hartley said he always deducted a few cubits from 
 his estimate of a man's stature if it turned out that he wasn't 
 big enough to laugh at himself. Meeting Graham on his own 
 ground, Hartley retorted : — ■ 
 
 "I don't really believe the story that you've taken the anti- 
 dress coat vow, Graham." 
 
 "Just as likely as not I may some time have some more 
 evening clothes built," conceded Graham, "if they would save 
 society extra expense for special police. I have no implacable 
 
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 quarrel with them. It's chiefly the terra-alba-frosting people 
 you have to level down to when you wear them." 
 
 The women had been biding their time for luring Graham 
 into talk of his campaign. He avoided it in such company 
 only to the extent of insisting that the advances must be made 
 by others. Mrs. Hartley surmised as much, and threw the 
 fly in the rather glaring hint ; "I though last evening that in 
 time I might learn partially to approve of you in the abstract, 
 Mr. Graham, if it were not for the danger of your convincing 
 my husband." 
 
 "It's the only first-rate substitute for out-door exercise, Mrs. 
 Hartley," returned Graham gaily. "All the men whose 
 brains are not thicker than their necks will come to it sooner 
 or later. Some of them still get their fun going West to kill 
 bear, but as a pure sporting proposition, coming East to res- 
 cue the unconscious rich from themselves has a sure shade." 
 
 "I'm afraid this mixture of idioms is a little beyond us all, 
 Graham," laughed Hartley. "Break it gently, and in home- 
 made terms." 
 
 "If I should be more literal," Graham objected, "I should 
 be talking shop in spite of myself." 
 
 "So much the better," fugued Hartley and the three 
 women, each in a different version. 
 
 "With apologies barred then," consented Graham, "at your 
 order I'll yard-stick and scissor a length of my dry goods. In 
 the first place, I take it everybody with his red corpuscles all 
 right gets more excitement out of a game that contains possi- 
 ble new situations, than out of one in which all the variations 
 are understood and plotted. The money game has been re- 
 duced to a mechanically exact science. Not everybody is com- 
 petent to play it, of course, any more than every one is fit to 
 play chess. But if the people who have the talent for either 
 game want to learn it, and can get a license, and will pay the 
 price, they can make the one about as regular as the other." 
 
 "Then you don't have a chapter of the Down-and-Out Fra- 
 ternity in your part of the world?" punctuated Hartley. 
 
 "Of course we have the scramble between individuals, to 
 strip one another of the wealth that is produced, and this in- 
 troduces uncertainty. On the whole, this confusion is better 
 in the long run than the other extreme of dropping competi- 
 tion, and settling down content to feed on our own fat; just 
 as the blood vendetta is preferable, biologically, to the misery 
 
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 of mere incestuous breeding in and in. As a strictly social 
 proposition, however, we have played the money game to a 
 stalemate. — I'm mixing this chess figure a little, and it 
 musn't be carried too far, but it helps some — The social game 
 has never been played at all, beyond the bare rudiments. It 
 all remains to be worked out, and this gives its superior sport- 
 ing value. To turn back on myself a bit, the really gamy 
 thing that is right ahead is to take hold of our economic in- 
 terests and organize them into full harmony with all the other 
 social interests somewhat as though we had now only check- 
 ers, and were wrestling with the problem of variations that 
 would finally turn out to be chess." 
 
 Hester had thus far hardly joined in the conversation ex- 
 cept with her eyes, or as an occasional monosyllabic echo of 
 one and another. As Graham paused, and no one else vouch- 
 safed a reply, she observed demurely, "It isn't possible, Mr. 
 Graham, that you took down a roll of rather large figured 
 wallpaper, instead of plain drilling?" 
 
 Graham's laugh rippled with the others, but as he seemed 
 to wait for further specifications, Hester added, "In other 
 words, could it not be brought within the reach of a still 
 feebler grade of intelligence?" 
 
 "It's not easy to get one's breath after such a rebuke, Miss 
 Kinzie," faltered Graham. "If I'm as muddy as that, I'm 
 in a bad way, but I'll make one more try. In a word, civilized 
 society has gradually taken on the character of a machine for 
 the manufacture of capital. The machine is not run for the 
 supreme purpose of promoting knowledge, virtue, art, relig- 
 ion, or merely general human comfort. All these are merely 
 incidental and secondary to the single purpose of the machine. 
 Most of the men who engineer the machine don't know this. 
 They think it is under their control, a docile domestic servant, 
 trained to do the bidding of their higher impulses. They 
 think it is malicious libel to lay bare the real situation. It 
 doesn't make any difference how lofty minded men are. 
 Capital either does or does not have the last word. If it does, 
 whether they know it or not, they are committed to a program 
 that consumes men for the sake of producing things. There 
 is going to be a time when political parties will split on the 
 straight issue, 'God or Mammon ;' and when they have got 
 that antithesis far enough into their heads to realize the 
 actual role it plays in human affairs, very likely the pro- 
 
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 gressives will give themselves the grand air of having dis- 
 covered a brand new principle of social cleavage." 
 
 "Let me point you not to use that metaphor in the Massa- 
 chusetts campaign," Hartley interjected half-seriously. "The 
 coroner's verdict might be, 'Didn't know it was loaded with 
 Rum-Romanism-and-Rebellion 1' " 
 
 Graham facetiously crossed himself, but he was thinking 
 less of the warning than of a more effective way of expressing 
 his meaning. 
 
 "If I seem to be talking poetry instead of literal every-day 
 politics," he resumed, "let me recall a parallel case. I have a 
 friend nearly twice my age whose father was a large slave 
 owner in the South before the war. The son is now a farmer 
 in his home state. The first time I visited him there he gave 
 me his theory of the economic weakness of the slave system 
 He said it meant simply clearing more land, to feed more nig- 
 gers, to clear more land, to feed more niggers, to clear 
 more land, and so on in an endless, empty circle. Clear- 
 ing land and feeding niggers was a process that tended 
 to impoverish both, and to keep the people who imagined they 
 were masters of the process from realizing that they too were 
 its slaves. They were not able to get outside of it far enough 
 to take their bearings, and lay their course toward a more 
 profitable purpose. Now my Southern friend's historical an- 
 alysis put me on the track of the radical vice in our business 
 situation. The capitalistic system is simply a disguised repe- 
 tition of the same stupidity. Stripped of all fine phrases, its 
 program in brief is to employ more capital, to employ more 
 labor, to employ more capital to employ more labor, to employ 
 more capital, in an endless series. But the last thinkable 
 term of the process always turns out to be capital, not people. 
 The human beings concerned are not considered as persons, 
 but as labor force, worth what they are worth as producers of 
 capital. The magnificent fellows who are officers of this sys- 
 tem are usually honest when they deny that they are heartless 
 and heedless of their fellow men. There is genuine tragedy 
 between their personal sentiments and the gravitation of the 
 system in which they are satellites. The men who are sup- 
 posed to be the realists par excellence of the modern world, 
 the men who never lose their heads, the men who see things 
 as they are, and act always and only upon evidence, and ac- 
 cording to the evidence, — these men have brought into the 
 
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 world, and are frantically fighting to fasten upon the world, a 
 system of control of which the essential principle is a direct 
 inversion of real values. The highest and best that we know 
 anything about, the last sane reason we can offer for the con- 
 tinuance of the world at all, is the happiness, and prosperity 
 and development of human beings. Everything which is 
 tributary to that is good. Whatever tends to become a substi- 
 tute for that is bad. Our capitalistic system in its present 
 spirit reverses the destiny of humanity. It puts last first and 
 first last. The big thing for men to undertake, therefore, is 
 the subjugation of capital. We have got to redeem our ma- 
 chinery, and run it for all it is worth in the interests of people, 
 and for the production of more machinery only when the 
 interests of people create the demand." 
 
 The monologue passed into lively discussion, and the party 
 had returned to the markee, where the women were resum- 
 ing work on some banners to be included in the scheme of dec- 
 oration for a garden party that was on the program. His wife 
 was so absorbed in the argument that Hartley had been 
 obliged to propose the move ; and after they were comfortably 
 disposed in the new location he reopened the proceedings: — 
 "We were just getting warmed up to the subject. Go ahead, 
 Graham." 
 
 "You have been explicit enough at last, Mr. Graham," Hes- 
 ter deposed by way of supporting the motion, "to give me one 
 or two gleams of comprehension. It is getting a little like 
 calling the culprit by name, however. I feel like throwing 
 myself on the clemency of the court by admitting that when 
 anyone says 'capital' it may include me, though I'm by no 
 means an officer." 
 
 "I feared the worst. Miss Kinzie," returned Graham, with 
 a rather well executed counterfeit of solicitude. "Capital, 
 like other contagions, respects neither youth, beauty nor inno- 
 cence. I had already discovered its marks upon your noble 
 brow, but as you were evidently let late into the plot, it would 
 be unjust to regard you as an original offender." 
 
 Then, with the thought that this personal application 
 barred further argument, Graham began to inspect some of 
 the unfinished work, at the same time taking the most ob- 
 vious line of retreat by moving to discontinue. "To tell the 
 truth," he protested, "there is no stopping place when one 
 
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 starts on this subject ; and I am much more interested in hear- 
 ing your plans for the lawn fete than in listening any longer 
 to my own voice." 
 
 "But we can't let you off so easily, Mr. Graham," urged 
 Mrs. Hartley. "You had not come to the point at all. It was 
 about the sporting proposition." 
 
 "I don't just yes! I remember," stammered Graham. 
 
 "It was about more fun in an improved game. That's easily 
 cleared up, and then no more shop till tonight in Haverhill. 
 To put it briefly, the capitalistic game reminds me of football 
 in the days when mass plays were in their glory. The game 
 was reduced to a dreary minimum of nothing but brute 
 force advancing the ball. It was entirely negligible senti- 
 mentalism to make mention of the life or limb of players, 
 or the happiness of spectators. At last the rule-makers have 
 apparently got a glimmering of the idea that the players are 
 the main thing, not the ball. All the ball is good for is to fur- 
 nish a use for the players' skill, and to mark their success in 
 applying their abilities. With this idea in mind, the prob- 
 lem is to make a game which the players can put themselves 
 into at their best, and out of which they can get the maxi- 
 mum enjoyment, without too much brutalizing of themselves 
 and their friends. The players are to be no longer merely 
 concentrated weight. They are to be men organized just 
 enough to get the best use of their bodies, while keeping them- 
 selves safely within the limits where mind turns the scale 
 against matter. 
 
 "The comparison won't bear too close examination," Gra- 
 ham commented, "but in our financial game 'the interests of 
 capital' take the place of advancing the ball. However hu- 
 manitarian the sentiments of individual capitalists may be, 
 capital as an impersonal interest sets the pace, not capitalists 
 as persons in the full sense ; and they must reach its mark or 
 drop out of the struggle. 
 
 "The most energetic men in modern society have turned 
 the game of life into the capitalistic game. It is something 
 as though the game of baseball had gradually been perverted 
 from its present character to a method of manufacturing balls 
 and bats, and the change had gone so far that the mass of balls 
 and bats in the world was steadily increasing, while freedom 
 to use balls and bats was constantly becoming more re- 
 stricted. 
 
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 "The last play that has been worked out in the capitalistic 
 game is known as 'concentration.' It raises the force of cap- 
 ital to its highest power, but at the same time it shows that 
 unless the rules are changed the game will presently devour 
 the players. Here is where the livelier sport comes in, Mrs. 
 Hartley, and you are probably correct in your suspicion that 
 your husband is the kind of man who is bound to get his 
 share of it." 
 
 The signs that his comparisons had not been wholly suc- 
 cessful kept Graham at his task. 
 
 "I doubt if it is possible to make such a fine distinction 
 very clear in words, till it has dawned on us gradually, after 
 we have formed the habit of occupying the spectators' seats, 
 and looking down on life as disinterested witnesses of the 
 show. The gist of it all, as I have said, is first that capital is 
 merely accumulated material ; second, its proper function in 
 the economy of life is simply and solely to serve as a means 
 for promoting the physical and spiritual well-being of people ; 
 third, by legal fictions that have turned men's heads, this 
 physical stuff, along with privileges to corner more stuff, has 
 been made into a superhuman personality; fourth, this arti- 
 ficial person, capital, is converting the masses of men into 
 drudges to drag its chariot, and the rest into more or less 
 glittering followers celebrating its ghoulish triumph. 
 
 Graham must have abstracted himself from his surround- 
 ings for a moment, and have got into communication with a 
 larger audience, for he seemed to be shaping a passage for a 
 speech when he concluded : — 
 
 "Modern life has been run off into a blind alley by this 
 personification and Caesarization of capital. The next era 
 of democracy has got to be filled up with the ascent of per- 
 sonal interests to the dominant place, and the reduction of 
 capital to its normal function as their tool. The present dem- 
 ocratic problem is to change the working formula of life 
 from 'The interests of capital require this and that of the 
 people,' to 'The interests of people require this and that of 
 capital.' The keenest wits in the world, scattered through all 
 classes of society, have been making out the signs of the 
 times in this same sense. The vast mass of human interests 
 that have been crowded out of place by capitalistic interests, 
 are feeling their way back toward combinations that will re- 
 store the balance. The collision of principles is as sure as 
 
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 fate, and it forces upon modern people the most difficult 
 strategic problems, on the highest level, that civilization has 
 ever tackled. It will not be long before the finest minds in 
 the world will be in full flight of competition for the prizes 
 of leadership in solving these problems. We are simply making 
 a modest beginning in our campaign for 'the right of labor to 
 a voice in the control of capital.' For a man who believes 
 in his fellow men, there is more satisfaction in planning such 
 a campaign than in managing the biggest financial syndicate 
 on earth." 
 
 "Then this is your version of socialism, Mr. Graham?" 
 pursued Mrs. Hartley. 
 
 Graham's effort to meet the question humorously stopped 
 with a hesitating laugh, and he continued in the same literal 
 tone : — 
 
 "There is a good deal to be said for the socialists, Mrs. 
 Hartley, but I am not one of them. They have queered the 
 name by being so much more certain about the solution than 
 about the problem to be solved. I am not a socialist, in the 
 first place, because I am sure nobody can foresee how de- 
 mocracy will adjust itself in its next form ; and I am willing 
 to let anybody dream about that who pleases. I go only so 
 far Bs to say that there are democratic principles which haven't 
 their proportion of influence in the present order of things, 
 and that it is our business to get busy making them plain, 
 and flnding out how to rectify the ratio. After we have fought 
 our way to the concession of so much, the rest is going to be 
 a matter of progressive adjustment at a thousand dififerent 
 points. Society is not likely to reform itself by accepting a 
 present of somebody's ready-made garments." 
 
 "My conscience has been troubling me," Hartley once 
 more joined in, with a suspicious inflection, "about the stag- 
 ger at a confession that my cousin made just now. It started 
 off as though it meant to amount to something, but it hedged 
 so disgracefully that I feel bound to let out the whole truth. 
 The entire affair, Graham, was an ambush contrived by these 
 women to make you fight at a disadvantage. Before you are 
 led in any further, it is my duty to tell you that Miss Kinzie 
 is not only a minion of capital on general principles, but that 
 she is a not inconsiderable fraction of the Avery Company 
 itself." 
 
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 Graham's embarrassment did not have to be pretended; 
 and in spite of Hester's protests that the mean tactics had all 
 been on the side of the defense, he declared it would be a mer- 
 ciful finish if he could be shot on the spot for conduct unbe- 
 coming an officer and a gentleman. On his petition for suf- 
 ficient respite to show that he could simulate decent behavior 
 by extraordinary effort, he dropped carelessly into his part in 
 talk that was safely guiltless of seriousness, until Hartley car- 
 ried him off for a meeting with the campaign committee be- 
 fore leaving for the evening appointment. 
 
 After dressing for dinner Elsie wrote to her parents : — 
 
 "My dearest Dears: — 
 
 " It 's all off with the philosophy. I 've seen a man. Even the letter 
 carrier and gas inspector are fading fancies. He 's big and boyish, and 
 I was going to say brilliant, for the sake of another b, but he isn't that. 
 I can't find just the word for him, but perhaps it's assuring. He makes 
 you feel as though you wanted to roll up your sleeves and help get the 
 housework out of the way all at once, so that everybody could be free to 
 enjoy the good time coming. He has a fair chance to be President some 
 day. At least Channing Hartley says so, unless there is something in the 
 Constitution about ages that will keep him waiting a few years. 
 
 ' ' He 's going to be in Chicago in a week or two, and I asked him to 
 come to dinner with us as soon as I get back. I am sure you will like him 
 as well as we do. Hester said not to mind her invitation; she'd come 
 anyway; only to be sure to give her notice. 
 
 "I forgot to say that his name is Graham; the one who started the 
 strike. He said he knew you, Daddychen, but I don 't see why you haven 't 
 told Mr. Lyon that there is some mistake, and that he ought to see Mr. 
 Graham and settle it. 
 
 "We are just back from Brookline. It all happened at the Hartleys. 
 On the way, Hester and I tried to decide whether we should be Grace 
 Darling, or the Daughter of the Regiment, if we turned out to be the 
 peacemakers. 
 
 "There is a whole lot of philosophy tangled up in this incident too, 
 but I don 't know whether I shall ever unravel it. Anyway, the atmosphere 
 seems less stifled than it did, so the altitude theory must be wrong. 
 
 "With a hundred hurried hugs, 
 
 ELSIE." 
 
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 XIV 
 
 THE SENTIMENTALIST 
 
 'While one of the chief counts in his theoretical indictment 
 of the system was that it was mechanical throughout, from 
 power house to President's office, with no room for human 
 sensibilities, yet after his feelings had been moulded into 
 a certain form for a generation, he could not rid himself 
 of the hauntings of a thoroughly inconsistent loyalty to 
 the Company." 
 
 THE Avery shutdown scheduled for six weeks had extended 
 into late summer. 
 
 On the surface neither side had changed its position nor 
 improved its prospects. 
 
 While each party counted on depletion of the other's 
 resources, as the most reliable feature in its calculations, 
 neither had for a moment relaxed its efforts to fortify itself 
 for aggressive action. 
 
 So far in the campaign the strikers had furnished the only 
 surprise, and if the deliberations of the Avery directors had 
 been made public, they would have proved that it was a de- 
 velopment for which no one was prepared. It was the un- 
 expected moral and financial strength that had rallied to the 
 support of the strike. 
 
 Everybody whose judgment counted for anything "on the 
 street" had said that, while some strikes had a fighting chance, 
 this one had gone out of its way to insure failure. It had 
 picked out one of the strongest antagonists in the field, and 
 it had risked a fight on the weakest kind of issue. 
 
 The notion that labor would assess itself to wage war for a 
 mere abstract idea was on all hands jeered at as too absurd 
 to be treated soberly outside of a young ladies' reading circle. 
 If a foreman had discharged a drunken loafer, and had re- 
 fused to reinstate him, the Company might have to defend 
 itself against everybody in the country that wore a union 
 button ; but if people with good jobs felt able to indulge in 
 the luxury of throwing them up because the Company re- 
 fused to adopt their particular color scheme for painting the 
 
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 clouds, it would not be long before they would find them- 
 selves left to pay for their own esthetics. 
 
 But the predictions had perversely miscarried. Not the 
 employees of a single establishment alone had listened to a 
 radical idea, and had made up their minds to fight for it, but 
 there had been such response to the same idea the country 
 over that it already disturbed the plans of the practical poli- 
 ticians in state and national machines. 
 
 There was a history behind the movement. It was not the 
 impulse of a day. It was the heir of a thousand sporadic and 
 seemingly ill-fated theories and experiments. Yet if we could 
 see the past in its true perspective we might learn that no peer 
 of the impulse now at work had ever been born into the world 
 with briefer or less turbulent travail. We might discover that 
 progress toward a conscious program of economic democracy 
 had been merely the latest demonstration that ordinary men 
 are more fully equipped than in any previous period, and 
 that whether or not the rich are growing richer and the 
 poor poorer, in ability to draw instruction for their own ad- 
 vantage from the wisdom of the world the footfaring mil- 
 lions nave at least been closing up the gap between them- 
 selves and the careering few. 
 
 At all events a popular movement much larger than or- 
 ganized labor, a movement that temporarily drew organized 
 labor into a more inclusive popular program, had adopted the 
 idea of which Graham was the most masterful exponent. The 
 new conviction was that today, unless it is coupled with 
 economic democracy, the political democracy which men a 
 century ago regarded as the sufficient guarantee of equal 
 freedom is little more than a toy to pacify children. 
 
 Whether the policy had given new life to this old idea, or 
 the idea had created the policy, the movement that supported 
 the strike seemed further to endorse with equal vigor the pe- 
 culiar plan of attack. The Avery strike was promoted as a 
 test case. It was not the local employees, nor the men in the 
 branch establishments, but democracy at large, against the 
 Company. While the strikers were bearing the brunt of the 
 fight, a vast multitude of believers in the principles of the 
 struggle were perfecting an organization which adopted the 
 fight as a popular interest. These backers insured the sup- 
 plies, and they might at any moment for strategic reasons 
 shift the battle ground to any other industrial centre. 
 
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 People who had made no predictions, who had simply 
 watched the facts, and analyzed their meaning, had begun 
 to suspect that they were observing the birth of a new epoch. 
 The syndication of capital was forcing the sydication of peo- 
 ple ; but as is always the case with a popular movement, com- 
 paratively few of the supporters of the new impulse clearly 
 perceived what it involved. Although they idealized their 
 enterprise in a hundred variations of "democracy against 
 plutocracy," when the meaning of the slogan was examined 
 it turned out that the majority were simply struggling against 
 a special class of their fellow men. The few who stood aside 
 and reflected on the conflict saw that it was more than a strug- 
 gle of men with men. The demand that all sorts and condi- 
 tions of men should be admitted to a share in the control of 
 capital implied the purpose, which would later become con- 
 scious, to terminate the primacy of capital as an impersonal 
 interest, and to absorb and distribute it as a proportional in- 
 cident of all personal interests. 
 
 In the beginning David Lyon had entertained no doubt 
 that it would be an easy matter to starve out the strike. When 
 six weeks had not sufficed, it was a mere detail to decide that 
 a little further patience was the cheapest and surest policy. 
 But two facts of almost equal significance had compelled sud- 
 den reversal of plans. Barclay had forwarded information 
 which he had carefully verified, that a rival company was 
 already incorporated under the laws of New Jersey. Double 
 the Avery capital had been pledged. It was controlled by 
 dangerously strong men, who saw an opportunity to capture 
 the Avery market. The location had been selected, and plans 
 for the plant accepted. Construction might begin at any 
 moment. 
 
 The other fact was the failure of the Company's agents to 
 get ahead in securing new help. Wherever laborers of the 
 class needed were approached, they were found to be fully 
 posted about the strike, and either in active sympathy with 
 it or sure that the chances were too much against them if they 
 tried to better themselves by becoming strike-breakers. Be- 
 tween strikers and competitors the Company was rudely 
 roused from its composed contentment to let things take their 
 time coming its way. Among themselves the directors 
 acknowledged that they had on their hands a struggle for ex- 
 
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 istence. They must either begin soon to fill orders, or allow 
 new investors to put them out of business. 
 
 It was promptly decided to start up the plant at once; to 
 notify the tenants of the Company's houses that they must 
 either immediately report for work or vacate; and to force 
 the plans for delivering help from every direction. Parley 
 and preparation were past. It was now the tug of war. 
 
 So far as the strike-leaders could control, personal violence 
 was ruled out of the campaign. On the other hand, no strike 
 ever commanded a more elaborate system of boycotting for 
 every one, from the milk man to the railroads, who had any 
 dealings with the Company or the new men it might employ. 
 
 But these larger factors were not the only forces which 
 were likely to share in turning the fortunes of war. There 
 were subtler influences, some of them too trifling to be re- 
 ported to the Board, that were making the moral conditions 
 which would presently turn the scale. One of these trivial 
 incidents, which had an accidental bearing on the course of 
 the struggle, was Kissinger's personal and domestic problem. 
 
 Soon after Graham's return he had arranged a second meet- 
 ing with Kissinger, and then a third. In brief the result was 
 mutual understanding that the subject must be dropped till 
 the end of the strike. Kissinger believed in Graham's pro- 
 gram. He saw no way to approach the ideals which for him 
 meant justice and progress, unless people of like mind with 
 himself would volunteer to work in the right direction. But 
 he was a creature of routine and habit and tradition. He was 
 distracted by a double duty. For the first time in his life 
 he squarely confronted the alternatives of principle and prece- 
 dent. When he had abandoned the profession selected for 
 him by his parents, the choice was merely between two poli- 
 cies on the same moral level. It was a question of which 
 would turn out best for his selfish interests. Besides, he was 
 nearly twenty-five years younger then, with congenital cau- 
 tion not yet confirmed by a quarter-century of stereotyped 
 conformity to system. While one of the chief counts in his 
 theoretical indictment of the system was that it was mechan- 
 ical throughout, from power house to President's office, with 
 no room for human sensibilities, yet after his feelings had 
 been moulded in a certain form for a generation he could not 
 rid himself of the hauntings of a thoroughly inconsistent loy- 
 alty to the Company. Probably closer analysis of this in- 
 
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 fluence would have resolved it into personal loyalty to certain 
 officers of the company, and feelings of comradeship toward 
 some of his associates. At all events his feeling was obstinate 
 that he had obligations to his position. From his theoretical 
 point of view there was only impertinence and fallacy in the 
 compunctions begotten of his military training; yet practi- 
 cally they were irresistible. He could not reason coldly enough 
 to chase out of his conscience the accusation that leaving the 
 Company now would be desertion in the face of the enemy. 
 
 On the other side, the moral value of such an idyllic sense 
 of honor arrested Graham's zeal and disarmed his reasoning. 
 He feared that a man who remained negatively wrong so 
 conscientiously might be worth more to the world than by 
 doing the positive right, if that brought him under convic- 
 tion of sin. At any rate he was not vandal enough to covet 
 the tarnished glory of procuring a conversion from such 
 wrong to such right. By mutual consent, therefore, the whole 
 matter was suspended until the end of the strike should open 
 a way to reconsider the subject on its merits. 
 
 By a still more intricate process Graham found himself 
 halted in another direction ; and he was not altogether sur- 
 prised that the second arrest returned to his thoughts oftener 
 and more vividly than the first. Hester and Elsie had been 
 at the Hartley's when he called after his circuit was finished, 
 and Elsie's invitation had been repeated. Graham men- 
 tioned to Kissinger that he had met his daughter twice in 
 Boston, but he did not feel at liberty to inquire about her 
 return. He even had time a little later to reflect that, by re- 
 jecting his proposition outright, Kissinger might have cleared 
 away certain limitations of his freedom which were now as 
 imperative as they were inconvenient. 
 
 There were moments, once or twice there were hours, when 
 Mrs. Kissinger's extravagant agitation tended to provoke her 
 husband to the opposite extreme. She had taken instant and 
 feverish alarm at the possibilities suggested by Elsie's meeting 
 with Graham. She said that the Hartleys, and perhaps even 
 Hester, might safely risk the consequences of putting them- 
 selves on an equality with vulgar people, but that Elsie could 
 not afford such compromising indiscretions. She assumed 
 that nothing could be said in Graham's favor, since Chicago 
 society regarded him as an undesirable citizen. If the scru- 
 
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 pies which alone influenced her husband had been explained 
 to her, she would have welcomed them as makeweights, al- 
 though they would have been without effect upon her mind 
 if they had happened to interfere with her estimates of social 
 utility. While Mrs. Kissinger was obliged to recognize sev- 
 eral grades of nobility within the charmed circle which she 
 called society, all outside the pale, when the possibility of con- 
 signment to that no-man's land was associated with her own 
 family, were an undifferentiated rabble of ignobility. Gra- 
 ham was by choice one of this herd of the impossible. Be- 
 yond the fortunate detail that some of them used a little more 
 soap than others, Mrs. Kissinger would have been at a loss to 
 mention offhand marks of discrimination which would dis- 
 tinguish certain of this unhallowed multitude as less inferior 
 and ineligible than the rest. 
 
 Mrs. Kissinger had little other thought of the strike than 
 that it was merely a varied form of essentially the same van- 
 dalism as burglary and murder. Yet her letters to Elsie made 
 no reference to moral taint from acquaintance with a striker, 
 but simply to loss of social rating. This seemed to her so cer- 
 tain that her fears were beyond control. She dismissed her 
 usual discretion. Instead of disapproving and discouraging, 
 she repudiated, and forbade, and vetoed and prohibited in 
 so many different keys, that a less spirited girl than Elsie 
 might have been provoked from indifference to resolution. 
 The excess of her mother's energy however, was sedative in 
 its effects upon the daughter, for it stimulated her sense of 
 humor rather than her active resistance. She assured her 
 mother that with proportional increase of insurance on the 
 house, and a platoon of mounted police to patrol the block, 
 with a private detective or two at each door and window, there 
 would be no extraordinary risk in Graham's call; but if it 
 would still overtax the family neurology she would forego the 
 experiment. 
 
 Mrs. Kissinger was not affected by that sort of irony, and 
 she did not allow the march of domestic events to drag. Not 
 many hours after her return to Chicago Elsie wrote : — 
 
 "My dear Mr. Graham: — 
 
 "If you were a mere individual, it would be hard to write what my 
 recently discovered duty dictates. It has been impressed upon me that you 
 are an Institution. As the case has been presented to me. Institutions at 
 best have no souls. At worst they are so bad that people who lay claim to 
 souls must not associate with them. In my mother's mind you have no 
 
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 existence as a person. You are Revolution. You are Anarchy. You are 
 Subversion of Society. In other words, you are no better in her eyes than 
 Samuel Adams or Patrick Henry would have been to a Tory dame of '76. 
 No self-respecting, and particularly no Society-respecting member of Soci- 
 ety could receive such an Institution into her house. It is not quite clear 
 to me why one should expect a bad, soulless Institution at the same time 
 to be sufficiently an individual to sympathize with the embarrassment of 
 another individual. Without trying to find the answer, I confess that I 
 think you will understand my mother 's wishes, even if I do not accept her 
 opinions. I will not try to smooth over this frank statement of the reason 
 for not giving a date to my invitation. 
 
 ' ' You may get the impression that I am always as tractable, and there- 
 fore a model daughter. At the present moment I am so subdued that I 
 cannot rest under even that imputation. If my defense had been stronger 
 I might have been rebellious. What could I do when my purpose actually 
 was to make the obnoxious Institution and not the individual the guest of 
 honor? I am not a pervert, but I shall continue to pay attention. 
 
 "Very truly, 
 
 "ELSIE KISSINGER." 
 
 And Graham answered : — 
 
 "My dear Miss Kissinger: — 
 
 ' ' Permit me to present my respects to your mother, with the assurance 
 that while I have no appeal from her decision, its justice would have been 
 less doubtful if it had rested on disapproval of the individual rather than 
 of the Institution. As the matter stands, the problem of the contents of 
 the platter between Jack Spratt and his wife was easy compared with my 
 plight between Mrs. Kissinger and her daughter. The former will have 
 none of the Institution. The latter graciously intimates that she will have 
 naught else. Unfortunately for me a non-detachable union between what 
 little there is of individual and Institution has not yet succeeded in mak- 
 ing much headway for either; but their only hope is in sticking by each 
 other to the end. My recollection is that it was a good many years before 
 the like of the Adamses and the Henrys got the privilege of treading the 
 hall rugs of the Tory dames ; but the world moves faster in these days, and 
 if the Institution shows new energy, one of the reasons not given to the 
 public will be the motive to make good for the sake of breakiag down 
 barriers against the individual. In pursuing its mission to uplift the 
 world, the Institution will be kept mindful by the individual of your 
 obdurate mother and your partially convinced self. It would be only fair 
 play if the Institution should a little later find a way to speak a good 
 word for the individual. 
 
 "Sadder, wiser, but still in the tourney, 
 
 "JOHN GRAHAM." 
 
 Except as a last resort, Mrs. Kissinger seldom called upon 
 the titular head of the household for help in making the social 
 plans of the family. His cue was to accept previously settled 
 programs, and to bear the imputed unrighteousness of failure 
 to arrive, for which he could have had only mystical responsi- 
 bility. In this instance Mrs. Kissinger prejudged the situa- 
 tion with more than usual finality, and she put corresponding 
 
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 vigor into her demand upon her husband to endorse her de- 
 cision. Kissinger had never before been so clearly aware of 
 the difference between his wife's ideas and his own ; but they 
 happened to agree on the inexpediency of social relations with 
 Graham under the present circumstances ; yet Kissinger was 
 more uncomfortable in this agreement with his wife than in 
 most of their differences of opinion. Her reasons were so 
 unlike his that he could not support her objections to Gra- 
 ham without sacrifice of principle, unless he was willing to 
 be drawn into full explanation. He had no taste for the sort 
 of profitless arguments which always grew out of attempts to 
 arrive at undei-standings with his wife on generalities. He 
 knew that it would do no good to discuss Graham and Grar 
 hamism in the abstract with his wife, nor M^as he ready to tell 
 her the whole story. 
 
 Although he foresaw that silence now would make it all the 
 harder to disarm his wife's reproaches if he should ever de- 
 cide to follow his convictions, Kissinger took the chance of 
 future difficulty for the sake of present comfort ; and instead 
 of expressing himself directly he resorted as usual to satirical 
 thanks for the compliment implied in the form of referring 
 to him for promotion of Mrs. Kissinger's social prearrange- 
 ments. 
 
 The eviction order operated as an incubator upon Kissin- 
 ger's half-born resolutions. He knew some of the men who 
 would have to leave the homes they had occupied for years. 
 Right and wrong, as he saw them, could not have been more 
 sharply defined than in the contest between the proper rights 
 of these men and their treatment by the arbitrary power of the 
 Company. It required this impersonation of his theories to give 
 Kissinger the necessary impulse for action. He felt that 
 if these employees were driven from their homes he could not 
 continue to serve the Company without becoming a partner 
 in the wrong. When the evils that he had impotently 
 brooded over were thus brought to his own charge, and not 
 in the form of abstract sentiment, but in the person of fellow 
 employees, men whom he had known for years, and whom 
 he believed to have an equity in the Company as good as that 
 of stockholders or officers, his hesitation at last passed into de- 
 termined contempt for the flimsiness of the reasons that had 
 so long secured his acquiescence. He decided that his weak- 
 
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 ness had not been chiefly from romantic loyalty to his em- 
 ployers, nor from fear of the risk he would run in giving up 
 security for uncertainty. He found that in the last resort 
 neither of these considerations restrained him as much as his 
 distaste for the disagreement he must encounter in his own 
 home. Summing it all up, the best he could say for himself 
 was that he had been too easy-going to face the fuss it would 
 cost to change the even tenor of his ways. However he might 
 shrink from the process of withdrawing from his position in 
 the office, and much as he dreaded the task of adapting him- 
 self to new requirements, these obstacles together deterred him 
 less than the inevitable awakening of the dormant disunity 
 in his family. Kissinger was not made of stern stuff. His 
 moral courage was of the sort that preferred suffering the 
 pains of self-suppression to outbreaking conflict even in self- 
 defense. Peace was more to him than progress. Although 
 goaded finally by a clear sense of duty, he might still have 
 shirked, if he had not discovered that Elsie was on his side, 
 and that Hester was likely to play an important part in 
 neutralizing Mrs. Kissinger's opposition. 
 
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 XV 
 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 "As a matter of fact, the world never possessed an absolutely 
 infallible automatic consumer of human rights until it 
 invented capitalism." 
 
 WHY Kissinger was moved to make his decision known 
 first to Logan Lyon rather than to his father was not 
 altogether clear to himself. This was his choice, however, and 
 he put a note on Lyon's desk, asking for a half-hour's talk 
 before he left the office. Kissinger was the older, and his con- 
 tacts with the Company's attorney had been rare except in the 
 course of strict routine. Never before had Kissinger felt im- 
 pelled to ask the confidence of the son about a matter that 
 primarily concerned the father. The Secretary was familiar 
 enough with the imperious manner of the President of the 
 Company. He had often seen him dictatorial to the verge 
 of violence, but he was not afraid of him. He knew that Mr. 
 Lyon was as just in his intentions as he was dogmatic in his 
 decisions, and that he was gentle in spirit even when immova- 
 ble in purpose. 
 
 The clue to Kissinger's exceptional indirection was less in 
 his desire to avoid his superior's wrath than in his habitual 
 study to shield him from annoyance. He did not rate him- 
 self as essential to the Company, nor even to Mr. Lyon ; yet 
 he knew that he had made himself sufficiently useful to be 
 valued, and that his defection at the present moment would 
 be peculiarly irritating. He knew further that Mr. Lyon was 
 Ukely to treat any brief statement which he might make as a 
 confession of disloyalty if not treachery, and that an attempt 
 to argue the case would be sharply repulsed. He had no rea- 
 son to suppose that Logan Lyon's opinion would differ from 
 his father's; but on the other hand a statement to the son 
 would not be equally embarrassed by personal considerations. 
 Kissinger hoped that Lyon would prefer to make such a re- 
 port to his father of the substance of their talk that the un- 
 pleasantness of the necessary interview might be partially re- 
 lieved. 
 
 In his private office, after the day's business was closed, 
 Logan Lyon waited with not a little curiosity for an explana- 
 
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 tion of the Secretary's unusual request. Kissinger had care- 
 fully thought out what he wanted to say, and he tried to go 
 straight to the point. His introduction was intended to be as 
 literal as a Euclidean theorem. "I have decided to resign my 
 position, Mr. Lyon, and without knowing exactly why, I felt 
 that it might be better to tell you the whole story before I had 
 to speak to your father." 
 
 Nothing further was needed to convince Lyon that the 
 matter was important. From the strictly business point of 
 view such an incident would ordinarily have been too petty 
 for his notice. Hundreds of times he had said himself or had 
 assented to others' saying, "Men are plenty enough." As the 
 stock phrase rang in his mind, however, like an automatic 
 busy signal shutting off a call, he as quickly answered him- 
 self with the equally trite proverb: — "but so are children; 
 yet one prefers one's own." Lyon knew how much his father 
 valued Kissinger, and how hard it would be at his time of 
 life to be comfortable in getting similar work out of a substi- 
 tute. The same half-conscious motive that had sent Kissinger 
 to him at once enlisted his interest in the errand, and without 
 a word in reply his manner certified that he would be attentive 
 to particulars. 
 
 'The plunge once taken, Kissinger's premeditated program 
 was for a moment disarranged. Ingenuousness was "large" 
 with him, as the phrenologists used to say ; while tact was an 
 acquired form rather than an indwelling spirit. It was a part 
 of his equipment only so far as it had been drilled into him 
 by discipline. It did not spring from his disposition. He 
 was too conscientious to be discreet. He was apt to make a 
 clean breast of the worst, with consequent buffetings by seas 
 of fussy troubles largely of his own creating. 
 
 "I may as well say frankly to start with, Mr. Lyon," Kis- 
 singer hurried on, as if anxious to put burned bridges be- 
 tween himself and retreat, "this strike has made me see that 
 I don't belong here any longer. My heart is with the strike, 
 not with the Company. I must give you the further details that 
 I have had a number of talks with Graham himself since the 
 strike began, and I believe in him. He is on the track of the 
 right way to solve labor problems, or rather to make them 
 impossible. He has made me a proposition that I can accept 
 when the time comes, and it will give me a chance to work the 
 rest of my life with my convictions instead of against them." 
 
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 Lyon's professional restraint was gone in a flash, and he 
 was on his feet glaring at Kissinger as though at the next move 
 he would throttle him. That Kissinger held secessionist eco- 
 nomic opinions was surprising enough; but the manner of 
 them, as evidenced by his own words, was intolerable. "Do 
 you mean to tell me that in the thick of this fight you are 
 deserting to Graham?" 
 
 Kissinger was aware in an instant that he had put the 
 wrong foot foremost; and in his zeal to tell the whole truth, 
 as it made both for and against himself, he went farther in 
 extenuation than he had intended before his blunder. "In 
 justice to myself," he expostulated eagerly, "I should have 
 started by saying that I refused to consider the proposition till 
 after the strike ends, although Graham's plan promises me 
 the chance of my life ; and I am reporting my decision to you, 
 not to him. In justice to Graham I should say that he of- 
 fered no objection to putting off the proposition till it would 
 be clear of all entanglement with our fight. Not a word has 
 passed between us about this particular skirmish. He is work- 
 ing out a campaign that will go on, whatever comes of the 
 Avery Company affair. In my way I am as interested as he 
 in that main campaign. My sentiment for the Company 
 won't let me go to the other side though till the point of at- 
 tack has changed ; but I am no longer able to carry out the 
 Company's orders, and it is up to me to state the facts and get 
 an honorable discharge." 
 
 Lyon could hardly have been more astonished if one of the 
 calculating machines had begun to give out theories in eco- 
 nomics. He had never suspected that this plodding, me- 
 chanical, taciturn man had a sufficient reserve of imagina- 
 tion to impeach existing conditions. He was reassured, how- 
 ever, as quickly as he had been excited, that Kissinger's be- 
 havior toward the Company had been strictly correct; and 
 with prompt acknowledgment that he was satisfied on that 
 score he settled himself to hear the rest of the story. 
 
 As Kissinger went on to explain the meaning of his de- 
 cision, he was surprised to find that it was easier to talk about 
 than he had expected. Lyon showed no further sign of im- 
 patience. Half a dozen times he interrupted with a direct 
 question, and again he more than once joined in making the 
 explanation complete by indirectly prompting; — "I'm not 
 quite sure that I get your meaning there, Mr. Kissinger." 
 
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 If he had been a physician listening to an account of a 
 patient's symptoms he could hardly have seemed more a.ir 
 tentive to every particular. Kissinger had no reason to sus- 
 pect that the attorney had any tolerance for the views them- 
 selves. He interpreted Lyon's courtesy rather as a recogni- 
 tion of his personal loyalty to the head of the Company. He 
 put all the stress he could on reiteration that he neither ex- 
 pected nor hoped to promote his selfish interests by a change 
 of position. He gave the Company credit for the best treat- 
 ment any employee could demand on strict business princi- 
 ples, and he tried to make it plain that he was acting not on 
 the impulse of a private grievance, but because he believed in 
 an idea which the Company could not accept ; and because he 
 had to choose between working as a servant of the Company 
 to defeat his own beliefs, and claiming his freedom to do his 
 best in the interest of his faith. 
 
 There was no index by which Kissinger could detect un- 
 derneath Lyon's impassive bearing, after the first outburst, a 
 contradiction between the official and the man. He had no 
 means of knowing that Lyon not only felt the force of the 
 abstract logic of his position, but was tempted to tell him so. 
 During a long pause, after Kissinger seemed to have fin- 
 ished, Lyon made no sign of reply except by keeping his eyes 
 fixed on Kissinger as though they might penetrate to some 
 meaning that had not come through the ear. Kissinger in- 
 ferred only that the attorney might be trying to decide how 
 to report the case in a way that would least disturb his father. 
 At most he might be considering whether the incident would 
 be closed when the inconvenience to his father had been dis- 
 counted; or whether it should be regarded as a symptom 
 which indicated something about the prospects of the strike. 
 When Lyon spoke he gave Kissinger the impression that he 
 was concerned merely about ending the matter without a 
 scene. 
 
 "If you were in my father's place, Mr. Kissinger, what 
 would you do under the circumstances?" 
 
 "In your father's place, and with his views," Kissinger 
 answered promptly, "of course there is but one thing to do. 
 I should be very glad though if he felt like recognizing my 
 regard for him personally, and my attempts to fill my place 
 during all these years, enough so that he could say good-bye 
 
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 to me in a friendly spirit, and tell me that he respected my 
 motives, even if he could see no justification for my opinions." 
 
 "If it were a matter between you and my father only," 
 Lyon continued, very much as though he were trying to find 
 the basis for a trade, "he might be able to disregard the opin- 
 ions, and make it possible for you to keep your position in 
 spite of them. But he must be told that you have had deal- 
 ings with Graham, and he could no more answer to the Com- 
 pany, if he kept you in your position, than a bank president 
 could who allowed a subordinate to be on friendly terms with 
 a cracksman." 
 
 It was Kissinger's turn to be excited. Lyon had never be- 
 fore seen him bristle with indignation, but in his newly de- 
 clared independence as a man the Secretary had shed the 
 deference of the employee. Yet before the anger had found 
 words, Lyon's show of surprise pointed to misconstruction of 
 his meaning, and Kissinger merely protested: — "I hoped, Mr. 
 Lyon, that my statement went far enough to free me from sus- 
 picion of playing for a higher bid." 
 
 "I gave you a wrong impression, Mr. Kissinger," Lyon re- 
 tracted heartily. "I meant to imply nothing of that sort. I 
 was merely thinking of my father's side of it, and that he 
 would have no fear of treachery from you. I wish for his sake 
 you had either kept away from Graham, or had not thought 
 it necessary to give me that part of the details." 
 
 Kissinger saw that he had not yet made his position clear 
 to Lyon, and the fact gave him his first definite perception 
 that the currency of his idealism was subject to heavy dis- 
 count when offered as a medium of exchange in the market. 
 He felt as though he had undertaken to make a fourth dimen- 
 sion intelligible, or a sixth sense. With no wavering in his con- 
 viction, but with glimmering appreciation of the difficul- 
 ties of bringing it within the range of practical calculation, 
 he braced himself for a strenuous attempt to make his ideal 
 visible if not convincing. 
 
 "You do not get my point at all, Mr. Lyon, if you suppose 
 that any arrangement which your father could make would 
 tend in the least to meet my needs. No mere alteration of de- 
 tails under the present system of doing business would go to 
 the heart of the matter. There is no place for me in business 
 until the whole system is revolutionized. To put it bluntly, I 
 am just admitting to myself that I have been a slave for years, 
 
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 but it was a slavery to a regime that I saw no way to change. 
 It gave me as good a living as I deserved, but it denied my 
 right to a man s share of influence on the business in which 
 he earns his living. I should probably have been the patient 
 ox to the end, if the system had not laid on me the last straw 
 in the shape of its order to be its agent in evicting that colony 
 of my fellow slaves. I know some of those men who have 
 worked in the shops as long as I have been in the office. Their 
 work has been as necessary in its way to the prosperity of the 
 Company as yours or your father's. It is simply legalized 
 fist-right that gives the Company power to send them into 
 exile. They have a moral eq^uity in their homes and in their 
 jobs which has as clear a claim at the bar of social justice as 
 the Company's legal equity in any dollar of its property. By 
 the law's decree the Company has an arbitrary ex parte power 
 over some of the moral rights of its help. It is as wicked to use 
 that power to separate those men from their homes and their 
 work, which they have made part of themselves, as it would 
 be to banish them from their wives and children. I shall not 
 be a man till I am free to work for all I am worth against a 
 system that tolerates such inhumanity. I want liberty to 
 count for what is in me toward vindicating the principle that 
 all workers are partners. I don't know whether American 
 business men are fools or hypocrites when they get hot at the 
 Czar for not letting the Russians have a hand in their own 
 politics, and in the next breath get hotter at Americans for 
 wanting a hand in their own business. Politics is only the 
 packing case of business anyway. Why are rights to handle 
 the boxings and burlaps worth bothering about if there is no 
 right to the goods inside ? The claim of every man who works, 
 to a share in the ownership and control of his work, rests at 
 last on the same ground as the claim of every man who helps 
 maintain the laws to a share in making and enforcing the 
 laws. Democracy in government is only a blind unless it is 
 carried out to the logical result of democracy in business. You 
 might just as well attempt to divide the management of trans- 
 portation between a democracy for roadbeds and an oligarchy 
 for rolling stock. There is no stopping place for democracy 
 till every full grown man has a man's full share in managing 
 all the world's arrangements that touch his interests. The 
 only power that one man can have at last over another man 
 in a democracy is the power either of the expert or of the 
 
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 official. In either case, society's judgment of its own welfare, 
 not the individual's self-interest, must make the rules to gov- 
 ern expert or official in the use of his position. Democracy is 
 an insult to human intelligence unless it means progressive 
 elimination of all arbitrary power of one man over another. 
 Our present system of property is an artificial invention that 
 delivers the many into the hands of the few. A righteous sys- 
 tem of property will rest on work only, and one kind of work 
 will create as valid claim as another to stock in the world's 
 opportunities. Our present business principles assume that 
 we have gone as far as we can toward securing human rights. 
 As a matter of fact, the world never possessed an absolutely 
 infallible automatic consumer of human rights until it in- 
 vented capitalism. Our capitalistic system is a siphon that 
 sucks up men's rights by a law of accelerated motion. Simply 
 give it time and let it alone and it would end before very long 
 in having every cubic inch of land, sea, and sky bonded to a 
 clique of financiers, and then the terms under which the rest 
 of the human race might be permitted to stay on the earth 
 could be dictated in the licenses granted at their own price 
 by the syndicate. Because human wills in the last resort are 
 stronger than habits, and sentiments, and logic and laws, this 
 thing won't work out. Men will stand it up to some limit that 
 no one can predict. Then they will rebel. Whether they 
 have a theory thought through by that time to expose the 
 fallacy of this capitalistic program or not, they will some day 
 rise up in their might and declare that the earth shall belong 
 to men, and capital shall be reduced to its place in the ranks 
 of tools. For years these things have been brooding in my 
 mind with no prospect of anything practical hatching from 
 them. I see now where I can keep on earning a living, and at 
 the same time make my work count toward the future free- 
 dom, instead of forging more links in the chains of slavery. 
 It's a sorry figure one cuts at best, obliged to confess that one 
 has lived nearly half a century without ever daring to be 
 quite one's self. The other side of it is that most of the human 
 race are not yet far enough along to suspect their humiliation. 
 It is something to arrive at the feeling that one has a soul and 
 that it has a right to assert itself. For me the Avery Company- 
 means the wrong side of the irrepressible conflict between capi- 
 talism and democracy. I should like nothing better than to 
 work with the men in the Company, if they could transfer 
 
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 their allegiance to the human side. As that is out of the ques- 
 tion, I shall get my first taste of real freedom when I am fully 
 enlisted in the other camp." 
 
 Neither Kissinger's resolution alone nor the profession of 
 faith behind it would have been likely to impress on Lyon the 
 feeling of a new sensation. The apparent metamorphosis of 
 this monosj^llabic man, however, this prosaic pursuer of rou- 
 tine, into a rhetorician and a rhapsodizer and a revolutionist, 
 was a psychological paradox at least, whether it might be 
 worth notice otherwise or not. As he listened, Lyon had 
 found himself wondering whether something of the same sort 
 may have been the basis of fact that had passed into the New 
 Testament tradition of the gift of tongues. Not what Kissin- 
 ger believed, but the way he believed it, might have made a 
 less open mind than Lyon's speculate whether such amiable 
 faith could be altogether out of tune with reality. While 
 Lyon noted every word of Kissinger's monolgue, Barclay and 
 Dexter came back to his thoughts, with their fighting version 
 of life. Then Halleck, and Graham, and Edgerly and Hester 
 Kinzie seemed to chord in with Kissinger's voice. Lyon hu- 
 mored the conceit that the confusion of notes was a sort of 
 tone-rebus ; a parody of the problem that for months had been 
 haunting the background of his reflections, — Is conflict 
 the main undercurrent of life or is it harmony? 
 
 Before Kissinger had started on this peroration Lyon had 
 set down the business side of the episode as a closed incident. 
 He did not see at once how he could reduce its annoying ef- 
 fects upon his father to a minimum, but he had all night for 
 that problem, and with these two factors in the case tempo- 
 rarily disposed of he gave himself license to improve the oc- 
 casion for giving rein to his investigating interest, and allow- 
 ing himself to dally a while with Kissinger on the plane of 
 purely abstract theory. 
 
 It was not merely trifling, however, either with Kissinger 
 or with himself. The strike so far had confirmed Lyon in 
 the opinions which had been his platform before it was de- 
 clared. He had seen no outlook for an alternative. At the 
 same time the "unavailable" in his opinions had gradually 
 assumed the character of a factor that possibly might have to 
 be reckoned with. If he had taken strict account of his im- 
 pressions after the season's costly experience, he would have 
 
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 discovered a larger element of fear, or perhaps it would be truer 
 to say of suspicion, that the factors which he had dismissed 
 as "unavailable" were the very elements in the situation which 
 changing circumstances were forcing to the front. It might 
 be possible that the chief business problem of our era was ad- 
 justment to these same "unavailable" factors. He had not ex- 
 pected light on the problem from Kissinger, but the thought 
 that he might be symptomatic, that he might be a sign of so- 
 cial currents which had not been rated at their full force, 
 made it worth while to go back of his individual connection 
 with the Company, and to treat him as an index of general 
 conditions. When he spoke, Lyon gave Kissinger the im- 
 pression that he had checked off his affair as settled, and was 
 opening another question : — 
 
 "I shall have to consider," Lyon said reflectively, "before I 
 am sure of the best way to present this to my father. Leave 
 word with Hichborn that you will not be at the office for a 
 day or two and that he is to report in your place. I will advise 
 you further tomorrow. But for my own curiosity, Mr. Kis- 
 singer, I want to ask whether you really think these fine sen- 
 timents can ever have any practical application to business. 
 Or in making this new departure, do you think of yourself 
 as getting out of business and taking up the employment of 
 an experimenter in philanthropy?" 
 
 Kissinger was not at all disturbed by the challenge. Indeed 
 it was a relief for him to dismiss the practical aspects of the 
 subject and to pass into the realm of theory. Here he felt him- 
 self at home. No one had a right to prescribe his thoughts. 
 His judgment was as free as another's. There was something 
 like compensation for his subordinate rank as a business fac- 
 tor, in having opinions that would be ridiculed on the street ; 
 in feeling sure that he was right and the street wrong ; and in 
 believing that time would justify his estimate of things. It 
 gave a sense of superiority to people limited by capitalistic 
 standards, like that which a civilized man would feel toward 
 savages, even if he were their prisoner. Beyond this, in meet- 
 ing Lyon on the level of pure theory, he felt that he was free 
 of obligations that had been heavy ballast in their previous 
 relations. He no longer felt responsible either for justification 
 or defense or persuasion. As far as he knew, Lyon was im- 
 mune to his type of democratic sympathies, and talking with 
 
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 him about them would be Hke two enemies under a flag of 
 truce discussing the ultimatum which neither expected to 
 change except by resuming hostilities. Kissinger met Lyon's 
 question, therefore, in a quite different attitude from that in 
 which he had begun the interview. The relations of the two 
 men were altered. Kissinger dropped into the casual man-to- 
 man tone of a confidential communication affected by no 
 other motive than sheer interest in the ideas; and he was 
 conscious that Lyon on the other hand waived his official po- 
 sition and accepted the neutral situation. 
 
 "If we were navigating a ship, Mr. Lyon," Kissinger began, 
 in an indirect style that sustained Lyon's surprise, ' and if we 
 found that our compass was disturbed by some force that we 
 couldn't calculate, would we call it practical navigation to 
 reckon the best we could with the causes of the deviations?" 
 
 "I see what you mean," assented Lyon, "but can you make 
 out a parallel?" 
 
 "Perhaps not exactly" returned Kissinger, in a tentative 
 tone, as though he were revising a hasty expression, "still I 
 think the two cases are at bottom alike. The current phrase 
 'the social unrest,' stands for a lot of ugly facts. Whether we 
 have any theories to explain them or not, they must be 
 counted with. As I see it, a policy of trying to find out how 
 to cancel as much of the social unrest as possible out of the 
 business situation would no more be changing business into 
 charity than seamanship is turned into philanthropy by al- 
 lowing for the variations of the compass." 
 
 "That's a catchy way to put it," returned Lyon, with an 
 incredulous shrug, "but it's a weak prop for a revolution. So 
 far as calculating variations is concerned, business has to 
 correct more cranky compasses every hour in the day than 
 sailormen ever dream of. What you really have to go on 
 when you talk about correcting errors is an impossible ambi- 
 tion to correct facts. The world is full of infinitely unequal 
 people. Business is what it has to be as a result of these ine- 
 qualities. Your 'social unrest' simmers down to a demand for 
 tearing business to pieces and starting from the bottom on the 
 assumption that all these unequal people are equal." 
 
 Whenever Kissinger had tried to express his social ideas 
 before, it had either been a solitary exercise of his imagination, 
 or in the company of kindred spirits whose minds were made 
 up in advance, and who held one another to strict account for 
 
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 opinions only when they had something decent to say of ex- 
 isting institutions. In such an atmosphere a radicalism that 
 had very little to rest upon might pass as plausible. It was a 
 different matter to save the same notions from seeming silly 
 when the presumption was reversed. Kissinger was not san- 
 guine enough to suppose that Lyon was open to conviction, 
 but he was anxious to show the attorney for capitalism that 
 something remained to be said for democracy. Although he 
 could not regard Lyon as a promising subject for missionary 
 effort, yet a certain proselyting fervor began to prompt Kis- 
 singer's side of the discussion. The new problem of making 
 his theories presentable to an unbeliever cautioned him back 
 into a prudence of speech which was in equal contrast with 
 his novel outburst of zeal and the usual staccato common- 
 placeness of his business utterance. In fact, not his words 
 only but his ideas seemed almost as strange to himself as he 
 thought they must sound to Lyon. 
 
 "If you really think the democratic movement means de- 
 mand that unequals shall be equal," began Kissinger experi- 
 mentally, "it is no wonder Graham looks impossible to you, 
 and you set down the strike as a trifling with fate. Perhaps it 
 is work enough for one era in civilization to clear a fraction of 
 the confusion out of our notions of human equality and 
 inequality. 
 
 "Let me take myself as a sample democrat. I suppose I 
 understand what is going on in the minds of men farther 
 along down in the economic scale than you do. I am nearer 
 to them, and see things from nearer their standpoint. Judg- 
 ing partly from what I meet in them and more from what I 
 find it myself, you put a completely wrong construction on 
 the underlying democratic motive. I know that your father 
 would be a more valuable factor in business than I could be, 
 under any system' that approached the present complexity. 
 His judgment is reliable where I wouldn't trust my own. 
 "Without a brain like his at the centre, a big business would 
 soon begin to go hard for all concerned ; and that would be 
 true, as far as I can see, in any kind of society that might take 
 the place of the present order. 
 
 "On the other hand, your father would be worth less than I 
 am to the business if he had to do my work, and I suppose 
 there are easily a thousand men in the employ of the Com- 
 pany in ordinary times who would discount either of us if 
 
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 we had to work along side of them at their own jobs. Whether 
 under any circumstances all men could ever learn to do the 
 same thing equally well doesn't seem to me however a prac- 
 tical question. There is another sense in which all men are 
 equal, and that sense is the mainspring of democracy. We 
 are all equal in our interest in being ourselves, with freedom 
 from control by other men through force, or fear, or fraud, or 
 privilege, or anything else except reason pure and simple." 
 
 The saving clause "not available" came to Lyon's relief in 
 full strength; and without a quiver of distrust that at least 
 so much ground was secure, he promptly protested this draft 
 on his assent. "How often would an army get through a war 
 on the winning side if it was run on a democratic plan?" 
 
 Kissinger's imagination was warming with the discus- 
 sion, and he began to glow with the excitement of real scout- 
 ing service for democracy. He felt more sure of his insight 
 into the weakness of the enemy's position than of his own 
 ability to make successful dashes to take advantage of the 
 openings ; yet he was gaining confidence that he could keep 
 Lyon from uncovering anything untenable in his own de- 
 fenses. At the same time this access of the militant spirit did 
 not mislead Kassinger into accepting the implications of 
 Lyon's martial analogy. The reply was on his tongue's end 
 instantly, and at the same time he made the mental note that 
 meeting this form of attack had given him a new group of 
 clues to the conditions of the campaign. Without hesitating 
 long enough to give a sign that the answer had to be consid- 
 ered, he persisted :— 
 
 "But there you're falling back on one of the false premises 
 that vitiate the whole capitalistic calculation. Life isn't all 
 war, and it isn't even all business. Life is a process of getting 
 a fair field for the promotion of all human interests in the pro- 
 
 Cortion of their merit. War and business are tools that people 
 ave to use in the course of this process. We have to learn how 
 to get the most work out of all the tools of life, business and 
 war among the rest. To the extent that we are dependent on 
 our tools, we have to submit to the dictation of the conditions 
 in which they are capable of their best work. This doesn't 
 prove that we are doomed to turn life into a slavery to our 
 tools. That is reversing the relation of means and end." 
 
 "I'm trying to follow you clear beyond my depth," inter- 
 rupted Lyon. "How are you going to adapt yourself to the 
 
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 necessity of organization in business, which means responsi- 
 bility and authority in somebody, and subordination and 
 obedience in somebody else, if you are going to get the tool 
 value of business ; and at the same time have employer and 
 employee equal?" 
 
 "In the same way that we have a constitution and laws of 
 the United States and a President to enforce them, yet when 
 it comes to individual rights every man in the country has as 
 sure a title to his share of them as the President himself. It 
 is no more decreed by the nature of things that a business 
 must be a military monarchy because it needs organization, 
 than it is that the United States must be an oriental despotism 
 because we need a Chief Magistrate. It all turns on what 
 I hadn't finished saying about equality. I suppose there are 
 people in the world who believe that a thousand babies born 
 the same day, and given exactly the same chance in life, 
 would turn out precisely alike in their character and ability. 
 Some people may believe that each of those babies might learn 
 to do whatever the others could, and that there would be no 
 good reason why one should count as a more important mem- 
 ber of society than another. Without going quite that length, 
 I believe men are more equally endowed by nature than our 
 social conditions give them a chance to show, and that de- 
 mocracy is bound to reduce the proportions of this needless 
 inequality. I understand Graham to believe the same thing, 
 although I imagine he would stop before I would in estimat- 
 ing the probable limit of equalization. But whatever turns 
 out to be the truth on this point, it isn't what I am at present 
 talking about. Suppose we assume that Number 17 in the 
 coal-yard gang and the President of the Company rank pre- 
 cisely in accordance with the actual inequalities of their 
 makeup, and that, in spite of everything men may some day 
 learn to do, the remaining differences between men will al- 
 ways cover a scale as wide as those extremes. My point is 
 that Number 17 in the coal-yard gang is equal to the Presi- 
 dent of the Company in right to work out his own salvation 
 unhandicapped by the ownership of any other human being." 
 
 "If you mean to join in with the socialistic rant about one 
 man owning another in our day," interposed Lyon, with 
 symptoms that his tolerance was evaporating, "you are out of 
 the region where discussion pays for the breath it wastes. 
 Since the era of free contract came in, Number 17 in the coal- 
 
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 yard gang has been as free as the President of the Company, 
 or any one else, to go where he pleased and get a better job. 
 When people begin to talk about one man owning another 
 under our modern laws, it shows me that they have thrown up 
 their attempts to sustain their claims with facts, and have 
 taken their last stand on an appeal to unreasoning feeling." 
 
 "You simply play into my hand when you put it that way," 
 retorted Kissinger, almost dizzy with the delight of uncon- 
 strained freedom of debate with Capitalism as he personified 
 it in Lyon. "When people of your class resort to the pretense 
 that a figure of speech can have only one literal meaning, and 
 try to hush up analysis of the social problems by the platitude 
 that this literal meaning has no existence in modem life, it 
 shows me that they have run short of ammunition and are us- 
 ing a 'thus saith the Lord' of their own fixing up as the easiest 
 way to cover their retreat. If Number 17 in the coal-yard gang 
 and the President of the Company were both thrown on the 
 resources that they individually command under our laws, 
 regardless of the good-will of any other human being, to find 
 a new job, the President of the Company would have several 
 million times the freedom of Number 17 to insure himself 
 against starvation. Not in the literal legal sense, but in efifect, 
 one man owns another to just the extent that he can control 
 him. On our merits as plain human beings each of us 
 owes something to all the rest, because each of us affects the 
 ability of all the rest to make headway in working out the 
 problem of life. But our system of property gives to the em- 
 ploying class an artificial means of commanding the con- 
 duct of the employed cla&«. The 'social unrest' that I was 
 talking about is not at bottom a kick against the legitimate 
 claims of man upon man. It is not a demand for a system that 
 shall rob some in order to give charity to others. Not a very big 
 fraction of it is a claim that all workers shall have the same 
 wage. It is in a word demand for an honest attempt to put 
 our property system on a basis that will give each man just 
 the influence over other men which belongs to him by virtue 
 of his share in human work." 
 
 Lyon had rather rapidly recovered his philosophic temper, 
 and while he felt that they were spinning an exceptionally 
 fine thread of abstract theory, he was in a frame of mind to 
 give Kissinger all the stimulus possible, to see where the argu- 
 ment would end. He had a feeling that, whether Kissinger 
 
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 was within sight of the facts or not, something further might 
 be not far out of reach about certain things that had been 
 referred to in the talk, and he turned the discussion back to 
 an earlier point of departure. 
 
 "Suppose we grant all this for the sake of argument, Mr. 
 Kissinger," Lyon conceded, "we have not gone very far to- 
 ward showing that it can ever have a practical application." 
 
 "That was what I was feeling after with my illustration of 
 the disturbance of the compass," responded Kissinger. 
 
 He did not know it, but he was facing the same perplexity 
 which sooner or later confronts social theorists of the widest 
 outlook. After they have analyzed things as they are, and 
 have made up their minds about the emotional attitude most 
 favorable to promotion of things as they ought to be, they are 
 more or less aware that they have shot their bolt. They are 
 helpless before the question. What acts that we or anyone else 
 can perform would bring people into that emotional attitude? 
 His feelings, rather than a strict process of scientific analysis, 
 had brought Kissinger into contact with one of the profound- 
 est of social facts, — the debt of every man to the work of other 
 men, and the cooperative character of all human effort. In- 
 stead of putting him in closer touch with practical men, his 
 perception that every business, and life in general, is a part- 
 nership in operation, and implies corresponding partnership 
 in control, virtually insulated him' from actual affairs and 
 ordinary currents of thought. Like thousands of wiser social 
 philosophers, he was facing the experience of discerning a 
 truth with utter distinctness, while helpless to make other 
 people either see the truth or act as though it were true. 
 
 Exhilaration had been Kissinger's first reaction in this ini- 
 tial experience of an apostolate to the gentiles ; yet his judg- 
 ment was sobered by instinct more than by reflection 
 that for his faith to impress Lyon it must be lifted above sus- 
 picion of the taint of extravagance. The sense of responsi- 
 bility steadied his vision and stirred him to a reply more po- 
 litic, if not more persuasive, than the dogmas which sufficed 
 for his own satisfaction. In consequence, it even occurred to 
 Lyon that Kissinger might be reconsidering. 
 
 ""My belief," resumed Kissinger, "that the application is 
 going to come, runs back to this idea. If an interest that all 
 men share is baffled by artificial arrangements, the question 
 is not whether there is any practical way of satisfying that 
 
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 interest. The real question is, How long will the artificial ar- 
 rangements be able to stave off the inevitable readjustment? 
 How long will it take for that interest to claim its own, and to 
 retire all the accidental hindrances to its satisfaction ? Unless 
 we go back to physical interests, that men have in common 
 with other animals, I can think of no more universal human 
 interest than every man's desire to be his own master; the 
 wish to be independent of the dictation of any other human 
 being. Your father was simply acting out every-day human 
 nature when he turned down Barclay s suggestion yesterday 
 that a merger with the New Jersey people might be the cheap- 
 est way to handle that end of the situation. When he shook 
 his fists in the directors' faces as though they were the New 
 Jersey people trying to force the proposition, and when he 
 swore he would die a pauper sooner than tie up his own busi- 
 ness, that he had managed all his life, so that he would have 
 to run it under orders from somebody else, he was merely 
 showing off a little more highly developed form of the same 
 interest that every working man feels. Judged not by the 
 laws, which are our present best stagger toward a square deal, 
 but by the whole of the human process that is gradually show- 
 ing us what the laws ought to be, no group of men can have a 
 right to own any business in such a way that they have power 
 to dispose at will of the lives and fortunes of other men who 
 are operating partners in the same business. We have no 
 doubt that minority stockholders have property rights which 
 the majority must respect. Our laws recognize the principle 
 and protect the rights. There are sound reasons why they 
 should. We shall some day see that there are equally sound 
 reasons for the principle that investing labor in a business is 
 just as good ground for property rights in the business as in- 
 vesting capital." 
 
 Temperamentally Lyon was a judge rather than an advo- 
 cate. Although circumstances had forced him into the role 
 of legal champion for a single aggressive corporation, and par- 
 tisanship was therefore his profession, it had not become his 
 preference. So far as he felt at liberty to act on his personal 
 impulse, he was always inclined to take the side of the unrep- 
 resented interest. His escapade in the directors' room the day 
 the strike wfts announced, wa.s inconsistent only on the sur- 
 face. It Wits quite in character with his constant impulse to 
 
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 look for the best that might be said by the absent party. He 
 had followed his propensity this time in giving the impossi- 
 ble a hearing till his sense of fairness, rather than his self-inter- 
 est, seemed to accuse him, and to call for an end of the con- 
 ference. Kissinger had observed nothing which led him to 
 suspect that the attorney's mind was at all divided between 
 official policy and abstract opinion; but Lyon had encour- 
 aged the airing of social heresies so freely that he had really 
 begun to feel like an abettor of conspiracy against things as 
 they are. As in his Sunday evening soliloquy with Edgerly, 
 facing the question. What is the next thing to do ? dissipated 
 the mirage of the ought-to-be and restored him to his sched- 
 ule habit of affirming life as it is. As he mentally dis- 
 missed abstract theory and returned to the level of daily trans- 
 actions, there was a parallel change in the quality of his voice. 
 The pliant labial softness of the inquirer hardened into the 
 metallic finality of the man of affairs. There would have been 
 as much incitement to debate in the multiplication table as in 
 the form or the substance of his answer: — 
 
 "But meanwhile we have to live and do business in a world 
 where nobody recognizes that principle. Practical men deal 
 with each other on the basis of facts that everybody accepts. 
 We might as well talk about shipping goods via the milky 
 way." 
 
 The hint in Lyon's changed tone notified Kissinger that 
 the interview was over ; but his courage had been strengthened 
 rather than shaken by this test in action with a real opponent, 
 and he put the whole zeal of his faith into a final assertion : — 
 
 "When the Americans took their stand on the principle 
 'No taxation without representation,' not a man of them could 
 foresee how the principle would work out in the Constitution 
 of the United States ; but sooner or later every truth creates 
 its own application. We can't see just what sort of social 
 machinery the principle of the universal partnership of all 
 workers is going to create ; but whether we admit it or not the 
 principle itself is in the nature of human society, and conflict- 
 ing interests will hammer away on one another until all our 
 institutions are wrought into a shape that will give the princi- 
 ple full scope. The main question between classes today is 
 not in the first instance a matter of ways and means. It is the 
 question whether they will line up for or against the principle 
 that all laborers are partners. We are using fictions for the 
 
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 foundations of society till that principle is fully accepted. 
 After it has won its way the applications will follow. Men 
 will not stop fighting for real justice and real democracy till 
 each one's investment of labor for the common weal fixes his 
 rights of suffrage and his rights of property." 
 
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 'These two weeks burst the shell of Hester's intuition that, 
 for her class, relief of distress was less goodness than 
 polite evasion of the issue." 
 
 HESTER KINZIE became a factor in the strike from the 
 moment of her conclusion that treatment of causes rather 
 than effects is the way to social betterment. 
 
 Graham's talks had not struck the same note in the minds 
 of the two girls, but they had produced similar results. 
 
 In Elsie the stimulus of a man weighing conventionalities 
 in his own scales, and dedicating his strength to purposes ap- 
 praised at his own valuation, quickened dormant protest 
 against the passivity of her own life, and brought a return of 
 unabashed will to work. 
 
 Graham' personified to Hester her more special problem. 
 He made it real and distinct and insistent. His solution could 
 not be taken over bodily into her program of life, but it had 
 crystallized her fluid desire to find a solution of her own. He 
 seemed to be wrestling with the question, What is the best 
 work that one can set one's hand to who has inherited the 
 power and privilege that go with wealth ? She had long been 
 inquiring without effectively answering. Having money has 
 one different duties from one having none? 
 
 The reports that came from Chicago lent force to the habit- 
 ual impulse of both girls to relieve human need. On the re- 
 turn trip they resolved to make a start in finding something 
 to do that might help to improve the situation. Like most 
 well disposed people with healthy social instincts, their imag- 
 ination halted with cases. It did not press farther into the 
 meaning of cases as fair fruits of conditions. They offered 
 their services as friendly visitors in the Associated Charities 
 district that included the Avery works. It was the closest 
 approach to finding a fulcrum for moving the world which 
 well-meaning young women of their class would know how 
 to make. With equal good faith their offer was accepted by 
 the Society. 
 
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 Two devoted weeks sufficed to develop the baffling percep- 
 tion not that such effort was useless, but that it was a hopeleag 
 substitute for removal of causes. 
 
 Contact with instances of destitution, and even of pauper- 
 ism, merely accentuated the paradox that poverty was less 
 puzzling than prosperity. 
 
 First-hand acquaintance with charity workers, and with 
 neighbors of families in need of assistance, shifted the appar- 
 ent centre of social unrest from the impossible to the compe- 
 tent. The persistent motif of discontent was not that no one 
 would give help, but that society was in a tangle which kept 
 the majority of the self-reliant from doing their best to help 
 themselves. It was not a condition of feebleness but of handi- 
 capped power. 
 
 These two weeks burst the shell of Hester's intuition that, 
 for her cla.ss, relief of distress was less goodness than polite 
 evasion of the issue. What better could be done was not much 
 clearer to her than before, but two or three insights had taken 
 shape in her mind, and they had quickened her instinct that 
 it was vulgarity not to be in search of more effective measures. 
 She was sure that something was out of gear in society. Her 
 suspicion had grown stronger that some of the trouble would 
 sometime be located in the morals of property. The most 
 distinct impression of all was that it was more the duty of 
 those who had property than of those who hadn't it to find 
 out what was the matter. 
 
 Hester faithfully permitted full freedom to the feminine 
 fashion of personalizing abstract problems. In her case, how- 
 ever, the foible was exceptional in giving a judicial severity 
 to her reflection, which most approaches to social problems 
 from the upper side conspicuously lack. Instead of refusing 
 to admit that there might be open questions about social prin- 
 ciples which touched her interests, Hester habitually treated 
 herself as defendant, without presumption of innocence. She 
 saw no way to settle social principles till she could give a con- 
 clusive account of herself. Without effort of her own, she 
 was mistress of millions. She had power to make life harder 
 or easier for several thousand human beings. She had never 
 done anything for them, but their labor created her income. 
 Parts of these facts she had lately discovered. Other parts she 
 had taken for granted all her life. The bald statement of 
 them, which her latest encounters with life had dictated, nar- 
 
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 rowed her concern with the social problem down to the radical 
 question, What gives me a right to my rights? 
 
 A week-end visit to the Lyons at Lake Geneva was less an 
 outing for Hester than an opportunity to push her inquiry. 
 
 The Lyon cottage would have rated as a defacement of the 
 scenery, if it had not been so enshrouded by trees that it was 
 visible only within its own preserve. Externally it was merely 
 a magnified log cabin. It contained, however, all the necessi- 
 ties of modern comfort, and some of the luxuries, but none of 
 the display. The landscape gardener had enjoyed scope de- 
 nied to the architect. The home grounds were the hospitable 
 front yard of a model farm. The farm itself was traversed 
 by a scheme of park roads, extending several miles inland, 
 and converging in a broad avenue that encircled The Lodge. 
 
 It was one of those faultless afternoons of the Indian Sum- 
 mer, in which it was easy to remember leniently the rest of the 
 year, and to claim for the region the fairest climate in the 
 world. After a trip down the lake to church in the morning, 
 and the usual Sunday reversion to dinner at noon, the party 
 was gathered in a corner of the lawn from which the rovers 
 of the miniature sea could be observed through a cloister of 
 trees. 
 
 A change had come into the temper of the family. Whether 
 permanent or temporary, for the time being it admitted busi- 
 ness topics within the domestic circle. Seriousness had al- 
 ways been the most obvious finding mark of the Lyons' family 
 life, but it was now crossed by an ill-omened tolerance of the 
 dreaded subject which had forced its way to the center of at- 
 tention. The tact of all combined was not able to keep interest 
 aimed long at a time in other directions. The family tradition 
 had stood hard on its dignity, but in the last week or two it had 
 almost abandoned the field. The strike, or some of its con- 
 nections, ruled the thoughts of the whole group, and by tacit 
 consent there had been a gradual lifting of the embargo on 
 the usually tabooed theme. At first the impertinent topic 
 had been remanded after little more than passive admission 
 that there was such a thing as labor disturbance ; but today 
 Hester used a recurrence of the main subject as an opening for 
 active inquiry. She had been thinking out the substance 
 rather than the form of questions which she wanted to pro- 
 pose, and she was hardly more forewarned than her guardian 
 
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 against the first query, "Did it ever occur to you, Uncle David, 
 that labor troubles will be stopped when you can eliminate 
 me?" 
 
 Unless they were of the obvious order to which common 
 usage had given a current value, figures of speech were usually 
 objects of suspicion to Mr. Lyon. To minimize risk he chose 
 to take the question literally, and he kept well under cover 
 with the answer, "I had not heard that you had been mixed 
 up with labor troubles, Hester." 
 
 "Then possibly I'm the clue to a comedy of errors," extem- 
 porized Hester, while she was trying to adapt her questions to 
 this unpremeditated version. "I've been doing a lot of think- 
 ing lately, and I have decided that I am the wicked partner. 
 You may get an entirely new view of the strike when you find 
 out that I am the real grievance." 
 
 Mr. Lyon's habitual complaisance with Hester always al- 
 lowed her playfulness liberties which he would have rebuked 
 in another. Mrs. Lyon was less liberal. She felt that under 
 the circumstances the subject was too dubious for light treat- 
 ment. To tell the truth, Edith was of much the same mind, 
 although she easily accepted Hester's unexpectedness as an 
 offset for her lack of veneration. Logan Lyon and Edgerly 
 were about equally divided between amusement at the chill 
 which Hester's apparent jauntiness imparted to the atmos- 
 phere, and curiosity whether her latest conceit would pres- 
 ently disclose an idea. 
 
 Both Mrs. Edgerly and her mother quickly took refuge 
 among the magazines of the month, while the two younger 
 men swung lazily in their hammocks, with the appearance of 
 noticing nothing beyond their cigars. They were really tak- 
 ing in every word of the dialogue, and their interest grew 
 more alert as they pondered on the probable bearings of the 
 argument. 
 
 Hester's fancy plainly gave Mr. Lyon no clue to her mean- 
 ing, and on her part it was an economy of effort to become 
 more literal. To be less enigmatic she took a new start: — "I 
 wish you would explain to me. Uncle David, how anybody 
 gets a right to an income from the Avery Company." 
 
 "Why, Hester, by earning it in some way or other." Mr. 
 Lyon had a feeling that this was escaping from the absurd to 
 the axiomatic. 
 
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 "That is my idea, too, Uncle David," and Hester was sure 
 she could make use of the admission ; "but can you help me 
 find out what I have done to earn my dividends?" 
 
 "Why, that is a different matter of course," Mr. Lyon 
 stammered; and his mind would not have been open to con- 
 viction that his "of course" was the exact equivalent of the 
 proverbial woman's "because." "You have a right to your 
 dividends by inheritance." 
 
 "Yes, Uncle David, I know those words by rote," pursued 
 Hester, "but they seem to me merely a way of hushing up the 
 difficulty. If the way to get an income is to earn it, what 
 right has anyone to invent such a device as inheritance, which 
 makes it possible for some people to get an income without 
 earning it?" 
 
 "If you push the matter as far as that," and Mr. Lyon made 
 a long pause before finishing his sentence, his deliberateness 
 plainly showing that he was not quite ready with an answer ; 
 "a complete explanation would take us pretty deep into tech- 
 nicalities. In a word, though, your capital earns it." 
 
 "If you won't mind the technicalities. Uncle David," Hes- 
 ter insisted, "I should like to make an effort with them. When 
 you say 'capital earns it' you seem to me merely to be putting 
 the mystery in other words, instead of explaining it. I used 
 to discuss this point with Papa by the hour when we read 
 political economy together. He was always obliged to end 
 by telling me that I would understand these things better 
 after I had had more experience with business. The longer 
 I think about it the more it seems to me that all the variations 
 of 'capital earns it' are really different ways of begging the 
 question. Indeed, I must confess that it seems to me to beg 
 two questions, and either of them is important enough to put 
 the fairness of things in the doubtful class. I don't want you 
 to think. Uncle David, that I am so foolish as to imagine 
 myself wiser than all the world put together. I simply don't 
 understand, and it seems to me that if the world is right it 
 ought to be wise enough to make anybody understand who 
 really wants to know. I will do my best to follow what you 
 say, if you will tell me a little more about each of these ques- 
 tions separately. It may be you will see where to begin if I 
 acknowledge the whole of my ignorance. In fact I have never 
 been able to think of an instance in which capital ever earned 
 a cent." 
 
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 Hester's declaration affected Mr. Lyon very much as if she 
 had said she had never known the sun to shine or the grass 
 to grow. If a man had made the avowal, Mr. Lyon would 
 have supposed he was either imbecile or insincere. Neither 
 alternative would apply to Hester, and although it seemed 
 incredible that she could have remained so juvenile in her 
 views on such a subject, while she was in other ways so sagar 
 cious, her guardian quite consistently assumed the explana- 
 tion that "childish" and "girlish" told the whole story. He 
 accordingly inferred that correction of the error was merely 
 a matter of directing attention to a few facts that are every- 
 day commonplaces for men. 
 
 "I should hardly nominate myself as a tutor," he ven- 
 tured, "where your father's teaching ability had failed to 
 open your eyes. I shall have to answer your question as a 
 plain financial proposition, just as if you asked me for ad- 
 vice about starting a business. Suppose we go back before 
 the Avery Company was organized. Some men see a chance 
 to build up an industry. They think it all over and decide 
 how they want to begin. Some one must give his time to work 
 out plans. A proper location must be found. Lawyers must 
 be engaged to draft a charter that will give the Company the 
 rights it needs. Architects and engineers must be selected 
 and told what is wanted, and their advice must be studied 
 very carefully before it is adopted. Contracts for buildings 
 and for machinery must be let. Experts must be employed 
 to take charge of different divisions of the work, and they 
 must pick out a large body of operatives, many of them 
 skilled laborers, others unskilled. Large quantities of raw 
 material must be used. A great amount of fuel and other 
 supplies must be consumed, and all this before a dollar's 
 worth of product can be sold. Now what pays the expenses 
 of all these organizers, and their expert assistants, and the 
 builders and operatives; and what furnishes all the material 
 which at last begins to put on the market something that can 
 bring a return for the cost?" 
 
 ""That is all very plain," conceded Hester, with a docility 
 which gave her guardian the impression that this one case 
 from real life had settled the matter. "Capital has to do all 
 this. But what I don't see is that capital earns anything by 
 its part in the business. Let me suppose that you and Papa 
 were the only organizers. You had earned enough money 
 
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 before to pay your own expenses while you were plan- 
 ning, and to pay the salaries of the different experts, and the 
 wages of the workmen, and the cost of all the building and 
 equipment and material. Now it seems to me that you and 
 Papa and all the other men worked and earned all that was 
 made in the plant. Your labor in the first place kept the capi- 
 tal from losing its value, by using it, and then your labor 
 brought more into existence, but the capital itself was all the 
 time powerless except as your labor changed it into things of 
 more value." 
 
 Mr. Lyon was not in the habit of drawing precisely such 
 distinctions. He had concerned himself very little with eco- 
 nomic abstractions beyond the stock phrases of eyery-day 
 business, and he did not foresee the dilemma to which Hes- 
 ter's approach was leading. He had no specific objection to 
 her way of stating the facts, but he preferred the form with 
 which he was more familiar, and he did not see any need of 
 giving it up. To guard the rights of the customary view, he 
 continued: — "Of course labor is necessary to make the capital 
 productive, but on the other hand the labor could not be pro- 
 ductive without the capital." 
 
 "If nothing more than that were involved," returned Hes- 
 ter, "I could understand it. I know that every one except 
 savages gets on by using things that have been saved up, in- 
 stead of destroying them. By turning the products of pre- 
 vious labor into means of promoting present labor we expand 
 our ability to supply our wants. That is all as plain as day. 
 But then you add on to that something which is not at all 
 plain. It seems to me like the conjuror pulling ribbons and 
 rabbits out of the empty hat. You say the capital earns this 
 output. That doesn't mean anything to me. Suppose the 
 capital which you and Papa had earned were already in the 
 different forms which your labor could make useful — a part 
 of it in money, part in provisions, part in stone, lumber, steel, 
 machinery and so on. Now if that capital were left to itself, 
 with no human labor applied to it, not only would no new 
 capital be produced by it, but in a very short time some of it 
 would begin to lose its own value, and it would not take long 
 for quite a portion of it to disappear altogether. That was what 
 I meant when I said that I had never found a case of capital 
 adding a cent's worth to itself, except as a result of human 
 
 labor." 
 
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 Mr. Lyon had not surmised that Hester was working out a 
 deliberate strategical plan. He assumed that her ideas were 
 as rudimentary about business matters as they appeared. He 
 supposed therefore that he had but to provide for the most pri- 
 mary statement of the situation, without anticipating more 
 searching inquiry into deeper phases of the facts. He ac- 
 cordingly walked straight into Hester's snare. 
 
 "Why certainly, my dear," Mr. Lyon responded encourag- 
 ingly, ''if it will help you out of your difficulties I am quite 
 ready to acknowledge that you are right in a way. If we 
 leave out natural increase of plants and animals, which I be- 
 lieve the economists put under the head of 'land' or 'nature,' 
 rather than capital, there is no such thing as increase of capi- 
 tal in the strict sense except by exertion of human effort. In 
 that sense of course all wealth is the reward of human labor." 
 
 Hester gave no sign that she was aware of having scored 
 a point. Her method as an ingenue was that of repression. 
 In the same tone of eager inquiry she proceeded : — 
 
 "I'm glad to hear you say that, Uncle David, because it 
 will help me a good deal about the next point that troubles 
 me. Perhaps I shall find that what you really think is not 
 so different from my ideas as I supposed. The next thing that 
 I am curious about is this. When you and Papa worked with 
 your capital in starting the Avery Company, you earned your 
 profits as the reward of your labor, just as the other men 
 earned their salaries and their wages. It might be put in that 
 way, might it not?" 
 
 "Certainly, Llester," a.ssented Mr. Lyon, rather relieved by 
 the evidence that his ward was not infected by the delusion 
 that the capitalist is not worthy of his hire. 
 
 "So far all is plain then," continued Hester, with tempo- 
 rarily concealed consciousness that the colloquy was approach- 
 ing a crisis. "But a great blank comes into my mind. Uncle 
 David, when I try to understand how my father earned any 
 thing any longer, when he retired from the business and be- 
 came simply a stockholder." 
 
 The d&sign in Hester's innocence had not yet revealed itself 
 to Mr. Lyon. Instead of a long step in logical strategy, the 
 question was to him only another exhibit of infantile un- 
 steadiness in learning to walk. He had no feeling of the in- 
 stability of his premises as he fell back upon the familiar 
 formula: — 
 
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 "Why, my child, his capital was still earning for him." 
 
 "But, Uncle David," urged Hester demurely, "I thought 
 we agreed just now that human effort does the earning, not 
 capital." 
 
 The gathering stringency of the arg-ument was not yet 
 fully apparent to Mr. Lyon, but he began to lose patience with 
 himself for supposing that even as bright a girl as Hester 
 could be an exception to the rule that it is impossible for the 
 feminine mind to understand business. He felt, however, 
 that his way out of the difficulty must be not by convincing 
 her of ignorance, but at least by showing that her ideas were 
 out of place in real life. It was too late to retract the un- 
 guarded admission to which Hester appealed, so he tried to 
 make the best of it by forcing its meaning. 
 
 "Precisely!" insisted Mr. Lyon, without a misgiving that 
 he was contradicting himself. "The effort that your father 
 exerted in creating that capital goes on working in the capital, 
 whether he works with it or not." 
 
 "But suppose every one else in the business stopped work- 
 ing at the same time," persisted Hester, "how would Papa's 
 efifort show itself? Would his capital continue to increase be- 
 cause he created it by work?" 
 
 This inquisitiveness of his ward began to affect Mr. Lyon 
 as uncanny. He saw that he must either go over the same 
 ground again and arrive at the same point, or turn her 
 thoughts in another direction. He was not aware that he was 
 unwilling to face ugly realities. He firmly believed that Hes- 
 ter was toying with imaginary difficulties, and that he was 
 telling her the unvarnished truth. He was inclined to think 
 that her interest in such things was unfortunate, but he was 
 unwilling to close the conversation without another attempt 
 to make the facts as direct and simple as possible. 
 
 "Perhaps it will help you vinderstand the matter," he re- 
 sumed, "if you look at it in this way. Your father worked a 
 certain number of years, and saved a certain amount out of 
 his earnings. Now would it not be a very strange and unjust 
 state of affairs, if he could not use those savings in any way 
 he pleased? Would not that be equivalent to denying him 
 his right to the reward of his labor?" 
 
 "I should think so, of course," assented Hester, again with 
 an eagerness which encouraged Mr. Lyon to hope that he had 
 found the right clue, "but if I see what you mean, it simply 
 
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 implies the answer that I can't understand to the other ques- 
 tion. Let me suppose a sum that is not large enough to con- 
 fuse my mind. Suppose Papa had saved a thousand dollars. 
 Now it seems to me natural that he should have a choice be- 
 tween two ways of enjoying his rights to his earnings. He 
 could either spend the money on things that he wanted, or he 
 could work with it as capital, and earn more with it. When- 
 ever he cared to stop working he would have a right to live 
 on what he had saved, or he could keep on working and use 
 vip all that he earned from year to year, without taking any- 
 thing out of his capital. But whenever he preferred to stop 
 working entirely, the only right left to him would be the en- 
 joyment of his savings. My difficulty is to see how he has any 
 right to eat his cake and have it too." 
 
 "But, my dear child," exclaimed Mr. Lyon, "investing his 
 money is one of the ways of getting the benefit of it." 
 
 "My trouble," continued Hester, regardless of her guard- 
 ian's apparent opinion that there was no room for further 
 doubt, "is that investing the money turns out to be a way of 
 getting the benefit of it and a good deal more. It looks to 
 me as though investing the money is simply one way of sav- 
 ing it, and it would end with that if artificial contrivances had 
 not been invented. If Papa wanted to escape working with 
 his money for the rest of his life, he had the choice between 
 hiding it somewhere and leaving it in the hands of people 
 who would work with it and give him security for its return. 
 If he had hidden it, he could have drawn from it whenever 
 he pleased till it was all gone, but he surely could not have 
 used more than he hoarded. When he puts it in the hands of 
 workers, he does no more work himself than if he had buried 
 the capital in the ground. But the protection which the laws 
 give makes the workers really insure the money, so that it is 
 safer than it would be if it were buried. Nothing that Papa 
 does seems to me to give him a right to enjoy more than the 
 bare amount of his earnings in the second case more than in 
 the first." 
 
 In casting about for something to say which would meet 
 the needs of such incredible simplicity, Mr. Lyon experienced 
 a fleeting gust of sympathy with teachers, if this was a sample 
 of the sort of reaction against the obvious which they had to 
 correct. He was not intentionally evasive. He meant to deal 
 candidly with Hester's difficulties. Her queries had not sug- 
 
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 gested to him the remotest possibility that she might have 
 proposed questions which undermined primary assumptions 
 of business. Her inability to accept every-day commercial 
 propositions seemed to him rather like his own boyish state 
 of mind when he scoffed at the multiplication table. He did 
 not consciously avoid the issue. He supposed that he was 
 speaking directly to the question when he took recourse in 
 the stock irrelevance — "You do not stop to think, Hester, 
 that very few people would invest their money unless they 
 could get profits on it." 
 
 The failure of her guardian to meet the questions did not 
 surprise Hester. Her father had gone over the ground so 
 often that she knew precisely what to expect. She was not so 
 much hoping for new light as she was exploring her guardian's 
 mind to see if recent events had tended to unsettle any of his 
 opinions. She was satisfied that no breach had been made in 
 his defenses at the first point of approach, and without the 
 slightest confusion about her guardian's failures to reply, and 
 without a sign that she knew he was retreating to quite differ- 
 ent ground from that which her questions reconnoitred, she 
 was not unwilling to test the strength of the second line of de- 
 fense. 
 
 "Papa used to insist on that," Hester admitted, "and I have 
 no doubt about it, but I do not see how it proves all that it is 
 supposed to." 
 
 She was still playing the part of an inquirer, and carefully 
 concealing the aggressive aim of her questions. "If you have 
 patience enough to hear it. Uncle David, I will explain my 
 trouble with your answer. You will think it is foolish, of 
 course, but you can't help me unless you know just how things 
 seem to me. I can say what I mean best by comparison with 
 something else. Suppose I had lost a thousand dollars, would 
 anybody who found it have a right to keep it?" 
 
 "Certainly not, without taking proper means to find the 
 owner," replied Mr. Lyon, with evident curiosity to learn what 
 connection Hester could find between such a case and profits 
 on investments. 
 
 "But if I should offer a hundred dollars for returning nine 
 hundred," continued Hester, "would the finder have a right 
 to accept the reward?" 
 
 "Of course," Mr. Lyon returned emphatically, "and it 
 would be good policy to make the offer, because we cannot be 
 
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 sure that people are honest enough to do what is right without 
 some advantage to themselves." 
 
 "But suppose you found my money, Uncle David, would 
 you have a right to the reward?" 
 
 It wius not a doubt about the proprieties of the supposed 
 case that caused Mr. Lyon to hesitate. His feelings were per- 
 fectly correct and unequivocal in this connection, but he was 
 not used to finding words for such scholastic suppositions. 
 With the impression that Hester was losing her interest in the 
 main subject, he humored what he took to be a new fancy by 
 replying, "My right to the reward would be as good as any- 
 one's, but of course I could not take it." 
 
 "But," persisted Hester, "is that not unbusinesslike? If 
 it is proper for the loser to offer the reward, and for the finder 
 to receive it, why should exceptions be made?" 
 
 Mr. Lyon was nearer than he realized to another trap. As 
 the subject appeared to him quite disconnected with anything 
 else, however, he did not feel the need of qualifying his reply. 
 He had never tried to explain such a case before, and it was 
 as though he were working out a question in mental arith- 
 metic, for his own satisfaction, as he responded : — "A reward 
 for returning lost property, apart from trouble and expense 
 that it may have cost the finder, is a sort of spur to good-will 
 and honesty. Very few people care as much for other peo- 
 ple's interests as they do for their own. Many people are not 
 honest enough to respect other people's rights unless there is 
 some gain in it for themselves. Everybody ought to want 
 everybody else to have all that belongs to them, but everybody 
 does not feel that way. A reward in such a case helps some 
 people to act as though they were honester than they really 
 are, and we are better off when we pay the reward than if we 
 trusted to honesty alone. But the honester we are, and the 
 more we care for one another's interests, the less possible is it 
 for us to make gain by helping others to what really belongs 
 to them. Between friends, accepting a reward for returning 
 lost property would prove that the friendship was counter- 
 feit." 
 
 "You have expressed my ideas better than I could, Uncle 
 David," Hester commented gratefully. She did not see much 
 prospect of making the argument effective upon her guardian, 
 but his analysis confirmed her belief that she was on the right 
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 it led away from current conclusions. Still she was not en- 
 tirely hopeless of making some slight impression with her 
 comparison. Meanwhile it would not have added to her con- 
 fidence if she could have measured the inertia of Mr. Lyon's 
 mind as she proceeded to apply the analogy. 
 
 "Papa always used to rely at last on the same justification 
 for profits that you have given, Uncle David, and it seems to 
 me that it is good up to a certain limit. The last winter we 
 were in Vienna we read Bohm-Bawerk's books together, and 
 we had several conversations with the professor himself about 
 his theories. My own feeling was that he had shown the ab- 
 surdity of all the standard explanations of profits from cap- 
 ital, but had offered a substitute as absurd as the rest. But 
 your own way of expressing it makes me feel that I have not 
 been so very wrong after all in putting two things together, 
 and thinking that the reason you give for profits is precisely 
 the same reason that you give for rewarding the return of lost 
 property. When we cancel the fictitious 'earnings' of capital 
 and the actual earnings of capitalists who do necessary work 
 with the investment, and deserve their wage like other labor- 
 ers, all I can see left that has any force, in the usual theories 
 of profits, is the claim that something is needed in the shape 
 of a prize, to spur people who couldn't be depended on to do 
 right for its own sake to do it for the sake of the reward. This 
 answers one of my two questions, but I am very sure you will 
 not want to put the same meaning into the answer that I do 
 For me, what we have said amounts to this : — The idea that 
 capital itself earns anything is a delusive rhetorical expres- 
 sion. The earning is all done by the people who do the dif- 
 ferent kinds of work with the capital. If people who own 
 capital do not need to consume it, and do not want to work 
 with it themselves, it is merely good citizenship for them to 
 save it in the most useful way, by allowing other people to 
 work with it. It seems to me that, without knowing it, they 
 are only good citizens for a bonus if they claim pay in the 
 form of unearned profits for doing what it is to their own ad- 
 vantage as well as other people's that they should do anyway. 
 The idea has been growing upon me that the people who 
 make this something-for-nothing demand on their fellow cit- 
 izens create the social problem. I have been studying reports 
 on Papa's estate, and it seems that I am credited each quarter 
 with a little more than the quarter before, for doing nothing 
 
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 and allowing other people to increase my capital. I didn't 
 mean that I am the only one responsible for the strike, but am 
 I so far out of the way in thinking that the root of the trouble 
 can be traced to my class of people?" 
 
 So long as the conversation was confined to generalities, 
 Mrs. Lyon and Edith had only once or twice noted a fragment 
 of the dialogue. At this apparent return to a personal appli- 
 cation their interest was once more piqued, and they instinc- 
 tively listened for a signal that would show them the aflSnity 
 of their sympathies. 
 
 Edgerly and Logan Lyon had given no sign that they were 
 paying attention, but each in his way had made critical notes 
 on everything that had been said. Each had observed that, as 
 the strike situation had grown more acute, all Mr. Lyon's al- 
 lusions to it had become more dogmatic and resolute. Each 
 was on the watch for indications whether these symptoms 
 meant that the older man's convictions were growing stronger, 
 or whether they were merely his way of fighting off possible 
 yielding of his convictions under pressure. Each realized too 
 that either a support for the old order, or a factor that might 
 turn the scale in a new direction, was taking shape in Hes- 
 ter's mind. They knew that if she decided to exercise her own 
 judgment, she would hold a balance of power which might 
 reverse the Avery Company's policy. They could not regard 
 the episode as mere talk. It was a critical phase of the pend- 
 ing struggle. Without intending to mix in the argument, 
 both men exchanged their hammocks for chairs which they 
 placed nearer to the zone of inquiry, and the evidence did not 
 escape Hester that they had been less indifferent than they 
 seemed, but had found something beyond triviality in the 
 discussion. 
 
 At the same time it began to dawn upon Mr. Lyon that he 
 had on his hands more than an infant-class exercise. Consid- 
 ering Hester merely as a girl indulging her curiosity, it made 
 very little difference whether or not her ways of thinking 
 conformed to those of the street. Viewing her as a power in 
 the affairs of his corporation, the sort of advice which she 
 accepted became momentous. When Graham had advertised 
 the ideas which Hester expressed, Mr. Lyon promptly set 
 them down as vicious weapons in the hands of an enemy of 
 society. For Hester to coquette with such opinions meant 
 dangerous weakness among the friends of society. For the 
 
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 first time Mr. Lyon realized that Hester's wanderings with her 
 father, and her sampUngs of all sorts of social influence, might 
 have infected her with ideas which could be turned against 
 him in the present struggle. He did not admit the possibility 
 that she might have found some more reliable clues to the 
 truth than his beliefs contained. It was an invincible convic- 
 tion with him that any social theory which called in question 
 a fundamental assumption of business was either ignorant or 
 criminal. The only judgment he could pass upon an inclina- 
 tion to dally with such theories was that it indicated arrested 
 or perverted development. While his paternal feeling toward 
 Hester could not be changed to harshness by finding her a vic- 
 tim of either misfortune, the necessity of rating her state of 
 mind as one of the practical factors in the situation threw his 
 executive consciousness into circuit and turned this domestic 
 incident into a business complication. 
 
 "My dear child," he began, with an unstrained mixture of 
 affection and authority, "it never can do any good to play 
 with the sort of powder you are handling. The world is what 
 it is, and wishing differently won't change it. Fire burns, 
 and water drowns, and poison kills, and all the tears we may 
 shed for the victims will not have the slightest effect in chang- 
 ing the laws of nature. It is the same with the laws of prop- 
 erty. You know the Bible says, 'To him that hath shall be 
 given and he shall have abundance.' That is the way the 
 laws of property work, of course, and it is hard for those who 
 have no property to be reconciled to it, but those of us who 
 know that brains, not sympathies, make the rules of business, 
 have the duty of setting ourselves against every silly scheme 
 to substitute sentimentality for the laws of economics. There 
 would be chaos in the world if property were not sacred. The 
 rights of property put you in possession of the estate your 
 father legally created. It is just as foolish to question your 
 right to that estate as it would be to doubt your right to be 
 bom. The position for you to take, Hester, is that you are 
 providentially entrusted with large business responsibilities, 
 and that it is your duty to accept business principles and carry 
 them out to the best of your ability in administering your 
 property." 
 
 Outwardly Hester gave no appearance of energetic think- 
 ing. No visible change in her bearing corresponded with her 
 guardian's sudden intensity. Not even Mr. Lyon, and cer- 
 
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 tainly not the younger men, knew Hester well enough to 
 measure the mental and moral force behind the gentleness 
 which was both an inheritance and an art. If Mr. Lyon 
 could have read her thoughts, the protest which he had just 
 uttered would have been a feeble expression of his surprise and 
 fear. In fact Hester was appalled at the vision which Mr. 
 Lyon's answers gave her of the distance between her view- 
 point and his. With the sanguineness of generous youth she 
 relied upon a sufficient love of truth for its own sake to open 
 the door for it everywhere. Although she had never been 
 able to get her father's assent to many of her versions of 
 social facts, his rejection of her ideas was a matter so apart 
 from practical life that it did not have the effect of Mr. Lyon's 
 obduracy in the present crisis. He had furnished ocular proof 
 of a certain judicial impotence. Even in the presence of a 
 collapse in the workings of his business principles, he could 
 not admit the possibility that anything might call for a re- 
 consideration of the principles themselves. This evidence 
 confirmed Hester's impression that there must be something 
 wrong in conventionalities which so jealously resented inspec- 
 tion. 
 
 No further demonstration was necessary of her guardian's 
 insuperable prejudice; but Hester feared that she might not 
 have another so favorable opportunity to talk with him at 
 leisure, and she hoped that at worst his opposition would 
 sharpen her conclu!5ions. Her short experience in the Bureau 
 of Charities had put a keen edge upon her zeal to get a more 
 definite account of her place in the world; and Mr. Lyon's as- 
 sertion that there could be no appeal from business rules 
 struck her as a type of fatalism which was not only arrogant 
 but improbable, "rhe one reverse which she had received dur- 
 ing the interview wa.s a sense of the hopelessness of modifying 
 her guardian's opinions. She realized that he had a concep- 
 tion of the world which nothing was likely to alter, and her 
 suspicion was approaching certainty that it was a conception 
 which pitted itself against the final laws of human progress. 
 She had not yet formed the distinct judgment that her guard- 
 ian's contention was pathetic. She was merely aware in a 
 vague way of a new foreboding that the destiny she was try- 
 ing to make out for herself would be doom for him. 
 
 These were but a moment's flash-light impressions, and 
 merely the accompaniment of Hester's indecision whether to 
 
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 continue a quest which was bound to be ineffectual. On the 
 other hand, the very uselessness of the attempt was a discov- 
 ery in itself. It marked one fixed point of departure in her 
 life problem. It was a term in the calculation of her proper 
 course. She did not pause long enough to indicate that she 
 was balancing alternatives. She showed no sign of recogniz- 
 ing the reproof and warning in Mr. Lyon's last words. As if 
 unconscious of a changed tone in the discussion, she pursued 
 the calm course of her inquiry. 
 
 "Before I was quite ready for it. Uncle David, we have gone 
 over to my second question. I'm afraid I shall succeed only 
 in convincing you that I am incorrigible. But let me go on 
 as though the first question had been settled. Suppose we 
 have accounted for Papa. I am unable to see how that justifies 
 me. Suppose it was true that my father was entitled to his 
 profits for life because his labor and his capital earned them. 
 But, giving myself the most liberal interpretation I can think 
 of, the only work I have ever done was as Papa's companion 
 for a few years, after he had spent several times as many years 
 as my preceptor. Then it might be said that, for a few 
 months, I was his imtrained nurse. If I had saved all the 
 wages earned in that way at usual rates, the whole would 
 amount to much less than my present income every month; 
 while girls of my age who are skilled workers in their trades 
 can never earn a fraction of my income. Do you really ex- 
 pect me to believe that you justify such a contrast by saying 
 that property is sacred? It seems to me that justice is more 
 sacred than property. As I understand it, the system of ar- 
 rangements which the word property really means is a col- 
 lection of attempts to do justice ; but if we find that these ar- 
 rangements fail to do justice, then they look to me no longer 
 sacred but stupid." 
 
 David Lyon would no more have wronged another in his 
 property, knowing his act to be wrong, than he would have as- 
 saulted a member of his family. He would as soon have con- 
 spired to overthrow the moral law not to lie, or steal or kill, as 
 he would have condoned an evasion of justice as he under- 
 stood it. But he was honestly at the limit of his intelligence 
 when called upon for credentials of his right and wrong. It 
 was as though he had been challenged to show cause why up 
 is up and down is down. To Mr. Lyon "property," "justice," 
 "morality" and the like, were words that stood for the abso- 
 
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 lute and unchangeable nature of things. He was by no means 
 a stranger to the great historians, but whenever he had read 
 of past events he had always judged the actors by the rules 
 which he would apply to his own conduct. These rules seemed 
 to him to require right because it was right, and he knew of 
 no more searching reason. He would have denounced it as 
 vicious trifling with words, if he had been told that what we 
 call right is only opinion, as strong or as weak as the reasons 
 upon which it rests. The proposition that right is always an 
 adaptation to circumstances, and that any alleged right is 
 essentially right in the degree of the fitness of its adaptation, 
 would have seemed to him sheer repudiation of morality. He 
 knew well enough that the laws of property in different ages 
 and countries had varied in detail, but he had never realized 
 that more than one basis of property institutions is conceivable, 
 nor had he ever comprehended that property is essentially the 
 specifications of a bargain under which persons consent to live 
 together. He had made no allowance for the fact that many 
 of the persons so acquiescing had practically no other alter- 
 native ; nor had he considered that the same balancing of in- 
 terests which once made the laws of property would be continu- 
 ing precisely the same process if it reconstructed those laws 
 when the social value of interests had changed. An assertion 
 that the institutions of property are liable to modification 
 whenever the conviction prevails that the terms are less favor- 
 able for some than for other parties concerned, would to his 
 mind have meant plain anarchy. 
 
 Mr. Lyon had never distinguished between the abstract 
 moral principle that every one is entitled to his own, and the 
 particular application of the principle in a given system of 
 property. It had never occurred to him, and he could not 
 have entertained the idea, that a property system is merely 
 an organization of human opinions about what ought to be 
 regarded as each one's own. In his view the political device 
 was as sacred as the supporting moral principle, because he 
 had never harbored a doubt that they were identical. More- 
 over, to his way of thinking, rights were inalienable endow- 
 ments of individuals. They were features of the divine image 
 in which man was created, and as unalterable as the archetype 
 itself. Property, as he viewed it, was simply those pre-estab- 
 lished rights recognized and guaranteed by law. Property 
 was therefore sacred because the rights were sacred ; and it was 
 
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 a sign of something wrong in anyone's make-up who would 
 imply that property is impeachable. 
 
 To be sure, Mr. Lyon had been quite consistent with one 
 phase of himself in admitting that the institutions of property 
 worked anomalies and hardships. He was equally sincere, 
 however, in classing these accidents with the other mysterious 
 orderings of Providence, and even more rigid in his belief that 
 they must be accepted as such. All distresses from lack or 
 loss of property seemed to him, like pain, disease, and death, 
 inscrutable dispensations. He wished they were not accidents 
 of the human lot. Quite in accord with the similar clause in 
 Halleck's creed, he was willing to admit that his faith in God 
 would be easier if they did not occur; but he was sure it 
 amounted to one and the same thing whether we blamed 
 property, for its share in them, or Providence. The dilemma 
 which Hester had presented affected him, therefore, merely 
 as a querulous complaint against the divine government. He 
 was too strongly intrenched in his religious beliefs, and in the 
 conventional morality which they protected, to be disturbed 
 in his confidence that they could not be thrown on the defen- 
 sive by collision with facts. He was shocked and grieved that 
 Hester could actually make a virtue of impatience with the 
 Supreme Wisdom; yet his paternal fondness promptly filed 
 the excuse that her experience had been too limited for ef- 
 ficient schooling in humility and reverence. 
 
 The two younger men detected rather clearly the remoter 
 bearings of Mr. Lyon's perplexity. Edgerly had a hundred 
 times analyzed with his classes the general situation of which 
 his father-in-law was a symptom. While he listened he had 
 found himself dramatizing the dialogue as an encounter of a 
 passing and a coming world-spirit. For years he had taught 
 that ideas still gripped business practice which more penetrat- 
 ing philosophy had dismissed as archaic. He credited in Mr. 
 Lyon all that was worthiest in presumptions fairly appropriate 
 to a simpler period; but insistence on them, in spite of chang- 
 ing conditions, affected Edgerly as a forlorn hope of barricad- 
 ing the sunrise. By contrast, the impulse and the insight of 
 Hester's ingenuous reflection of the world as she saw it im- 
 pressed him more as confirmation than as consequence of 
 the dawning perceptions. 
 
 Logan Lyon's interest had been wholly curious at first. As 
 the immediate practical bearing of Hester's questionings pre- 
 
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 sented itself he had tried to think of them in their business re- 
 lations, and to give them a rating at their strictly logical value. 
 Instead of making for an abstract judgment, however, this 
 attempt at a severely judicial hearing had passed rapidly into 
 an emotional attitude. Lyon had never served formal notice 
 on himself that the girl he had so long treated as a precocious 
 infant was already beyond classification as a child. Viewing 
 her impersonally, considering her argument as he would a 
 contention in court, following her method of thinking, he re- 
 corded his first distinct observation that Hester had become a 
 woman. Her mind was not merely responding to casual 
 stimuli. She was not merely receptive and acquiescent and 
 imitative. She was selecting, and correlating, and judging 
 and estimating. 
 
 But this impromptu psychological analysis served only as 
 a brief introduction to a personal reaction. When he was at 
 the point of submitting in rebuttal his ultimatum of unavail- 
 ability, Lyon was checked by strange stirrings of feelings 
 that with Hester's spirit as an impulse the frontiers of availa- 
 bility might be indefinitely advanced. With the suggestion, 
 his whole scheme of life seemed to come up for audit. He had 
 a moment's view of it against a background of alternatives 
 which he had never considered. He wondered whether he was 
 affected more by disgust with what was or by desire for what 
 might be. He was sure only that his attention had shifted 
 from the questions to the questioner. Instead of interposing 
 an objection which might have embarrassed Hester, he hoped 
 to help her express herself more fully by submitting the 
 query : — "As we are all in the same class, Hester, so far as 
 drawing dividends beside our salaries, what do you see for us 
 to do to make ourselves less troublesome?" 
 
 Hester wished she knew more of Logan on the business side. 
 He had always been good fun as a teasing big brother. She 
 believed in him heartily up to the point where she began to 
 regret him as j)robably a too f ai thful copy of his father. As 
 Logan had kept his professional equation wholly out of her 
 view, she had no evidence that he tended to vary more from 
 his father's opinions than from his character. She had no 
 reason to suppose that his question was an exception to his 
 quizzical habit, and with the faintest parrying smile she still 
 directed her appeal to her guardian. 
 
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 "If I am repeating the same thing, Uncle David, it is be- 
 cause I am trying to find the plainest words for my idea. Let 
 me tell it this way : — A great many kinds of people must work 
 together to create a business. Some of them contribute un- 
 skilled labor of their hands; some of them skilled labor of 
 their hands ; some labor of their brains ; some, like you and 
 Papa, not only labor of hand and brain, but special supervis- 
 ion and wise judgment, without which all the rest of the work 
 might be unsuccessful ; and still other people have helped by 
 putting into the hands of these workers some of their wealth 
 to be changed into new forms of wealth. Is it not plain truth 
 that all these kinds of contribution were necessary to make 
 the business? Could it have been created by one kind alone? 
 Up to the paying stage, has there not been a necessary part- 
 nership of all the makers of the business? But what happens 
 after the business is made? Do the persons who have con- 
 tributed work only, either of hand or brain, retain their rat- 
 ing as partners? Are they not mere hired help? Those who 
 are supposed to have contributed wealth, with or without 
 work besides, are now the only partners, are they not? They 
 own the business. They are the business. After the hired 
 workers have received their pay, and the other costs are cov- 
 ered, these contributors of capital claim all the output that is 
 left, with all the added value that comes from many sources 
 outside the business. If the business turns out to be as pros- 
 perous as the Avery Company, every ten years or so, although 
 these partners have collected from the business every year a 
 high rate of interest, they divide among themselves a surplus 
 equal to the whole amount of their previous principal. None 
 of the other partners, except these controllers of the preferred 
 factor of capital, have any voice or share in this distribution, 
 but why should one class of partners in its production be en- 
 titled to dispose of it and not all the others?" 
 
 This time Logan Lyon deliberately rode for a fall. He 
 was sure he could provoke a reply that would bring out Hes- 
 ter's version more distinctly. In his most serious manner he 
 protested: — "But, Hester, haven't all these other people had 
 their pay at market rates?" 
 
 "Yes, Logan," Hester sighed, and the hardly perceptible 
 depression of light in her face told him that she could find 
 less palliation for his tardiness than for her father's, "let us 
 hope that they had, always including the money-lenders. For 
 
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 that very reason, if full market rates of pay to all concerned 
 have still left a surplus undivided, why should it belong to 
 one group of its producers rather than to all?" 
 
 Hester had scarcely glanced at Logan in replying to his 
 question, and was still apparently consulting only his father. 
 
 "But there are some more questions. Uncle David. If we 
 had come from another planet, which had only the laws of the 
 physical universe in common with ours, is it not possible that 
 we might be astonished at this arrangement? Might we not 
 say that it was largely a clumsy make-shift, and that it cor- 
 responded only in the roughest way with the elements of jus- 
 tice involved in the case? Might we not decide at once that 
 this treatment of great numbers of the makers of the business 
 as not-partners, and the reservation of partnership rights for 
 a favored section of the makers, was arbitrary? Mjght we 
 not prophesy that, whatever may have been the causes that 
 led to such unfair arrangements, they could never perma- 
 nently satisfy rational beings, and that removal of the in- 
 justices would begin as soon as people reached a high grade 
 of intelligence? It may be I have lived as far from your busi- 
 ness world as though I had been on another planet. Any- 
 way, the appearance it presents in the glimpses I am getting 
 is chiefly amateurish." 
 
 By this time Mr. Lyon had dismissed the thought of cor- 
 recting these vagaries at once. He was so convinced of his 
 helplessness that he had given up the attempt to instruct, and 
 was merely following anxious curiosity to draw out any un- 
 spoken reserve in Hester's ideas. "Most business men are on 
 the lookout for ways to improve their methods," he protested 
 with an effort at humor, "and would be willing to pay liberal 
 royalties to anyone who could show them how to become less 
 amateurish." 
 
 "One of our modern engineers would call the pyramid- 
 builders amateurish, would he not, Uncle David," and because 
 she well knew how her confession had hurt her guardian 
 Hester tried to speak soothingly ; "although he might not be 
 able to tell how the knowledge and tools at their disposal 
 could have been u-sed more skillfully? As a stranger from 
 another world, I must respect the skill applied in your eco- 
 nomic system, yet T must be frank enough to say that it seems 
 to me an impossibly boorish system." 
 
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 "Do not spare the particulars, Hester," sadly exhorted Mr. 
 Lyon. 
 
 "Why," continued Hester, "I should suppose that things 
 are worth what they are worth in serving people. As I un- 
 derstand your economic system, it makes people altogether 
 subordinate to capital. Does not such an inversion of values 
 make the system essentially savage and superstitious?" 
 
 Hester did not at the moment remember that she had used 
 one of Graham's phrases. She had consciously enough, and 
 often, thought over his arguments, but her concurrence with 
 them had been endorsement rather than absorption. She 
 was really trying to find a view-point of her own, and her 
 method would have been telling evidence against the imita- 
 tion theory in social psychology. Her sense of loneliness in 
 this search had grown more oppressive with every gain in 
 clearness of vision. She had not yet made out that not Gra- 
 ham alone, but Halleck and Edgerly and even Logan Lyon 
 were moving from different starting points toward the same 
 outlook; and her very devotion to the individual problem, to- 
 gether with her feeling of solitude in the pursuit, retarded 
 her perception that Mr. Lyon represented a declining phase 
 of the world-order, and that her forereaching was merely one 
 among innumerable signs of the latest human awakening. 
 
 "If what you call 'an inversion of values' could really be 
 brought home to it, I should have to accept the impeachment," 
 Mr. Lyon provisionally admitted. 
 
 "But can what we have agreed to about the facts of the 
 system have any other meaning than an inversion of values?" 
 pleaded Hester. "If we frankly invent fairy stories, the more 
 fanciful they are the better, because they set out to be a com- 
 plete vacation from hard realities. But I have always resented 
 such mixtures of fact and fable, of gods and men, as Homer's 
 description of the siege of Troy, for instance. It affects me 
 as tantalizing sane reason to credit men with heroic exploits 
 and then, just as their deeds are about to achieve their natural 
 ends, to interpose actors who are independent of rational cause 
 and effect, and make them defeat the results. But I can see no 
 more superstition in mixing up mythical gods with a Greek 
 tribal conflict than in your making a person out of capital 
 and allowing it to nullify the rational relations between 
 laborers." 
 
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 "Your Greek is surely Greek to me, Hester;" and Mr. 
 Lyon's inability to see any pertinence in the parallel was not 
 feigned. "I can think of nothing that calls for such a com- 
 parison." 
 
 "Have patience with me just a moment longer, Uncle 
 David," — Hester was not happy in wounding her guardian, 
 but she wi^s obeying a strengthening sense of obligation to be 
 genuine toward the problems she was facing, — "and I will say 
 it in only one more way. It seems to me as plain as the lawn 
 and trees and lake before our eyes that we should make the 
 world better if wc were willing to accept the consequences of 
 some very simple facts. Is it not clear that life is just people 
 learning how to live together so as to help out one another 
 most in turning nature to their uses? Are not people and 
 nature the only real factors in the problem? When we have 
 worked together long enough to have government and laws 
 and beliefs and business, are any new factors really con- 
 cerned? Is it not an illusion if we imagine that these varia- 
 tions are anything more than combinations of the work of 
 nature and of people? Can any business possibly be an ex- 
 ception to this rule? Is not a business merely means that 
 nature affords, fitted by some people's work to furnish their 
 share of the exchanges by which all the people in the world 
 satisfy their wants? Is there any sanction in unspoiled rea- 
 son for excluding from a business some of the persons who 
 have created it, and giving their places to this upstart ficti- 
 tious person, Capital? Have not the people who put their 
 lives into the business made themselves more a part, of it than 
 those who merely put in their money? Can a system built on 
 the contrary assumption be anything but an accumulation of 
 accidents? Is it not a complete inversion of values, a jugglery 
 of greedy force, a conspiracy to consecrate wrong, if we try 
 to perpetuate this structure of fictions in the place of nature?" 
 
 Mr. Lyon was entirely free from misgivings in classing 
 Hester's ideals as a somewhat more advanced variation of cry- 
 ing for the moon. Upon that supposition he was wise in pre- 
 suming that experience would be the best teacher, and he 
 restricted himself to the incredulous prediction, "As you grow 
 older, Hester, you will probably learn that there are difficul- 
 ties in the way of putting our preferences in the place of the 
 plan the world was built on." 
 
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 Hester refrained from reminding her guardian that he was 
 again begging the question, but she saw more plainly than 
 ever that the clue to the difference between them was his ina- 
 bility to conceive that anything remained to be discovered 
 about the world's workings. She offered larger bonds than 
 she was aware for the lawfulness of her thinking, when she 
 further confessed : — 
 
 "I acknowledge I have no idea how far it is pos- 
 sible to go at once toward changing capitalistic business into 
 human business. Perhaps it may require an era merely to 
 install the belief that this is the next great problem. It may 
 be that evangelizing the world with such a gospel would be 
 salvation enough for one epoch. I'm afraid I shall not be a 
 patient waiter for the fruits of this righteousness till all the 
 world has received its seeds. Such a religion ought to begin 
 early to be justified by its works as it goes along. At all 
 events, if I understand Mr. Graham, he is simply a prophet 
 of this faith. He is not an enemy of business. He wants 
 business to make itself more human by repudiating an irra- 
 tional principle. He insists that every worker in every busi- 
 ness shall be recognized as a partner in the business, with his 
 proportionate share of property in the business and influence 
 upon its policy. He does not profess to know how the pro- 
 portions of property and influence will be worked out. He 
 claims only that the next move toward fixing these propor- 
 tions must be admission of the neglected principle. So much 
 at least he demands now in the name of justice, and all the 
 facts that I can see tell me he is right." 
 
 For several minutes Edith Edgerly had been standing be- 
 hind her father, her hands resting caressingly on his shoul- 
 ders, and as it seemed to her husband, instinctively guarding 
 Mr. Lyon against something impending. Edith was nearer 
 than Mrs. Lyon to thinking and feeling as Hester did ; but 
 quicker sense of the crushing meaning which submission to 
 such valuations would have for one man, than of the advance 
 it would mark for other men, spurred wife and daughter 
 alike to silent resentment. While absorbed in her inquest, 
 Hester had not failed to regret the tension in their family 
 circle, yet she did not doubt that it was unavoidable. It 
 seemed merely a reduced reflection of the business conflict. 
 She saw no hope that the one could disappear without the 
 other ; but she was in doubt whether her skirmishing had more 
 
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 advanced or retarded the adjustment of either situation ; and 
 no one in the group felt more relief in following Logan's 
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 "We should have no saving of life by means of the operating 
 room if some one hadn't the nerve to cause suffering for 
 the sake of relieving it." 
 
 MRS. LYON alone remained at The Lodge. The rest of 
 the party took the early Monday morning train for the 
 city, with the understanding that if the weather held good all 
 would return for one more Sunday at the Lake. Mr. Lyon 
 planned to take his meals at the Club and to sleep at Logan's 
 apartments. Hester was visiting Elsie. The schedule for the 
 week was rather crowded, but nothing was in sight to show 
 that the season's conflict was nearing a decision. 
 
 The Edgerlys consorted with a University coterie who 
 called themselves The Riffraff. They had been drawn to- 
 gether by miscellaneous attractions. Before they were fully 
 aware of their affinities, Fessenden of the economic depart- 
 ment observed that they were what the sociologists would call 
 a group; and he explained that the reason why sociologists 
 existed was that there were a few things left not worth any- 
 one's else attention. The members of the bunch scorned to 
 inquire whether the joke was on the sociologists or them- 
 selves; but from that hour they began to have a group-con- 
 sciousness, which they afterwards learned was also sociolog- 
 ical. Without deliberation for or against, and without sur- 
 veying themselves in the abstract, as we are viewing them, 
 they spontaneously assumed the function of academic safety- 
 valve. They admitted that they were a providential pro- 
 vision against the pressure of too protracted and pervasive 
 profundity. Their operations were not reduced to rule. They 
 mostly happened. When human nature could endure no 
 longer, they fell back on reversion to type. Their only plan 
 was to have no plan, but to vary their recuperations according 
 to a general law of non-conformity. They descended upon 
 one another's abodes in designedly irregular rotation. Usu- 
 ally by themselves, but occasionally for the redemption of a 
 wider University constituency, they behaved like naughty 
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 The old guard of the group numbered exactly twenty. As 
 many more had been recruited from time to time. They 
 were the men and women of the academic community who 
 had the most compatible and infectious gifts of laughter or 
 its proxies, and the temper to make them restorative and 
 tonic. They were no close corporation. Their boundaries 
 were adjustable. Within the circle indeed were two or three 
 pairs of feudists who departmentally were always at each 
 other's throats, but in the group atmosphere professional ani- 
 mosities were as evanescent as professors' salaries. The Riff- 
 raff merged with everything non-vocational about the Uni- 
 versity, and once or twice a year it managed to fuse the whole 
 faculty body for an hour or two into a mass of homogeneous 
 good-fellowship. 
 
 This time the call had read : — 
 
 The Riffraff collects with the Edgerlys Monday evening. 
 
 Committee of the whole to consider the state of the Universe. 
 
 Mrs. Edgerly had asked Hester and Elsie. They came for 
 dinner too ; and the table talk was largely biographic of the 
 more salient personalities to be expected. 
 
 It was not like the usual rallies of The Riffraff. The com- 
 bined effort to relax placed no net result to its credit beyond 
 general disclosure of unreconciled temper toward social con- 
 ditions. Vacation was just over, it is true, and "the strain of 
 toil, the stress of care" had not yet told to the reacting point. 
 
 The real reason, however, was subtler. Along with the 
 smoke and the Stock Yards' aroma, the strike streaked the 
 University atmosphere. And it was not with the surface 
 effect of dust that a tuft of feathers whisks from its lodgment. 
 It was the drain of vims in the blood. The Edgerlys were 
 the only University family with a negotiable interest in the 
 labor issue, but it would have been hard to find a member of 
 the faculties who was not brooding over the situation as 
 though it were his immediate individual affair. Few of them 
 had definite and organized opinions that would go far as a 
 basis of settlement. They had rather desultory and disquiet- 
 ing feelings, fine scruples that this, that and the other aspect 
 of the case on either side ought not so to be, compunctions 
 that the morals on trial were vulgarly under ^ade, but withal 
 a curiously concerted certainty of dogmatic imprecision that 
 somebody ought to do something. 
 
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 David Lyon's vocabulary would not have enabled him to 
 characterize this state of mind as a coincidence of neuras- 
 thenic parallels. If he had known where to borrow the terms, 
 and had been advised of the occasion for their use, he would 
 doubtless have employed them promptly. He would thus 
 have satisfied his conscience without unparliamentary divulg- 
 ings. In spirit, too, he would have represented most of his 
 directors, but they would have troubled themselves less about 
 non-conducting language. 
 
 Yet the diagnosis would have quite misconstrued the sig- 
 nificance of this academic sentiment. Only a small fraction 
 of the University community had given more than layman's 
 attention to labor problems, from the standpoint either of the 
 business man or of the social theorists; yet almost without 
 exception the faculty men reacted to social conflicts as 
 promptly as temperature to the sundown. Without an articu- 
 late account of it, they were accepting themselves as parts of 
 a social conscience in the making. As a result of influences 
 which they could not have scheduled, they were forming the 
 habit of looking at themselves as among the responsible par- 
 ties behind all the good or evil of society. Though they had 
 no ready cures for moral ills, they were fast shedding the 
 shame of secretiveness about the ills' existence. Their in- 
 stinct was becoming declarative that a breakdown anywhere 
 in the social process was not wholly, nor perhaps mostly, a re- 
 fusal of individuals to keep faith with the social order; but 
 more a probable case against the intelligence of the ways in 
 which society was trying to work. For David Lyon's kind 
 to despise the symptomatic value of such people, was as fatu- 
 ous as it would be to deny their competence to ring in an 
 alarm, because they didn't belong to the fire department. 
 
 When an individual has gone wrong there may be some 
 hope of bringing him back by ridicule. When it is a whole 
 industrial system, ridicule has the effect of much ado about 
 nothing, till particular persons can be haled before the bar 
 of public opinion, charged with specific and recognized trans- 
 gressions. 
 
 The fly in the ointment of The Riffraff was invisible to the 
 naked eye, and this was the prime unsettling of their spirits. 
 That the economic process in Chicago was nearing halt on a 
 dead center, was plain enough. That civilized industries were 
 not beyond liability to such arrest, was sad enough. But the 
 
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 worry to the dispassionate observer was that no distinguish- 
 able individuals were in sight to whom it could fairly be said, 
 "Thou axt the man 1" No corporation in the country had a 
 more spotless reputation than the Avery Company. Its 
 officers and largest stockholders were among the people of 
 whom Chicago was proudest. On the other hand, the more 
 the strike leaders pressed their case, the stronger the set of 
 public opinion toward Halleck's early conclusions. 
 
 University sentiment was more sensitive than that of the 
 general public to both sides of the dilemma. There was a 
 stealthy feeling that a social deadlock was somehow a contra- 
 diction in the logic of life. There was half-conscious confes- 
 sion of humiliation and guilt at inability to speak the word 
 that might expose the flaw in the reasoning and start up action 
 along its rational course. 
 
 This sense of incompetence gave the pitch for the evening. 
 
 Seymour, one of the biologists, was the first to arrive, and 
 he brought Graham as his guest. He would not have gone so 
 far without an accomplice. It was Hester's work; and her 
 private reasons went back to Graham the individual, not the 
 Institution. She had urged Seymour to come early, promis- 
 ing to be answerable for the consequences. Seymour and 
 Graham had roomed in the same hall for three years at Har- 
 vard. Between the alternatives of conflict and complement 
 open to such opposites they had accomplished a durable nat- 
 ural selection of the latter. Hester's suggestion to Seymour, 
 who was a long-time friend, had been that Logan Lyon would 
 be invited by his sister; and that a meeting, under such cir- 
 cumstances, might do something indirectly toward settling 
 the strike. If the argument was ingenuous in its substance, 
 it was slightly overdrawn in its sanguineness, and besides thai 
 it was surreptitiously advanced several numbers in the rating. 
 In this particular connection, the strike was in fact quite inci- 
 dental to Hester's more personal purposes. 
 
 Halleck, whom Edgerly had invited, was the only other 
 guest. When Seymour presented his friend to Edgerly, and 
 later to Lyon, it was "Graham of Harvard," "Edgerly of 
 Yale," "Lyon of Princeton." Beyond this it sufficed that they 
 were gentlemen. After Hester felt that Graham had settled 
 his dues to his hosts, she manoeuvered a topic which included 
 the Edgerlys and Seymour, but offered no inducements to 
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 The elision occurred according to a law not mentioned by 
 Grimm; and furthermore the phonetic change was appar- 
 ently unobserved when Graham detached Elsie from the dis- 
 course, and formed a diphthong which at once showed capa- 
 bilities of sustaining itself without adventitious support. 
 
 Hester's back was turned, but she needed no assurance that 
 details were immaterial. With an introspective withdrawal 
 not betrayed to the rest of the circle, she indulged a momen- 
 tary reflection that things were not so insuperably intractable 
 after all. In any event, her self-imposed function of media- 
 tion had been discharged without announcing itself, and the 
 inward reward was prodigally disproportioned to the visible 
 merit. 
 
 "I wonder. Miss Kissinger," Graham ventured, "if an out- 
 lawed Institution still rouses enough curiosity to bring a neg- 
 ligible individual within the range of vision." 
 
 "The Institution has been behaving so atrociously of late," 
 Elsie reservedly replied, "that the individual may perhaps 
 elicit a degree of morbid interest from the thoughtless and 
 injudicious." 
 
 "Then the individual must be in for a lonesome time of it 
 this evening," sighed Graham, "unless there are non-apparent 
 resources for diluting the social medium." 
 
 They had taken a few steps toward the library door, and 
 the Colonial fire-place which occupied one end of the room at 
 once struck Graham as a strategic position. Without allow- 
 ing space for an answer, he continued : — "One of those chim- 
 ney corners might possibly take us back to the Boston level 
 at which we parted company." 
 
 "I haven't decided yet," skidded Elsie, while they moved 
 slowly in the proposed direction, "whether the Boston that I 
 found had risen above or fallen below the chimney corner 
 level." 
 
 "At this moment," Graham deposed complaisantly, as they 
 occupied one of the settles, "there is no room in my mind for 
 doubt that, compared with a particular chimney corner, Bos- 
 ton, past, present or future, is a sub-basement." 
 
 Elsie was neither prepared for a metamorphosis of Graham 
 into the ordinary society jollier, nor was she so inexperienced 
 as to attach more than a surface meaning to such speeches, 
 even from the most matter-of-fact men. On the whole the re- 
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 repertoire, and it was distinctly disappointing. Graham in 
 earnest was impressive. She feared for the staying powers of 
 the interest if he began to exhibit the marks of a tner-out of 
 debutantes. 
 
 Graham's next lead was hardly more fortunate : — 
 
 "The facts might easily be distorted into the charge that I 
 had been shadowing you and Miss Kinzie." 
 
 "And the undistorted facts are?" queried Elsie. 
 
 "My program takes me often into your charity district, 
 and I have several times had to execute some quick right- 
 abouts to keep outside your lines." 
 
 "I see," Elsie interpreted, "the Brahmin avoids the Sudra's 
 shadow." 
 
 "On the contrary," amended Graham, "the unsanctified 
 respects the .sanctuary. If the sort of thing you are doing 
 weren't so futile, it would be holy." 
 
 Elsie was not sure whether Graham's real emphasis was on 
 the depreciation or the praise, but she left the move with him 
 by the inquisitive protest: — "Then you imagine one's con- 
 science may be so easy with its secret of futility that one needs 
 to be taunted with it?" 
 
 Graham was both pleased, and at the same time, in the 
 classic English of his self-examination, "stung." He was 
 happily surprised by Elsie's insight, but she made what he 
 intended as sincere, if qualified, appreciation look like brutal- 
 ity. Yet her implied anticipation of the thought in his mind 
 was a sign that she had looked farther into the situation than 
 he had expected. He was disgusted with himself for his awk- 
 ward beginning, but his very blunders helped him the sooner 
 to find firm footing for frankness. He was more like Elsie's 
 previous &stimate of him when he further explained, instead 
 of retracting: — 
 
 "If you look at it in that way. Miss Kissinger, whether it 
 is holy or not, it is heroic. I have come across plenty of traces 
 lately of you and Miss Kinzie doing things fit to earn you 
 sainthood, and I meant to applaud them heartily. I wish 
 you would tell me though just what led from my way of put- 
 ting it to your phrase 'secret of futility.' " 
 
 "Confessing for myself costs nothing," Elsie answered de- 
 liberately, "but I can speak for no one else. You mustn't 
 infer from me anything about Miss Kinzie. How far we 
 think alike or differently, I have no right to say. I don't 
 
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 mind telling you, though, that I have kept on doing friendly 
 visiting with the feeling of carrying a mangled child to the 
 hospital after I had been riding in the machine that ran him 
 down. There would be some virtue, I suppose, in making all 
 the amends in my power, but there would have been so much 
 more in preventing the reckless driving." 
 
 "Have you ever carried that idea over to the credit of the 
 Institution, Miss Kissinger?" suggested Graham searchingly. 
 
 "Why ! Mr. Graham," and Elsie was instantly almost bel- 
 ligerent; "at this moment the Institution is the only reckless 
 driver! Isn't it just as bad for the boy, whether he is run over 
 by the freight truck or the fire engine?" 
 
 "But," pleaded Graham, "you might have pardoned the 
 engine driver for running over one child, if he had saved the 
 Iroquois hundreds?" 
 
 They stopped a moment to take bearings. Each picture 
 seemed plausible, but neither was satisfying. After adjust- 
 ing her reflections as well as she could, Elsie showed that she 
 was puzzled more than defiant, when she speculated, "Isn't 
 the answer that no driver can be sure of saving the hundreds, 
 but he may take care of the one?" 
 
 "If you will pardon me. Miss Kissinger," Graham resisted, 
 "I think that is just the feminine of it. It is emotionally fine 
 to help the near individual, but it is rationally weak to mag- 
 nify him over the remoter many." 
 
 "Of course," yielded Elsie, with scoffing humility, "it is my 
 duty to believe that the masculine of it is the right of it, but 
 sooth to say I have never been so persuaded. The hypothet- 
 ical many in the distance may be worth more than the actual 
 one present, but reason seems to me stronger if it makes sure 
 of the real one, and deals with the unreal many when they 
 materialize. Preachments and programs about humanity may 
 have their place, but the need of the Higgins family next 
 block is a neighborly hand. It seems to me that real human- 
 ity must mean joining one neighborly hand to another till 
 all the world is in touch. I can't understand the arithmetic 
 that expects to sum up the whole by leaving out the parts." 
 
 "And you lay that at the door of the Institution?" 
 wondered Graham. 
 
 "Why shouldn't I, Mr. Graham? When you explained 
 your campaign in Boston, it sounded almost convincing. But 
 i come back to the Avery district and everything seems to 
 
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 contradict your theory. A year ago the region was full of peo- 
 ple who were getting on in the world with tolerable satisfac- 
 tion. They were working hard, but instead of finding fault 
 with that, most of them would have given up all the hopes 
 they had ever pinned to luck, or politics, or fine sounding 
 theories or anything else, for the assurance of a chance to do 
 that same kind of work to the end of their days. Those of 
 them who were careful had saved something from their earn- 
 ings. They were adding comforts to their homes. They 
 were starting their children better than they started them- 
 selves. They didn't live in Paradise. They had heard of 
 spots on the sun, and they knew of exasperating things about 
 government, and even about their own industry. In propor- 
 tion to the substantial welfare of their lot, however, the eco- 
 nomic and political evils were hardly more prominent in their 
 calculation than the sun spots. Now comes the strike, and in 
 place of that prosperous and comfortable and decently con- 
 tented population, all are unhappy, hundreds are miserable, 
 and scores are desperate. What is the change for? To elevate 
 'Labor!' Where is this 'Labor,' and what is it? You would 
 say it is all-the-laborers, and they can be benefited only at 
 the cost of some-of-the-laborers. What the employers fall 
 back on sounds a little more impersonal, but it really comes 
 to the same thing. They say everything must yield to the 
 interests of Capital. In either case it's imaginary people pre- 
 ferred to real people. Both the strikers and the corporation 
 have a theory of the greatest good of the greatest number, but 
 in practice the only ones you can be sure of don't count in the 
 least. Between your upper and nether millstones of Capital 
 and Labor you grind the life out of the actual, near, flesh and 
 blood man who is most worth considering. He bears the 
 brunt, whether of work or fight; but whatever happens to him 
 Capital and Labor manage between them to keep work or 
 fight going on in the interest of the absentees, who in either 
 ca,se are in no danger." 
 
 It was not easy for Graham to deflect the force of this ar- 
 raignment, especially as his own thoughts had been running 
 in the same direction. In sheer fighting strength the organi- 
 zation had gained with every week of the strike. But the tolls 
 of war had to be paid, and experience at the place of collec- 
 tion tended to make tlic price look larger than its purchase. 
 In [>rinciple Graham had never faltered for a moment, nor 
 
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 as far as he knew had any of his supporters. For substantially 
 the same reasons that Elsie had expressed, however, he had 
 lately been turning over in his mind the possibility of terms 
 with the Avery Company that would leave the skirmish line 
 a visible distance in advance of its original position, and would 
 relieve the first combatants by transferring the thick of the 
 fight to another part of the field. Simply because he had not 
 been able to hit upon a feasible proposition, he was obliged 
 to decide that the time had not come for altering the plan 
 of campaign. 
 
 Graham had hardly more heart than hope for an effort 
 to acclimate Elsie's sympathies to such a north temperate at- 
 mosphere. He was not comfortable under her criticism; 
 still there was refreshment in the contrast between her warmth 
 toward people in particular and the necessary chill of a war 
 policy that had to treat humanity as an abstraction. Nor 
 upon second thought was he inordinately proud of his gen- 
 eralization that a presumption in favor of actual people, as 
 against contingent prospects, was peculiarly feministic. On 
 the contrary, he remembered that precisely this preference was 
 the first principle of practical business. He saw that an apol- 
 ogy was due to Elsie, and that he must accept the burden of 
 proof that her bird in the hand was not worth his two in the 
 bush. His confidence in his own judgment was not waver- 
 ing, but he was almost as uncertain of his wish as of his ability 
 to change Elsie's view. His usual decisiveness was well in the 
 background as he took up his defense. 
 
 "You wouldn't admit. Miss Kissinger, that you are appeal- 
 ing to the philosophy of 'let well enough alone?' " 
 
 Elsie was unhappily neither as sure as Graham of her out- 
 come, nor was she as reliant upon her own reasoning. She 
 was in contact with a mass of saddening facts, and she con- 
 nected them correctly with their immediate occasions. Be- 
 yond this she was in the same fog with older and wiser peo- 
 ple. If there was a difference, it was that few of the older 
 and wiser gave themselves as much uneasiness about a fog- 
 dispeller. Graham's insinuation touched a specially tender 
 spot, and he charged up another gaucherie to himself when 
 Elsie answered : — "Is that degree of harshness necessary, Mr. 
 Graham ? One might suppose it would count as a mitigating 
 circumstance that I said first aid to the injured is futile com- 
 pared with shutting off the supply of injuries?" 
 
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 Graham could have choked himself for his tactlessness. It 
 was a new experience to miscue in this stupid fashion. He 
 felt as though he had suddenly found out that one of his 
 senses had stopped working. He thought it must have been 
 his campaign habits. A season of sharpshooting at the worst 
 and the weakest in opposing opinions must have reorganized 
 him for offense only. 
 
 At the same time Elsie was trying to restrain herself from 
 too fickle parting with her illusion that Graham was tolerant 
 and magnanimous. His uneasiness was so obtrusive, how- 
 ever, that she could understand it only as a taking of liberty 
 to be angry at her disagreement. 
 
 With a doughty effort to put himself right, Graham threw 
 over his misplaced confidence in abstract reasoning, and reck- 
 lessly followed his impulse. It was a lucky stumble into rein- 
 statement in Elsie's sympathy. 
 
 "I don't know why I'm floundering so, Miss Kissinger," 
 he blurted out boyishly, "but it's probably what's coming to 
 me for dragging the day's work in at all. My instincts claim 
 you as an ally. It was farthest from my intention to worry 
 you into professing my opinions. I have been wrestling all 
 Summer with friends and enemies who had at least the one 
 purpose in common of beating the dust out of one another's 
 arguments. Those of us who were fighting shoulder to shoul- 
 der against the Company have fought one another as hard, 
 not to defeat one another but to chase everything out of our 
 calculations that can't justify itself. It's a terrific test, but 
 in the end it's a mutual benefit. There is nothing like it to 
 prick bubbles and put us face to face both with ourselves and 
 the cold facts. I had no business to go at you as though I 
 wanted to schoolma.ster you into reciting my lessons, and it is 
 more of a surprise to me than to you that I did it. As I think 
 it over now, our organization has been furnishing a pretty 
 good illustration of George Eliot's remark that kicking and 
 cuffing are common folks' wooing. We have improved our 
 mutual understanding and kept up our courage by merciless 
 belaborings of one another. Ever since our Boston talks I've 
 counted you on our side in spirit. It was boorish confiding- 
 ness not to guard you against our sort of attack, but it was that 
 at worst. To tell the truth, the hardest struggle I've had has 
 been with my own misgivings in the very line you have sug- 
 gested. I hope I'm open to conviction, if I'm wrong, but I 
 
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 have nearly sweat blood deciding that it wouldn't be justice in 
 the long run to the people who are sacrificing most, if we 
 should let up before we had clinched something in their favor. 
 I was hungry for a crumb of confirmation from you. Possi- 
 bly my conscience was guilty and came to you for indulgence. 
 I don't like to think so, though. If I can tell the truth about 
 myself, I was just instinctively hoping you had checked up 
 the items in the bill of expense that you had direct knowledge 
 of, and had still found a balance to the credit of the strike. 
 It would be no wonder if you hadn't, but it would have stead- 
 ied me with a whole lot of comfort if you had." 
 
 How remorseful Graham's confidence had made her feel, 
 Elsie would hardly have cared to admit, but her relenting was 
 unconcealed. She was quite aware that her vanity might 
 have been drugged by Graham's association of her with his 
 cabinet counsellors ; but whether the flattery was artful or art- 
 less, it was conciliating. The constraint between them was 
 gone, and Elsie rather eagerly seized the chance to prove up 
 her impressions with Graham's assistance. 
 
 "If it will help any," she responded, "to acknowledge that 
 it was the feminine of it to mix my feelings with matters of 
 opinion, I hereby accept my sackcloth and ashes. If you will 
 forget that foolishness, I will further confess that I ought to 
 have racked my soul a good deal more, before I pretended to 
 be sure I had weighed everything in the case. I am not sure, 
 and I know it, and I was really experimenting with your own 
 plan of saying the worst to see what it was worth. Perhaps 
 it would be nearer the truth if I should say that, in spite of 
 my belief that your argument for the strike is strong, if it de- 
 pended on me, after all the consequences of the strike that 
 I have seen in these few weeks, I wouldn't have the courage 
 to say it should continue." 
 
 "It may be, Miss Kissinger," Graham returned with an ab- 
 stracted manner which Elsie had not seen in him before, 
 "that if it depended on you it would require still more courage 
 to say it should not continue. I'm afraid of lapse into the con- 
 troversial again, and so I merely ask how you could stop with 
 your demand for removal of causes, and not take the next 
 step of recognizing that the whole aim of the strike is to re- 
 move causes." 
 
 "But if the strike, so far as you can see, multiplies evils in- 
 stead of preventing them ?" pleaded Elsie. 
 
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 "Then," submitted Graham, "is there nothing in the anal- 
 ogy that the most scientific doctor or surgeon often has to make 
 the patient worse before he can make him better? We should 
 have no saving of life by means of the operating room if some 
 one hadn't the nerve to cause suffering for the sake of reliev- 
 ing it. Let us go back to one item in the state of things as you 
 described it before the strike. The people would have jumped 
 at an offer to underwrite their jobs for life. Without reckon- 
 ing any other evil in their lot, isn't it an intolerable situation 
 that, instead of having their jobs safe for life, either Capital 
 or Labor may any minute step in and put them out of their 
 jobs? Isn't it worth something to them to change that condi- 
 tion? Can't they afford to sacrifice and suffer a little while 
 to win security for life?" 
 
 "In the abstract that is easy to suppose," confirmed Elsie, 
 "but the awful practical problem is to find the line between 
 profitable sacrifice for future good, and profitless prolonging 
 of treatment that only aggravates the disease. In our own 
 case, isn't it time to consider anything possible that might get 
 our people a little fraction of what they have fought for, and 
 then let some other silent partners on the labor side take their 
 turn in distress?" 
 
 The piano had been the base of operations for the larger 
 group, while only a meagre overflow of the non-musical had 
 trickled into the library. The whole company was now tak- 
 ing possession of its more familiar forum. 
 
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 XVIII 
 THE SOCIOLOGIST 
 
 "The upshot was that all the folks who stopped to talk the 
 matter over between innings agreed that live-and-help- 
 live ought to be the game, and that every body would get 
 more out of it in the end, after it was fairly learned, than 
 they w^ere getting out of the live-and-let-live game." 
 
 THE ordinary symposium of The Riffraff was modelled 
 after a fox hunt. Anyone who ventured to express an 
 opinion was fair game for the rest. This time the talk had 
 taken an introspective turn that was getting on everybody's 
 nerves. It had become a rather abstract and caustic debate 
 on society in general, and the part that academic people might 
 and mostly do not play in solving social problems. A pessimis- 
 tic shadow was settling over the group when Vance, one of the 
 mathematicians, pointed in a new direction. 
 
 "No doubt there is a good deal of subsidiary fumigation of 
 the universe," he conceded, "in thus rouging over our own 
 blushes. It seems to have been an artistic piece of work. But 
 the terms of the call led me to expect incidental attention to 
 the fact that we are not the whole thing. We are the belle of 
 the ball of course, and the main interest flutters around our 
 make-up; but at this stage of the preparations wouldn't it 
 tend to insure the success of the function if we heard from 
 the committee of arrangements what is known about the fig- 
 ures and favors?" 
 
 The allusion would have meant nothing to a stranger, and 
 its point was not seen by the company till Vance had focussed 
 attention on Randall, who had thus far been a silent super- 
 numerary in the library scene. It took but a moment for 
 Vance's hint to do its work. The pack had slipped its leash 
 and was in full cry driving Randall into the open. 
 
 Randall was one of the sociologists. His personal equation 
 was an indulgently cynical front toward the besetting weak- 
 nesses of his immediate environment, with a concealed storage 
 battery of day and night doggedness to make his prospect pan 
 out. The sententious smile which was a part of his undress 
 
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 uniform, was a modus vivendi between wearied resignation 
 and amused curiosity. That the foolish were requiring of 
 sociology a sign, and that the wise were persuading themselves 
 it was foolishness, served Randall as an exhaustless source of 
 quickening inspiration. It was wholly reassuring, he held, 
 that the sociologist was a prophet without honor. If the big 
 world listened, it would be" something new in mortal grop- 
 ings toward the light; and it would rouse fears in the knowing 
 that after all they were voicing the past instead of the future. 
 It did not feaze Randall that his colleagues generally classed 
 sociology with phrenology and palmistry. He was old enough 
 to remember when biology was in the same doldrums, and he 
 had started his own professional career as the first incumbent 
 of a chair of history and economics, created in a New England 
 college against the protest of every member of the faculty ex- 
 cept the President. The objection was that those subjects were 
 not fit for a place in the curriculum ! Why should his work 
 have an easier time making its way than every previous wid- 
 ening outlook? Randall liked to dream of his subject set- 
 ting such a pace that it could presently afford to take breath 
 at the top of the last hill climbed, and look back compassion- 
 ately on the stragglers struggling up the slope. His vote 
 among the sociologists was always for keeping at their weav- 
 ing while the demand was developing for their goods. There 
 was grim resolution back of his playful dictum that the found- 
 ling social sciences were fast outgrowing their knee-pants, and 
 would soon have to be cutting their clothes from sociological 
 doth. 
 
 A moment's lull followed Randall's protestation of reluc- 
 tance to break in on a pleasing pastime. Nor was it imme- 
 diately apparent whether he was accepting or declining the 
 challenge ; but that he was not over-awed by the symposium 
 needed no confirmation after he began to speak. He wielded 
 a plausible drawl, and it was one of the accessories that ef- 
 fectively confused the proportions between the facetious and 
 the serious when he was intentionally non-committal. 
 
 Although he affected a patronizing tone toward the dis- 
 cussion, he saw signs in what had been said that the coterie 
 was promisingly agnostic about some things which it had 
 never before openly questioned. He wanted to help the good 
 work along, and he thought it was a psychological moment for 
 giving it a lift, but he warned himself that the jig would be 
 
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 up if he betrayed signs of going at the subject very Hterally. 
 Before allowing himself to be inveigled, he sparred defen- 
 sively a few seconds with several assailants at once, and there 
 was little to suggest the propagandist when he finally settled 
 back, with fingers matched over his watch-chain, in decent 
 didactic style, as sign of preparation to impart instruction. 
 
 "Well then," he began, "since you children insist on romp- 
 ing in my workshop, I must quit my job and watch what will 
 happen. You play with the tools and act now and then as 
 though you might accidentally toss off a respectable piece of 
 work. You might be charged with spasms of almost social 
 intelligence sometimes, if you weren't so coy about being 
 caught in the act. Some day you'll come tiptoeing 'round to 
 our shack begging us to connect up your social theories that 
 stop just short of going alone. You'll find us ready to let by- 
 gones be bygones. We'll help you out, and we won't even say 
 'I told you so.' You've evidently nibbled on the sly at wind- 
 falls from the tree of knowledge, but the thing you'll no 
 doubt swallow whole, one of these days, is the process concep- 
 tion of life; and then you'll blame the sociologists for not 
 naming an earlier date for a new heaven and earth." 
 
 Randall radiated on the company one of his most suavely 
 patriarchal expressions, which was his method of advertising 
 that he did not think it expedient to presume on their ripe- 
 ness for further revelations. 
 
 Fessenden was the first to call him: — "Now you've got 
 your foot in, Randall, go the route ! Let us see if you can 
 make a crossing !" 
 
 "Oh ! I should hate to ride Dapple Gray too hard in an ex- 
 hibition heat," feinted Randall. 
 
 "Give us the rest of it, Randall," badgered Gregory, of the 
 Divinity School. "We'll let you off for freeing your mind 
 this time." 
 
 Randall was in fact by no means sure how he could say his 
 say without lapsing into shop talk. There was another re- 
 version into general chatter, all aimed at harrying him into 
 further offense or defense. When he had resisted enough to 
 insure a hearing, he resumed, with an availing injured-inno- 
 cence effect: — 
 
 "Although you have no use for my way of thinking, it 
 may please you if I pay a passing compliment to yours, "rhe 
 flow of soul of which I have been an enraptured observer this 
 
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 evening has unfolded to me your dazzling conception that life 
 is a nest of boxes. With hardly restrained delight I have made 
 out your penetrating idea that the puzzle is to find which be- 
 longs inside of which. I notice that you expect some day 
 to get them all correctly assorted, and cozily stowed away, each 
 in its foreordained place ; whereupon the millennium will be 
 ready to receive callers. You make some brave little sorties 
 with other catch-words, but you don't get beyond retreating 
 distance from your cubby-hole conception. Your heaven and 
 hell are just the biggest boxes in the outfit, where your ma- 
 chine-turned righteous and wicked are to be stationary in their 
 respective eternities ; and your society is an assortment of the 
 same sort of boxes, set on wheels and cut up into compart- 
 ments to match the various calibres of your good and bad 
 contract-labor migrants, consigned through this intermediate 
 human state to the final distributing point. I hate to 
 disturb your party with the news that the whole thing you've 
 arranged for in this smug fashion is not a nest of boxes at all. 
 It's a continuous performance transformation scene, and the 
 play is for all the actors to scamper every minute to find them- 
 selves in the new setting. 
 
 "That's only the beginning; but if you'll run home by and 
 by, and think over it quietly, I don't mind telling a little 
 more of the tale. You can piece it out for yourselves from 
 things you may see any day out of your own windows, if you 
 don't put too many old age spectacles on your noses." 
 
 "At this rate, Randall, you'll reach the climax that the sun 
 usually rises in the east and sets in the west," was Fessenden's 
 note of appreciation. 
 
 "No ! No !" cheerfully retorted Randall. "God forbid my 
 too rudely jostling anyone's sustaining faith that the sun has 
 gone into a permanent decline." 
 
 Randall rapidly calculated that his psychological moment 
 could not last always, and he pulled out a few more stops, 
 rather with a view to volume than distinctness. 
 
 "You'll have to take my word for it. Your glossaries don't 
 English our Yiddish. But the truly wise in their generation 
 have found out that a hurry-call has gone in to change over 
 the world's morals from a categorical to a functional basis. 
 It's a cryptogram to all but the psychologists, and they may 
 have got the key before we did. They've been so busy rum- 
 maging the secret drawers of consciousness with it, however, 
 
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 that they've left pretty much all out-doors to us. There may 
 be some quicker way, but the only direction I can give for 
 finding out what it means, is to Summer it and Winter it till it 
 seems like home folks. Traces of it have seeped into the heads 
 of a few people ever since philosophizing began, but it is still 
 known to commerce only under the poison sign. Meanwhile, 
 a good deal that has passed as immorality has been virtue trav- 
 eling incog — that is, irrepressible nature forcing practice 
 ahead of rules." 
 
 Randall again affected pained surprise at the small fire of 
 sarcasm that greeted his runic generalizations. 
 
 "I know it sounds a little heavy for Mother Goose," he apol- 
 ogized, "but I'm only used to saying it to people who have 
 learned the lingo. I don't know whether it will strike you as 
 more condensed or diluted, but as a pedagogical plunge I'll 
 try — happy thought! I'll give you a few leaves out of my 
 Constructive History Studies, designed and executed for the 
 use of infants of days at a stage of arrested precocity which I 
 can imagine without complete segregation from the present 
 company." 
 
 The medley of "Hear! Hear!" and "Boo! Boo!" in mascu- 
 line and feminine chorus, was in tune with Randall's temper, 
 and served its purpose of prodding his effort. 
 
 "Also!" he began. "Once upon a time the world woke up. 
 One fine morning somebody, whose name has unfortunately 
 been forgotten, stopped grubbing on the ground-worm plan 
 and said to himself, 'There's something in my mind's eye 
 that doesn't exist anywhere else ; but it looks worth while and 
 I'm for it! Therein the scheme of things first showed its 
 hand. From that on the mind's eye sets the mark, and the 
 human process begins as a game of see-it-first-and-get-all-of-it- 
 I-can. 'Twas a great thing for the world, this birthday of the 
 mind's eye game, and if we only knew what day of the month 
 it fell on, we might sometime make it a bigger holiday and a 
 saner than the Fourth of July. At the start, it's no very nice 
 game, nor a polite. The mind's eye doesn't picture very lady- 
 like things, and there's no great squeamishness about how to 
 get them. It turns out later though that the whole game is 
 a way of getting the mind's eye to see things better worth 
 while, and improving tastes about ways of putting them on the 
 active list. The things first in the mind's eye don't keep their 
 attraction very long. Either getting them or finding them 
 
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 out of reach leaves the mind's eye free to pick out something 
 else ; and after the game is fairly under way there is no telling 
 how fast these new worth-whiles will put in an appearance. 
 
 "Minds' eyes get pointed toward new things partly by find- 
 ing other minds' eyes standing in their light. Some things 
 look all the more worth while if other mind's eyes are watch- 
 ing them, and grabbing grows greedier on that account. 
 
 After a bruising time of playing the game under devil- 
 take-the-hindmost rules, a few minds' eyes get a picture of a 
 game of live-and-let-live. It seems as though that might be a 
 mighty restful change from the game of grab. A lot of peo- 
 ple get excited over rules for playing it. Other people can't 
 make it look good. They so conveniently get what they want 
 under grab rules that they don't care to take risks with dif- 
 ferent regulations. 
 
 "So, instead of getting a chance to settle down quietly, the 
 folks with live-and-let-live in their minds' eye have a more 
 rough-and-tumble time than ever with the folks who have 
 only grab in their eye. At last the gentler folk so far out- 
 count the rougher that, by sheer force of numbers, live-and- 
 let-live becomes the game. No more knocking on the head. 
 No more making some people slave for the rest. No more 
 taking some people's food and clothes away because other peo- 
 ple want to be fatter and warmer, or because they find it easier 
 to rob than to work. That's all foul. The game now is for 
 everyone to have his own things. If anyone doesn't consent 
 to this, everyone else is to join in and make him. 
 
 "The live-and-let-live game enjoys no end of popularity 
 till folks have cleared the way for playing it. There is some 
 sadness over parting with the mind's eye, to be sure; but 
 there's never a gain without some small loss. Though there'll 
 be nothing for a mind's eye to do, after the live-and-let-live 
 game begins, the fun of the game will more than make up 
 for any benefit that used to come from watching out for better 
 things. 
 
 "But it is not so very long before folks find that it isn't 
 working that way. Somehow or other the mind's eye gets 
 busier than ever, and it finds a whole lot of new things worth 
 while. It's a glorious thing to play a game in which every 
 one is let alone by everyone else, and everyone is free to make 
 the most of oneself, according to one's own sweet will. All is 
 as gay as a May-day frolic when the new rules go into force; 
 
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THE SOCIOLOGIST 
 
 but before long the fun begins to flag. Perhaps the prospect 
 is too bright for the mind's eye to bear. At any rate, many 
 complaints are heard that things look queer. The live-and- 
 let-live game has the field, yet folks are not happy, and the 
 minds' eyes seem all at sea. They are filled with such a fog 
 of ugly things-as-they-are, that they can't make steady pic- 
 tures of things that would be worth while. This live-and-let- 
 live game has got folks into a nasty mess. It never was so in- 
 tended in the least. No one would have thought it before- 
 hand, but living in one's own way, and letting everyone else 
 do the same, came to a pass where a few minds' eyes made out 
 that if some kinds of folks lived in their way, they played the 
 mischief with other kinds of folks who wanted to live another 
 way. Some folks wanted to earn their daily bread, and eat it 
 with as little fuss as need be, and then to spend the rest of 
 their time wholesomely exercising their minds and bodies, 
 or in making merry with their friends. Other folks could 
 see nothing worth while but stores of bread ; and not satisfied 
 with eating their own and then living decent lives, they spent 
 their time cornering the bread that other folks needed to eat. 
 The first kind of folks said that the second kind of folks were 
 making a fool of the whole game. They not only wanted to 
 play for bread alone, but they turned all the bread they didn't 
 want to eat into a form that was not fit for anyone else to eat, 
 but was useful only for making more useless bread. This was 
 a quirk in the live-and-let-live rules that nobody had expected 
 and nobody understood. The deuce of it was that it seemed to 
 make everybody's mind's eyesight worse and worse. Nobody 
 was any longer fit to be trusted about what was worth while. 
 The folks that wanted to do nothing but heap up the stale 
 bread couldn't see straight about what was worth while for 
 their bodies or their minds or their friends ; but most of those 
 who didn't care for bread not necessary for food, also sadly 
 neglected body and mind and friends, because the necessary 
 food was so fearfully hard to get. The live-and-let-live game, 
 that looked so brave before it was tried, had turned out to 
 mean, Everybody let Smith live as he pleases, even if Smith 
 finds a way to live so that Jones must live in Smith's way or 
 not live at all. 'Twas bully for Smith, but rough on Jones. 
 But the Jones tribe outnumbered the Smiths a hundred to 
 one, and when the Joneses found their affairs going from bad 
 to worse, many of their minds' eyes grew quite wild, hunting 
 
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 for something worth while when the game was getting so 
 mixed." 
 
 Randall's parody had caught on with the company. It put 
 the issue they were all bothered about in such third-personal 
 shape that it did not strain the group code. At the same time, 
 this homely whittling down to a point gave everyone the feel- 
 ing that Randall was really saying something, whether they 
 could agree with it or not. For once The Riffraff dropped its 
 disguise and became for the moment perniciously thoughtful. 
 Probably no one in the lot was less likely to be convinced than 
 Tracey of the Law School ; but so far as he went he spoke the 
 sense of the meeting, both in the spirit and in the saving rem- 
 nant of sporty letter, when he encouraged : — "Run your string 
 out, Randall! We're with you, win or lose." 
 
 Accepting the terms as all that could reasonably be de- 
 manded, Randall proceeded: — "Just as a great many folks 
 were getting desperate, and vowing the only thing to do was 
 to break up the game altogether, some minds' eyes, that had 
 been watching the game without making much head or tail 
 out of it, got an image of a new worth-while. They caught a 
 little different slant of light on the game, and the rules of 
 live-and-let-live had become live-and-help-live. 'Twas aston- 
 ishing how different the game looked ! 'Twas hard to recog- 
 nize it as the old game at all. 
 
 "It didn't take long before these few people, with a new 
 worth-while in their minds' eyes, began to hear from one an- 
 other. After a bit they got in the habit of coming together 
 between innings, squatting down on the grass, and talking 
 over improvement of the game. One would say, 'All the 
 chance there is in the world belongs to us all alike, to play the 
 game for all it's worth. Why should any of us have the right 
 to block the game for the rest of us?' 
 
 "Then another would say, 'Yes, indeed! Why? It's all 
 well enough for us to let one another live in our own way, but 
 what's going to happen when we get in one another's way?' 
 
 " 'That's the talk !' chimes in a third ; 'have the Smiths any 
 more right to get in the Joneses' way than the Joneses have in 
 the Smiths'? If the Joneses want to enjoy their bodies and 
 their minds and their friends, after they've earned enough 
 bread to fill their stomachs, why should they be prevented by 
 the Smiths' craze for cornering bread?' 
 
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 "Then a fourth would get in his word : — 'Everybody with 
 his mind's eye open knows now-a-days that the worth-while 
 is to have just enough bread so we can make the most of our 
 bodies and our minds and our friends. If we make too much 
 of the bread, we scamp the other things ; and if we try to do 
 without the bread, and have the other things, we slip up on 
 the whole business. We're all out after the worth-while, but 
 nobody can do everything. No one has any more right to try 
 for the worth-while than another. No one has any right to 
 hinder another's trying. It looks to me as though the only 
 way to get the most of the worth-while is for everybody to join 
 in helping everybody else, by swapping off chances that we 
 can't use to piece out our own worth-while, for chances that 
 the other fellow can't use. In that way each will fill out his 
 own worth-while, with the least surplus of not-worth-while on 
 his hands.' 
 
 " 'That's all very well,' puts in a fifth, 'but what are you 
 going to do if some of the Smiths won't play that way? 
 They're always saying it's none of their affair if the Joneses 
 are short of worth-while. The Smiths have got things fixed 
 so they can get all the fresh bread they want, and can humor 
 their fad of piling up stale bread ; while the Joneses have got 
 to stop trying for the other worth-whiles and help the Smiths 
 heap up their musty bread, in order to get a bare living al- 
 lowance.' 
 
 " 'I'll tell you what!' shouts a sixth. 'There's always got to 
 be some Johnsons in the game to tell both Smiths and Joneses 
 when they're offside. Nobody ought to be allowed in the game 
 that isn't working out a part of the worth-while for everybody 
 else. Instead of the Smiths and the Joneses crowding each 
 other out of their different sorts of worth-while, it's as you 
 just said. Number 4. Each ought to have a fair agreement 
 to piece out the unfinished parts of the others' worth-while 
 with some of the surplus of his own worth-while. If either of 
 them clog this arrangement by carrying their own worth- 
 while too far, it should be the Johnsons' business to call a halt, 
 and tell them this isn't the old false-pretense live-and-let-live 
 game any more ; it's the improved live-and-help-live game.' 
 
 "About that time someone not so noisy as the rest would 
 speak up. 'I've been thinking,' he would say, 'and I believe 
 I can see where we've been making our mistake. We've talked 
 as though it wasn't one game at all, but as many different 
 
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 games as there were people, and each a game of solitaire going 
 on in each one's private room, that had no connection with 
 anyone's else private room. If that had been the case, our 
 live-and-let-live rules would have been perfect, if we had made 
 it impossible for anyone to break into anyone's else private 
 room. But the fact is that all sorts of wires and tubes and 
 levers and belts and wheels connect everyone's room directly 
 or indirectly with everyone's else room. The tenants in some 
 of the rooms wanted to use all this machinery as though it be- 
 longed to their rooms alone, and didn't care what effect it had 
 in other rooms. That presently tangled the machinery up so 
 it may any minute stop altogether.' 
 
 "That would start another of the quieter men. 'I agree 
 with the last speaker in the main,' he would say, 'but his fig- 
 ure is confusing. The fact is we must go back to the simple 
 rudiments of the game. The whole thing is experience of 
 our minds' eyes in sighting worth-whiles that are all-in-all 
 more worth while than what had passed for worth while ; and 
 experience of our all 'round abilities in getting those minds' 
 eyes' worth-whiles into reality. Now the thing we've run 
 up against is that the Smith kind of folks want the game to 
 stop with their kind of worth-while, instead of keeping on to 
 other folks' worth-whiles. We've got to make up our minds 
 that it takes all the different sorts of worth-whiles that the dif- 
 ferent kinds of players discover to make up the big worth- 
 while of the whole game. And we may as well decide first as 
 last that something is wrong if anyone's worth-while is put- 
 ting anyone else out of the game. What we need is a code of 
 rules that will make the whole game set the limits for any lit- 
 tle part of the game, instead of allowing the Smiths to run 
 their own game and other people's too.' 
 
 "The upshot was that all the folks who stopped to talk the 
 matter over between innings agreed that live-and-help-live 
 ought to be the game, and that everybody would get more out 
 of it in the end, after it was fairly learned, than they were get- 
 ting out of the live-and-let-live game. 
 
 "But the more people joined in these between-inning talks, 
 and the more worth while the live-and-help-live game seemed 
 in their minds' eyes, the gustier it looked for the game as it 
 was going on. These between-inning talks were of course 
 passed along to everyone in the game, and while they were 
 taking place some of the Joneses started to throw mud at some 
 
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 of the Smiths. Then some of the Smiths of course shied stones 
 at some of the Joneses, and it really looked as though the game 
 might go back to the old bruise and kill and grab, before it 
 could reform itself into live-and-help-live. 
 
 "One of the troubles was that, although the Smiths were not 
 all agreed among themselves that the new rules would be bad, 
 nor all the Joneses that the rules would be good, on the whole 
 the Smiths fought them, while the Joneses defended them, 
 and the Smiths had to stick with the Smiths, and the Joneses 
 with the Joneses, so that the game was no longer on its merits, 
 but it was turned into a row between the Smiths and the 
 Joneses, neither caring much for the others nor for the rest 
 of the players. 
 
 "That is as far as the thing has got. If you read tomorrow 
 morning's newspaper with your eyes wide open, you'll see 
 that nothing much has been going on today except that a good 
 many different breeds of Smiths have been charging ahead 
 with their own particular worth-whiles, regardless whether 
 they bowled over any of the Joneses' worth-whiles or not. At 
 the same time the Joneses have been just as nasty toward the 
 Smiths, but not quite so successful. If there is anything 
 worth noticing in the paper beside this, you will have to find 
 it mostly between the lines. If the papers know it, they don't 
 print it. The fact is that this jumble of the game really 
 worth playing, that is growing so senseless under the hypo- 
 critical live-and-let-live rules, is dividing the people into two 
 opposing camps, the camp that is bound the rules of live- 
 and-help-live shall come, and the camp bound they shall not 
 come. The only moves of first-rate importance in the world 
 today or any other day, till the rules are revised, are ground 
 gainers for one or the other of those camps. The thing we're 
 deciding now, and probably for a good many generations to 
 come, is whether the rules hereafter are to be dictated by the 
 dog-in-the-manger, or by the whole farm." 
 
 Translating Randall's story as it went along, into terms of 
 the pending labor situation in Chicago, the group had really 
 listened with a good deal of respect. Something more seemed 
 to be looked for, and as a transition from his pedagogical role 
 Randall concluded: "All of which, being interpreted, sim- 
 mers down to the inevitable : — When a real demand arises for 
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THE SOCIOLOGIST 
 
 general franchise of all the actors in bringing their full per- 
 sonality into play in the whole activity, democracy is march- 
 ing on, and some time or other, in some way or other, the de- 
 mand is bound to prevail." 
 
 No one was quite ready to commit himself either for or 
 against this sweeping thesis. Even Fessenden leaned more to- 
 wards Randall's ideas than he thought it was professional eti- 
 quette to admit. To bluff out his opposition he good na- 
 turedly sneered : — 
 
 "Behold how History again repeats herself I The senti- 
 mental mountain labors and brings forth the sociological 
 mouse 1" 
 
 "No doubt it looks that way if one has reached the creepy 
 stage," calmly assented Randall. "Keep your eye on the 
 mouse though, while you're sobering off, and see it grow into 
 the army of occupation." 
 
 "Time's up!" announced Edgerly. "Cakes and ale in the 
 kitchen !" 
 
 Even that euphemism was almost sumptuous for the rations 
 the rules allowed ; but the dining room scene was always the 
 epilogue of The Riffraff play. As the migrating movement 
 began, Randall raised his voice for a parting pronounce- 
 ment: — 
 
 "I almost forgot something," he appended. "I'd just like 
 to leave in your minds another version of my original text. 
 It'll pay to ponder it : — The sap of the tree of life is any juice 
 that makes it grow; not the primings and the groomings it 
 gets from foresters and horticulturists." 
 
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 XIX 
 
 THE WAR COLLEGE 
 
 "It ought to be easy for old college men to take up a mooted 
 question in the same spirit they used to show when they 
 
 got a good grip on a subject for debate If there 
 
 was something to be said after all for the moon's being 
 made of green cheese, it never entered their heads to block 
 discussion by pleading vested rights." 
 
 HESTER and Elsie, with Halleck, rode in Logan Lyon's 
 auto the few blocks to the Kissingers' house. They were 
 hardly in their seats when Lyon started to unburden his 
 mind : — 
 
 "No mistake about it, there's something freaky in this sea- 
 son's Chicago air ! Everyone is catching it. That man Ran- 
 dall pretty near had me going. If I believe what he seems to, 
 I don't know it, but several of the things he said might have 
 been cribbed from my own words, when I was having some 
 fun with a bunch of our directors the day we heard the strike 
 decision last Spring. I've said a lot of such things in kidding 
 matches with Edgerly, but they have a different sound when 
 they come back at you from the other fellow. You have all 
 pimpled out at times with the same rash, and there's your 
 father, Elsie, not to speak of Graham's eruption, and Edgerly 
 would have been safer quarantined years ago. I suspect that 
 whole University crowd would vote for anarchy tomorrow, if 
 they had a chance with the Australian ballot." 
 
 "And if we had you strung up by the heels, Logan," ban- 
 tered Halleck, "and shook your pockets out, wouldn't we 
 gather in a few stickers of the same color?" 
 
 "That's the devil of it," sputtered Lyon. "Nobody knows 
 how much he is smeared with the same pitch. They're al- 
 ways saying we must change human nature before we can 
 alter the institutions of society. If these conniptions mean 
 anything, the human nature is looking out for its share all 
 right. I'm getting a flying start toward a flop into the fatal- 
 ism that it will take a revolution to bring us straight up 
 against lunacy as it works. A little of it in practice would be 
 
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 good and plenty, and then we'd be in a pious state of mind 
 for hard sense." 
 
 "Suppose we should begin to inure ourselves to the rig- 
 ors," Hester mildly mocked, "by dismissing the machine and 
 going the rest of the way afoot?" 
 
 "You two precious plotters may go the rest of the way 
 afoot," fumed Lyon, as they made the landing in front of the 
 Kissingers', and, as he handed the latchkey back to Elsie he 
 added: — "I hope the smell of the powderless smoke of this 
 nefarious evening won't disturb the good people inside." 
 
 As soon as the two men were alone, Halleck opened upon 
 Lyon with more hope of starting something than he had in- 
 dulged since the strike began : — "Logan, the next thing that's 
 got to happen is a friendly talk-out between you and Gra- 
 ham !" 
 
 Lyon made no response for a moment. He had gone over 
 the possibilities of conference and conciliation and arbitration 
 so many times, he had sounded the temper of both sides, and 
 particularly his own, in so many ways, that Halleck's idea 
 suggested to his mind nothing that had not over and over 
 again been tried and found wanting. His expression was 
 less indifferent than skeptical, but it said directly enough that 
 he saw no encouragement to consider the proposition, when 
 he languidly answered : — "Is it a frame-up for Graham?" 
 
 "No !" returned Halleck, and he was neither surprised nor 
 cooled by Lyon's listlessness. "It's the break-away of the ir- 
 resistible power and the impenetrable mass. This thing has 
 got to end some time. Two bulks of brute force are pounding 
 each other to cinders now. That catapulting will go on till 
 there's nothing left of one or both, or this battle of the ele- 
 ments has got to change soon into a fair appraisal of reasons. 
 You're the first point on the Company's side, Logan, in the 
 Ime of lea.st resistance. You've got to be the transformer, if 
 the two currents ever get to work again as one. IIow it's go- 
 ing to be done I don't know any better than I did at the start, 
 but nobody in the days of direct messenger service from 
 Heaven was surer of special orders from the Almighty than I 
 am that it's up to you and Graham to negotiate a truce of 
 God." 
 
 "If it had been my personal problem," consented Lyon 
 frankly, but rather to the impulse than to the application. 
 
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 "there wouldn't have been any fight till we had tried all there 
 was in the face to face method. Whatever liberty he may 
 have to give advice, however, there is nothing at last for a 
 subordinate officer but to obey orders, and that tells the story 
 of my part in the campaign. One doesn't often turn the trick 
 of dissecting one's private from one's official personality, and 
 it's a nasty thing to slip up on ; but if you think you have any 
 way to keep it a purely individual affair, with no real or con- 
 structive commitment of the Company, I would rather have 
 a session with Graham than not, even at this late day. I don't 
 see that anything could come of it, beyond quieting our curi- 
 osity, but I'll balk at nothing that has a ghost of a show to 
 help matters." 
 
 Before they parted at Halleck's door Lyon had put him- 
 self in his friend's hands to the extent of reserving Thursday 
 evening for dinner with him at the Casino ; and Halleck had 
 undertaken to contrive an accidental crossing of paths with 
 Graham. 
 
 Even if Halleck had been capable of more indirection with 
 Graham than with Lyon, it would have defeated his purpose. 
 Both principle and policy obliged him to state the facts just 
 as they were, and to make virtually the same appeal the next 
 morning which had won the night before. Under the same 
 provisos that the interview must count as strictly personal, 
 with no representative value, Graham consented to make one 
 of his frequent calls at the Casino Thursday evening. It 
 was left to Halleck to complete the connection in such a way 
 that it would either not be noticed at all or rated as entirely 
 casual. 
 
 Graham had not neglected to compile from Halleck a 
 Baedecker of Lyon's make-up. He was not in the least sur- 
 prised that these details, fitting so easily into the showing he 
 had watched at the Edgerly's, flatly contradicted all he had 
 encountered in Lyon's professional behavior. Indeed, this 
 contradiction was precisely one of the typical cases which he 
 alleged of the impossible paradox in our institutions. In his 
 own words, he had declared war against a system which stulti- 
 fied the personality of its operators. As he expressed it to him- 
 self, the whole thing he was fighting for was a new deal by 
 which the best of them would agree to reverse the surrender 
 
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 of their real sches to economic dictation, and would under- 
 taJce to subject their business selves to their personal stand- 
 ards. 
 
 The chance to try conclusions with a man of Lyon's kind 
 flushed Graham with new joy of battle. He did not so much 
 want to defeat Lyon a.s to make such a fight that it would 
 presently force them both into some position where they 
 could fight on the same side. 
 
 He could not have planned the skirmish more carefully if 
 it had been an agreed duel to decide the campaign ; but when 
 Halleck brought the two principals together in the man- 
 ager's room neither would have given a spectator reason to 
 suspect anything out of the commonplace in the encounter. 
 
 After the sort of greeting that might have passed between 
 two law partners who happened to find themselves side by 
 side in a street car, Graham led off as he might if the subject 
 had been the last topic discussed in their office:^ 
 
 "It ought to be easy for old college men to take up a mooted 
 question in the same spirit they used to show when they got 
 a good gri]5 on a subject for debate. They didn't care whose 
 ox was gored. They wanted to go to the bottom of the ques- 
 tion. If there was something to be said after all for the moon's 
 being made of green cheese, it never entered their heads to 
 block discussion by pleading vested rights." 
 
 "Brave hoys!" endorsed Lyon ambiguously. "Neither did 
 it enter their heads that whichever way it turned out would 
 make no difference in the date or the size of the next remit- 
 tance from father." 
 
 "That may have had something to do with it," nodded 
 Graham, "but every thoroughbred in the lot would have 
 chipped in the remittance any time to see the thing either way 
 to a Q. E. D. finish. Perhaps you will set it down as butter- 
 fly-chasing, but I have more hope of curing capitalism by 
 transfusion of new blood from the colleges than from any 
 other one factor." 
 
 "I'm not quite that sanguine," Lyon demurred, "I don't 
 look to the colleges to turn business into a communion of 
 saints, but as the Scotch candidate for ordination said, when 
 he'd been doing his duty by the doctrine of justification by 
 faith, and the question turned to 'works' : — 'Of coorse, I hae 
 nae doot it micht be a' richt tae hae a few.' " 
 
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 "There's more to it than that," persisted Graham. "I never 
 could see that mental Swedish movement on the phylo- 
 genesis of the ethical dative could train a boy for anything 
 but shirking a man's job ; but that's getting to be ancient his- 
 tory. Even if he is afterwards plumped, as I was, into the ice- 
 bath of a millionaire's situation, no boy fit to be out of a home 
 for the weak-minded can spend two or three years in the kind 
 of running down social cause and effect that's going on in the 
 colleges now, and ever be quite at his ease in the Philistine 
 Zion of capitalism." 
 
 On the whole, the opening had tended to strengthen Hal- 
 leck's expectations. He could not have proposed a line of 
 approach more likely to command Lyon's respect. "While 
 barring himself from the combat, he was watching like a lynx 
 for signs on either side to indicate possible leanings toward 
 accommodation of views. If he had known less about the 
 resistance to be overcome in Lyon, and especially around him, 
 the next few sentences would have given him the feeling that, 
 as Graham fortified his position, all was settled but the for- 
 malities : — 
 
 "I'm taking a flyer that you yourself, Mr. Lyon, will turn 
 out to be a case in point," was Graham's next advance. "The 
 old words and the old social arrangements can do a whole lot 
 to keep the new ideas from showing what is in them, but it's 
 only a question of time. Our generation learned the language 
 of things fixed in an eternal state, but we couldn't think things 
 that way to save our necks. Every day of our lives we get a 
 little nearer to change of base from things as they are classi- 
 fied to things as they work. The nearer we get to that point 
 the less are we able to accept anything because it is, and we 
 put everything in the suspect class till it can justify itself 
 by what it does. If poetry, as someone said, is anybody's 
 thought until it is everybody's, then I'm poet enough to hold 
 that business will be just bushwhacking with its clothes 
 changed till we go at every question that comes up anywhere 
 in the neighborhood of business, as the War College fellows 
 handle their problems. It doesn't matter whether they label 
 themselves Uncle Sam or John Bull ; they want to know just 
 how strong or weak a position is, and how much force could 
 be brought against it. If they started in by getting mad and 
 swearing they'd court-martial the first man that dared to dis- 
 
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 pute their theory, it wouldn't take them long to fall out of the 
 strategy procession." 
 
 "That's all right, Mr. Graham," ratified Lyon cordially, 
 "but if it came to be war, instead of War College, and the 
 enemy assaulted position and theory at once, the War College 
 chaps wouldn't be good for much until they got mad and hit 
 back. I'm with you, though, that this armistice means, for 
 the time being, War College and not war. I'll be the Avery 
 fortifications, and you may hammer me with all the theoret- 
 ical bombardments you please. My defense will be simply 
 that when you undertake to apply your theories in real war, 
 you will shoot your bolt with the collapse of your commis- 
 sariat. Upper ether and angels' food will never support opera- 
 tions on terra firma." 
 
 "I'll come to that a little later," noted Graham, "but as I'm 
 the attacking party it won't do any harm for me to locate 
 myself with reference to the Articles of War. You may have 
 another order of importance for the clauses, but I'd like to 
 mention two or three. Whatever you suspect about the 'upper 
 ether and angels' food,' I suppose it isn't necessary for me to 
 prove in the first place that I've made good in developing a 
 base of supplies of your own sort. If I had made a fizzle of 
 business, and had taken to reforming the world as an easier 
 job, you might be safe in calculating that I couldn't fight with 
 your weapons. You know what every bank in Chicago knows, 
 however, about my rating, and how I got it; and that settles 
 the question whether I have a business head. Then you want 
 to know whether, outside of my personal resources, I have 
 the wherewithal to support my undertaking. You want to 
 know whether I am honest; whether I am fighting or black- 
 mailing ; and you want to know whether I have mapped out a 
 campaign on a theory that will hold water. After all, this last 
 is the main thing for a War College, and the other items 
 are negligible. To save strength for the heart of the prob- 
 lem, you can afford to assume at present that I am what I 
 pretend. 
 
 "While I am about it," Graham parenthesized further, with 
 one of his arresiivo index-finger gestures, "I may as well re- 
 peat to you what I've said a hundred times to labor audiences, 
 but it may not have got to your ears. I have no ill-will what- 
 ever toward the Avery Company. I am very sorry it must 
 suffer anything from me. If you directors and the rest of 
 
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 the owners could just go through what the theology that 
 Halleck is bringing down to date used to call 'a work of grace,' 
 you'd be the very lads I'd expect most from in booming de- 
 mocracy. I'd much rather be with you than against you, if 
 you'd get on the right side ; and until a lot of your kind do 
 get on the right side democracy is going to be mostly a pros- 
 pectus." 
 
 "It's a romantic sort of affection," ruminated Lyon, "that 
 first endorses its neighbor as a desirable citizen, and then picks 
 him out as the one man in town to shoot at!" 
 
 "We can't institutionalize ourselves," Graham pronounced 
 deliberately, "and forever get away with the profits without 
 the liabilities. You get the law to re-create you as one of its 
 artificial persons whose life-breath is capitalism. That same 
 principle which supports your artificial person is the most 
 wasting parasite of democracy. Everybody who uses his brains 
 knows that either democracy or capitalism must sooner or 
 later swallow the other. Everyone who prefers that democracy 
 should do the swallowing is bound to hunt capitalism as long 
 as it keeps out of democracy's game-bag." 
 
 "Talking about passionless logic," mused Lyon, "your li- 
 cense to hound capital, whether it has offended or not, is an 
 interesting replica of the lamb getting his for spoiling the 
 drinking water of the wolf up-stream." 
 
 "At any rate," corrected Graham, as he felt that they were 
 gradually getting into close quarters, "let's not lose our range 
 by confusing the landmarks before we open fire. My quarrel 
 is not with capital but with capitalism. To keep out of sav- 
 agery, democracy must have capital as much as it must have 
 food. Capital is as different from capitalism as water is from 
 drowning. I mean by 'capitalism' a vicious principle of ac- 
 cumulation institutionalized, along with its chartered as- 
 sumption that the procurers for the principle are fore- 
 ordained to dictate the remaining destinies of mankind. The 
 fate of democracy will turn on its ability to put that assump- 
 tion out of commission ; and every crusader against capitalism 
 is bound to assault it wherever it is exposed." 
 ■ "That may be good piracy," recoiled Lyon, with signs 
 that looked squally for the War College agreement, "but I 
 take it you're claiming nothing for its morals or its man- 
 ners." 
 
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 "I am claiming everything due to the morals and the man- 
 ners of the bayonet in a righteous cause," devoutly answered 
 Graham. 
 
 There was nothing of the braggart in his measured utter- 
 ance. Plis calmness, almost solemnity, halted Lyon's slip to- 
 ward contempt, and revived the impression of the Armory, 
 that the man was not only in earnest, but had thought his case 
 through, and was sure of his ability to maintain his position. 
 For a few .seconds neither spoke. Then, with the emphasis 
 of repression, and with the same retarded tempo, Graham re- 
 sumed : — 
 
 "Nothing worth doing is ever done on time, whether it is 
 expelling the Turks from Europe or introducing livelier sub- 
 stitutes for psalm tunes, until some one takes his life in his 
 hand. In this particular passage in the advent of democracy, 
 the one thing needful is to save its force from dissipation on 
 detached cases, and to get a decisive line-up between the prin- 
 ciples behind the cas&s. More than that, democracy can never 
 pass into the scientific stage till men whom capitalism has 
 trained have been won over to enlist their talents on the hu- 
 man side of the process. Count the egotism for all you will 
 against me, but I believe I have as providential a call as any- 
 body ever had to anything, to spend my life working toward a 
 square deal between democracy and business. Thus far, the 
 whole paltry catalogue of industrial caterwaulings, since capi- 
 talism began to get in its work, has been mostly hysteric fid- 
 dling of particular discords out of the concert, with scarcely 
 a decent attempt to find out whether there were such things 
 as underlying laws of harmony. So long as the democratic 
 side of the conflict of principles can be broken up into a bed- 
 lam of individuals disconnectedly tuning instruments, capi- 
 talism can fasten itself firmer on the world. I regard myself 
 as a voice crying in the wilderness, 'Prepare the way for some- 
 thing better I' What little there turns out to be in me is en- 
 listed for life to organize Americans on the principles of real 
 democracy, and to drill them for a fair fight with capitalism. 
 The Avery strike is merely the opening gun. It is easy to 
 divide history into epochs in which people fought one an- 
 other with their best eye shut. The boundary is drawn be- 
 tween epochs at the point where people at last find out what 
 has hurt them, and what they have been fighting about, and 
 what they want, and sum up their findings in something 
 
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 fundamental, and end the quarrels that uncertainty about 
 this base line has bred, by taking it henceforth as their com- 
 mon point of departure. For a hundred years or more capi- 
 talism has been a gathering mutiny of the minority in every 
 democratic ship of state. There is no covering up the ques- 
 tion of principle any longer. It is a plain issue between the 
 mutineers and the ship." 
 
 Halleck wished he could hear Graham declaim that pas- 
 sage in his most dramatic style before an audience that would 
 cram the Auditorium. It had been spoken slowly, gently, but 
 almost as fervently as a novice's vow of consecration. It af- 
 fected Lyon more than he cared to show, especially as he 
 liked Graham personally the better for it; but he was irri- 
 tated by what he had schooled himself to regard as sentiment- 
 alizing practical matters, and there was no concealment of it 
 in his frosty objection : — 
 
 "Suppose we cut out this sort of rehearsal for the jury, and 
 put the case in shape for the court. You could easily make 
 the solar system look ridiculous, if you expressed it in terms 
 of a Summer-garden-thriller outfit, but it wouldn't help much 
 toward revising the law of gravitation. This whole play-to- 
 the-gallery trifling with the foundations of society is criminal 
 the minute anyone threatens to take it seriously. You and I 
 can't afford to waste any more time on this comic supplement 
 style of rhetoric. Turn off the hot air, but I'm open to argu- 
 ment on anything under the sun that can be put into a busi- 
 ness proposition." 
 
 "Very well," responded Graham good naturedly, "I've for- 
 gotten most of my law language, and all that I ever knew 
 about pleadings, but you are no more anxious than I am to 
 get our case into literal terms that we can both accept as the 
 basis of argument. In a word, this is my contention : — The 
 whole economic and social theory which modern business 
 takes for granted is radically mistaken. Our social problems 
 are partly due to conditions beyond human control, but 
 partly also to our fallacious theory of the conditions we may 
 control. We shall never get on a secure basis for industrial 
 peace until we overhaul our whole socialtheory, and reorgan- 
 ize business according to a more intelligent analysis of the 
 facts." 
 
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 "Now we are getting down to brass tacks," relented Lyon. 
 "No matter whether I admit anything or not, I'll save my 
 argument till I've heard your bill of particulars." 
 
 "There ought to be a few rulings from the Court of Ap- 
 peals," expanded Graham, "before the law that I have to as- 
 sume is perfectly clear; but our test ca«es are principally for 
 the purpot^e of getting those rulings. The people a few gen- 
 erations from now who inherit our social axioms with the 
 tangles straightened out, will be able to give an account of the 
 social process that will make our present philosophy look 
 silly. You would probably challenge what I would lay down 
 as first principles; so I will start a good way this side of the 
 first, with an allegation of fact, viz : — Our whole social order 
 is an attempt to do business on an economic basis that is a 
 mathematical absurdity." 
 
 "I can't help interrupting," Lyon again resisted, "to ask 
 why, if it's as bad as that, the economists haven't found it out 
 long ago?" 
 
 "Plenty of them have," assured Graham, with a glance that 
 seemed to say he was glad to be reminded of something. "I 
 am not the first to see through the fallacy of capitalism by 
 any means; but the men who have been in the saddle have 
 been able to run every one off the range who showed signs of 
 getting wise to the system. Those that hadn't shown the 
 signs soon saw how things were going, and kept still. The 
 consequence has been that practical men and theorists the 
 world over have been in cahoots to keep up the credit of every 
 one who looked at things through the capitalistic illusion, 
 and they have managed to get everybody on the blacklist who 
 threatened to see things as they are." 
 
 "I didn't mean to open another rhetoric valve," disparaged 
 Lyon. "Have you anything more under the head of facts?" 
 
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 XX 
 THE ILLUSION OF CAPITALISM 
 
 'The only producers of wealth are nature and labor 
 
 nature and labor always supply the power, while capital 
 is merely the grist and the millstone." 
 
 THERE was apparent common consent to regard the pre- 
 liminaries as arranged, and the disputants now settled 
 down for hard work. 
 
 "I'll ask you for your own answer to that question," prom- 
 ised Graham, "after you have sampled my specifications. To 
 begin with, capitalism banks on the assumption that capital 
 itself is productive. Now unless you make the shell game out 
 of your words, and put one meaning into the term 'capital' 
 this minute and another the next, every penny of capital in 
 the world is as sterile as a monthly statement. All we have 
 to do to show this is to imitate the chemists, for instance, and 
 'isolate our phenomena.' Strip away from capital everything 
 that is the spontaneous working of nature on the one hand, 
 or the exertion of human energy on the other, and capital no 
 more produces anything than the pyramids or the merid- 
 ians." 
 
 "I don't want to quibble, Mr. Graham," interposed Lyon, 
 "and I am not going to be patient when you do it. 'That 
 sounds to me very much like the fake algebra that proves one 
 is equal to zero." 
 
 "The fake algebra has been so long on your side of the case, 
 Mr. Lyon," retorted Graham, "that it makes the whole fact 
 of aberration which I am pointing out. Take a bar of bullion 
 in a bank vault, for instance. It might lie there forever with- 
 out adding a millionth part to itself. Nevertheless capitalism 
 permits that bullion to be in Chicago, while the man who owns 
 it lives in Europe, yet the owner may collect a percentage of 
 the value every year, and pass on to his descendants the priv- 
 ilege of continuing the collection, till they have used up its 
 equivalent over and over again ; but the original claim to the 
 bullion is as good as ever. This scheme has all the other con 
 games beat to a frazzle. The only producers of wealth are na- 
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 some of it as capital, in the form of support for workers, raw 
 material, tools, etc., and thereby make its cooperation with 
 nature much more productive ; but nature and labor always 
 supply the power, while capital is merely the grist and the 
 millstone." 
 
 "How can a man of your business experience," snapped 
 Lyon, "talk as though that reserve of bullion in the vaults had 
 nothing to do with the prosperity of business?" 
 
 "How can a man of your intelligence," paraphrased Gra- 
 ham, "talk as though having something to do with the pros- 
 perity of business, and the 'productivity of capital,' are one 
 and the same thing?" Graham was wondering whether he 
 was dealing with the ordinary opaqueness of the capitalistic 
 class bias, or only with a lawj'er's ingenuity in putting the 
 best face on anything that could favor his client. "You might 
 just as well talk about the productivity of the plate you eat 
 your soup from. If you're exploiting fallacies, you've got 
 your artful dodger middle term 'productivity,' and you can 
 shuffle it back and forth to suit the devil ; but if you're after 
 the facts, you don't talk of the productivity of the plate in the 
 same sense in which you speak of the productivity of the soil 
 or of the farmer." 
 
 Lyon saw no reason for taking issue with this obvious 
 logical precision. He had even been preparing for it by a 
 side line of reflection about Edgerly's argument to the Pa- 
 triarchs on arbitrary associations between capital and prop- 
 erty. He was too acute not to appreciate these abstract dis- 
 tinctions, but his honest estimate of their importance for prac- 
 tical purposes was in the slurring comment: — "I see no ob- 
 ject in denying that you've split your words with the grain 
 this time, but I'd as soon argue a tailors' strike on the ques- 
 tion which blade of the shears cuts." 
 
 "You know that isn't fair I" challenged Graham, with his 
 first touch of bitterness. "Not which blade cuts, but whether, 
 in the last analysis the shears cut or the hand that holds them, 
 is the 'Art thou the King of the Jews?' of the capitalistic crisis. 
 If you can't make cold science read the signs of the times, 
 what is your sense of humor doing that it doesn't put you on 
 to the saturnine paradox leering out of every line in your 
 position ? You advertise business as the only rock-ribbed hu- 
 man structure of literal matter-of-factness. At the same time 
 it doesn't strike you as at all incongruous that the founda- 
 
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 tion of your bullying realism is a mystic Mephistophelian 
 metaphysic of values in matter fated to overrule the values in 
 men. It isn't, as your brute money ultimatums always imply, 
 a monks' question of the capacity of a needle point as a dis- 
 embodied spirits' dancing floor. It is capitalism's way of 
 prejudging in its own favor the whole question of men's place 
 in the world." 
 
 The stiffness in Lyon's silence may have been more ex- 
 pressive than words. Graham had no doubt of its meaning. 
 He rose mechanically, and backing into the farthest corner, 
 stood blinking from one to the other like a man coming out 
 of a dream. The mood passed in a moment; and returning 
 to his seat, with a careless air of release from duty to recrea- 
 tion, he resumed on a lower level : 
 
 "I've canvassed this thing so many times, from bottom to 
 top and end to end, I can't realize that there's a debatable 
 hair's breadth in it. It's like cramping mj^self back into an 
 unconvinced state of mind about the spelling of words of one 
 syllable. I no more expect to revamp our economic system in 
 a minute than I count on putting our locomotion tomorrow on 
 an air-ship basis, because we have found that the air can be 
 navigated. But I do demand that honest men shall be as will- 
 ing, in the one case as in the other, to admit general principles 
 when they are discovered, and to stop barring the way of find- 
 ing out what use they can be put to in furthering human 
 purposes." 
 
 "Well, Mr. Graham," submitted Lyon, with a deep-drawn 
 sigh of partially reconciled resignation, "if you'll allow me 
 to concede once for all that there's a safe reserve of star mist 
 vaporing around the rim of space, I'm still ready to consider 
 the question. What of it?" 
 
 Because Graham was too much concerned with the collision 
 of principles to be fussy about his personal dignity, he merely 
 smiled at the sarcasm, and tried another approach. 
 
 "As I was saying, then," Graham repeated, "our whole so- 
 cial structure rests on an economic assumption that is a mathe- 
 matical absurdity; and the chief lure into this absurdity is 
 the productivity theory of capital. Now let me take a con- 
 crete case, and show what we are called upon to believe when 
 we pin our faith to that prop of capitalism." 
 
 Graham produced his note book, and holding it up a mo- 
 
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 ment, with his fore-finger between the pages to which he had 
 quickly turned, he further prefaced : — 
 
 "Let us see now on which side is the star-gazing, and on 
 which the arithmetic. I've carried these figures around with 
 me a long time, and have tried them on many people. The 
 best logic any one has ever been able to muster against them 
 has looked more like an attack of bronchitis. Your convincing 
 metaphysic of capitalism begins by endowing capital with 
 a unique self-sufficiency of accretion. Suppose George Wash- 
 ington had taken one step more in fathering his country, and 
 had left to his posterity a perpetual object-lesson in the oper- 
 ation of this alleged Aladdin's-lamp capacity of capital." 
 
 Then, referring to his notes, Graham recited: — "In 1783, 
 Congress reimbursed Washington for outlays from his own 
 means during the war in the sum of $64,315, not mentioning 
 the cents. Suppose Washington had decided to set that sum 
 apart forever as a scientific demonstration of the creative 
 power of capital. Suppose he had secured an act of Congress 
 permitting the amount to accumulate at the rate of four per 
 cent, compounded annually. In the year 1913, if the meta- 
 physics worked according to schedule, that modest amount of 
 capital would have become $10,535,440, and it would then be 
 only just starting on its career." 
 
 "But," pursued Graham, scanning Halleck and Lyon in 
 turn to see how they were affected by the illustration, "we all 
 know that the man in business who doesn't set his mark for 
 profits as high as ten per cent, is a chump. If he makes that 
 much he passes as fairly successful. To count as a financier 
 he has got to make his capital net much more. Now Wash- 
 ington is supposed to have been rather canny himself, and it 
 would do injustice to his memory to assume that he would 
 have been satisfied to leave posterity only a partial demonstra- 
 tion of a fundamental truth. While he was displaying the 
 power of capital he would surely demand for it something like 
 a decent share of its rights. Let us suppose that he compro- 
 mised on a rate of ten per cent compounded annually. Then 
 he would have provided subsequent generations with some- 
 thing like a respectable exhibit of the virtues of capital. Again 
 assuming that there is nothing wrong in the metaphysics, the 
 share of the wealth of the country to the credit of that invest- 
 ment would have amounted in 1913 to the somewhat im- 
 pressive total of fifteen thousand four hundred and sixty-five 
 
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 million, four hundred seventy four thousand, three hundred 
 seventeen dollars. Compared with any sum in the possession 
 of a living money magnate, that pile would be as a flagstaff 
 to a walking stick !" 
 
 Lyon had been taught the productivity theory of capital, 
 and he accepted it. Moreover, he could not remember that 
 he had ever heard money men argue the rights of capital with- 
 out getting most of their leverage more or less directly from 
 that 'metaphysic,' as Graham termed it. He was at the point 
 of asserting that business ability of course would have to be 
 called in to make the investment profitable. He saw at once 
 though that this would be deserting his theory under 
 fire. He had never seen the facts quite in the light of the illus- 
 tration before, and no answer that occurred to him offered 
 much resistance to its force. He was really playing for time 
 when he entered the caveat: — "But no business man ever 
 claimed that capital can roll up that way indefinitely !" 
 
 It was Graham's term to be cynical. Tilting back in his 
 chair, with the manner of a man who had things about as he 
 wanted them, and could afford to let other people do the wor- 
 rying, he composedly demanded : — "Will you kindly give me 
 the address, Mr. Lyon, of any one outside our holy economic 
 hierarchy, who can invite his soul with the flattery that his 
 theory of life is a howling success, when the best that can be 
 said in its favor is that it has to break down completely in 
 order to work at all ?" 
 
 Lyon was not proud of himself as he further temporized : — 
 "Suppose you explain what earthly connection there is be- 
 tween your figures and a practical business proposition." 
 
 No man was quicker to detect such connections, and the 
 present instance was an inconvenient addition to the visible 
 supply of "unavailables," but Lyon was not prepared to admit 
 that it was more. 
 
 "You do not need me to point out their meaning, Mr. 
 Lyon," accused Graham, with revived intensity. "They show 
 as plain as the sun shining in the heavens that the whole meta- 
 physic vanishes into thin air the moment it is called on for an 
 accounting. One of the few things I took with me from the 
 history of philosophy was Kant's moral minimum : — 'Act al- 
 ways according to a rule that is fit to be made a rule by every- 
 body,' or words to that effect. I never was quite sure whether 
 it meant anything different from the 'Golden Rule' in the 
 
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 Sunday School version ; but whether there is an extra wrinkle 
 in it or not, nothing less, that I ever ran against, could make 
 good as a safe standardizer of human actions. Your capital- 
 istic metaphysics can't do business in the same firm with any- 
 thing up to the level of the Kantian ethics. If everybody 
 started at once to act strictly in accordance with the presuppo- 
 sitions of your economic philosophy, there would be a world- 
 wide drop into barbarism before the books of the first year's 
 operations were closed, and general starvation in another year. 
 The scheme seems to work, first because only a small fraction 
 of the race are in on it, and second because we are still sweep- 
 ing in the rich pickings from nature's surface. When we get 
 to the bottom, there is only a diff^erence of detail between the 
 capitalistic programme and the 'woman's bank' plan of pay- 
 ing dividends on earlier deposits from the later. The chain 
 isn't endless. There must be a last link, and then ?" 
 
 There was a cold chisel and auger effect in the rigidity of 
 Lyon's features as he seemed to be boring into the argument. 
 Getting no reply, Graham drew out his conclusion. 
 
 "I have used the Washington illustration," he explained, 
 
 "simply for the sake of the general fact. And I ought to 
 
 have said at the start that this particular strike marks an era 
 in labor difficulties, just because it makes an issue farther back 
 on fundamental grounds than any other labor struggle I ever 
 heard of. We lay down the principle that it is merely putting 
 off the inevitable day of reckoning to try to reconcile labor 
 differences on the basis of the present economic metaphysics ; 
 and instead of puttering to improve results while we let the 
 causes alone, we demand a rehearing of the whole theory of 
 capitalism. Because the Avery Company stands pat on the 
 mystical capitalistic metaphysics, instead of consenting to a 
 readjustment of theories to facts, we have got to make our 
 first fight against it . 
 
 "But as I was saying : — Whether capital is actually getting 
 one rate or another doesn't affect the principle. We are ex- 
 ploiting nature, and producing wealth, and every time we 
 turn a ton of goods into capital we add a corresponding 
 amount to the fixed charges on the world's labor. Now where 
 is this extra charge to come from? It can come from only four 
 sources: Fir.st, new appropriations of nature; second, new 
 technical processes; third, new labor efficiency; fourth, sub- 
 
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 traction from some one's share in the product. Under pres- 
 ent conditions, there is no doubt whose share it will be." 
 
 It was less the force of the reasoning which kept Lyon si- 
 lent, than his surprise at the unfamiliar look of this whole 
 section of capitalistic premises. He had assumed that he was 
 at home in economic theory from A to Z. He was, in the parts 
 of it which were closest to everyday application; but Gra- 
 ham's argument had made him see that he had been as ama- 
 teurish about the foundations of it as those people are in their 
 religious views who plant themselves on the "cover-to-cover" 
 conception of the Bible. While Graham did not quite fathom 
 Lyon's reticence, he was sure he was making an impression, 
 and he was quick to follow up the advantage. 
 
 "If every scrap of surplus wealth had been consistently cap- 
 italized," he recapitulated, "from the wooden soles under the 
 peasant's feet to the bullion in tyrants' chests, civilization 
 would have been brought to a standstill before it had fairly 
 started. We could no more carry out the theory of capitalism 
 than we could make our industries pay a royalty on every 
 breath we draw. We have got to find a theory that will turn 
 the accumulations of the race to the reducing of fixed charges 
 instead of increasing them. We are bankrupting the world 
 just as surely by attaching a cumulative power to capital, as 
 though we were levjdng a progressive tax on industry to re- 
 munerate the ocean for its uses to commerce." 
 
 It was a soiled and sallow facetiousness with which Lyon 
 emerged from his reflections ; but it did its best to create a di- 
 version. "Would you fight me, Mr. Graham," insinuated 
 Lyon, "because some of my progenitors believed that the sin 
 of Adam doomed most of mankind to hell?" 
 
 "Getting pretty desperate isn't it, Mr. Lyon, when we resort 
 to such feeble efforts?" Graham's laugh was as stalwart as his 
 logic, and his whole body joined in a pantomime of ridicule. 
 "You won't convince anybody but yourselves that you are 
 being called to account for the sins of your ancestors. We 
 are fighting today's sins of the Avery Company, and the es- 
 sence of them is nothing past and gone, but refusal to open 
 the question whether the past and gone must always dictate 
 the future. We have inherited a theory of capital which 
 seemed fairly well to account for the facts, when all the cap- 
 ital there was consisted virtually of tools in the hands of the 
 owners, who did with them their share of the world's work. The 
 
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 theory is a barefaced swindle when most of the capital that 
 makes the trouble is out of sight of its owners, and they may 
 or may not do any part of the world's real work with it. As 
 an abstract proposition, which I know as well as you do we 
 must hold subject to the compelling force of circumstances, 
 there is no more sense in paying a royalty to capital than to 
 the alphabet or the multiplication table. We support insti- 
 tutions, and enforce attendance on them, for putting each 
 generation in possession of the world's spiritual accumula- 
 tions, but wc load on each new generation a periodical and 
 progressive fine for using our material accumulations. I 
 can't pick out any better fun than puncturing that sort 
 of a toy balloon. If I live long enough, theres going to 
 be a start made towards a fair trial of the question why our 
 whole system of social accounting should not be shifted from 
 the capitalistic to the labor basis." 
 
 Lyon foresaw that this meant a turn in the argument, and 
 he felt a sense of relief in the prospect of passing to more fa- 
 miliar fighting ground. Meanwhile he hoped to escape the 
 appearance of having yielded anything, by the reservation : — 
 "Before you get too far from the subject, let me call your at- 
 tention to the fact that you have given away your whole case 
 by your phrase 'compelling force of circum.stances.' " 
 
 "Foiled again !" repudiated Graham, mock-heroically. 
 "When I say 'compelling force of circumstances,' I make full 
 allowance for the whole scale of limitations, from natural laws 
 to fiUibustering hypocrites, — and what is life anyway, but a 
 matching of men against circumstances? At the one ex- 
 treme we get the absolute bounds of possibility, at the other 
 the rate of practicability. The force of circumstances made 
 it a long time after men knew the world was not flat before 
 they could circle it in eighty days ; but the same circumstances 
 did not justify the 'interests' in forcing people to assume that 
 the earth was flat after it was proved to be round. More than 
 that, the interests were presently eliminated from the cir- 
 cumstances, and men have been working out their salvation 
 ever since on a round world. The capitalistic mythology 
 may die harder than the scholastic cosmology, but the 'com- 
 pelling force of circumstances' can no more bring human 
 progress to a halt in the one case than in the other." 
 
 "Very well then," consented Lyon with a show of alacrity 
 that invited inspection, "for the sake of argument let us sup- 
 
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 pose we have settled something. Now what have we got? 
 Capital is incapable of unlimited spontaneous reproduction ; 
 therefore, the Avery Company is under obligations to deliver 
 over its management to outsiders. Have I stated it correctly, 
 Mr. Graham?" 
 
 The smile that relaxed the lines of Graham's face might 
 have been put on to greet an opponent's excuses for losing the 
 first hole. Graham waB too good a sportsman to preen him- 
 self over his successes ; but for the sake of the men behind him 
 he was bound to keep Lyon on the defensive, and to force the 
 fighting. Allowing a pause for his complacency to take ef- 
 fect, he combined the two purposes in his next line of at- 
 tack : — 
 
 "If you mean to assert on your honor, Mr. Lyon, that you 
 can see nothing more in the case so far, I am quite content to 
 let it rankle in your conscience for the present, while I turn 
 the searchlight on another weak spot." 
 
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 "A theory of economic distribution which assigns an in- 
 come to landlord or capitalist for any other reason than 
 
 that which assigns a wage to the manual laborer is 
 
 not merely a rape of justice but an insult to ordinary 
 intelligence." 
 
 HALLECK understood Lyon so much better than Graham 
 did, that his spirits had risen with every turn of the talk. 
 He knew the limitations of Lyon's influence in the Company, 
 but he also knew its strength. He knew the enormous differ- 
 ence between Logan and his father, that whereas either would 
 stake his life before he would violate his code, the older man 
 was sure the business code was immutable, while the younger 
 was equally sure of the abstract proposition that the morality 
 of business, like business itself, along with the rest of life, is 
 perpetually in the making. Halleck knew that Logan had 
 only to be convinced of a moral weakness in the Company's 
 position to become a power making for a change of attitude. 
 He knew that nothing was so likely to convince Logan of 
 weakness in his moral premises as conviction of their logical 
 inconclusiveness. He could see that Logan's confidence in 
 what Graham called the 'metaphysics' of business had been 
 disturbed, and that he was open to reason about alternative 
 conceptions of the economic process. It remained to be seen 
 whether enough could be said to break down Lyon's assump- 
 tion that no other conception is practical. 
 
 There was less carrying power in Graham's appraisal of 
 Lyon, but it made in the same direction. Graham had de- 
 cided that Lyon was not the sort of man whose moral equa- 
 tion was dubious after he was convinced. His will was not 
 the wicked partner of his intellect. He would not change to 
 a zealot for a new perception, but his testimony would never 
 be perjured. It was some gain to show him that there were 
 open questions about the antecedents of his working schedule ; 
 and Graham deployed his reserves with an assurance that he 
 had not felt when Halleck proposed the conference. 
 
 "My second specification," announced Graham, "is that the 
 capitalistic premises of distribution are as shifty as the myth- 
 
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 ology of production. And," he interpolated, "I assume it is 
 unnecessary to point out that these academic abstractions have 
 about the same interest for me that legal technicalities have 
 for you. Either may make or mar real fortunes, and there- 
 fore they must be watched ; but they are merely incidental to 
 the main concern. My case is, in a word, that the premises 
 of capitalism construe human relations as they are not, and 
 that business and law compel acceptance of those premises 
 by a conspiracy of force. I am showing up your premises not 
 to win a debate, but to locate the real issue. The Avery Com- 
 pany is simply capitalism personified at one spot, clamping 
 the strait-jacket of an arbitrary conception of life upon the 
 men who work with nature and give the world its wealth. 
 The organization that you are fighting personifies humanity 
 demanding the freedom of its functions. If human evolu- 
 tion has passed into its senility we may lose ; but the workers 
 of the world are its optimists." 
 
 Lyon was again hesitating between irritation and amuse- 
 ment. Ordinarily he would have dismissed such fluency of 
 figurative expression as jugglers' passes to distract attention 
 from clues to the illusion. He had heard Graham enough 
 though to be sure that, right or wrong, he was not pushing 
 forward a water-color perspective in advance of his calcula- 
 tions and blue prints. Indeed he was beginning to suspect 
 that, if Graham could be refuted, it would not be because his 
 thinking had been shallower than that of the system he at- 
 tacked. Graham had apparently taken the measure of that 
 veteran philosophy. The correction would have to come from 
 analysis and reconstruction that would retire both tradition 
 and revolt. 
 
 Lyon dismissed the impulse, which had been strong earlier 
 in the interview, to treat Graham as a word-artist instead of 
 a thinker ; but he tried to keep up the appearance of regard- 
 ing his heresy as a joke. 
 
 "If you hadn't labeled it, Mr. Graham," Lyon criticized 
 triflingly, "I should never have thought of calling it a 'de- 
 bate.' You might have got to me if you had said 'selections 
 from a suffragette lyric contest.' " 
 
 Graham was not thrown out of his stride a moment by 
 Lyon's sarcasm, and it was as easy to keep ahead of him in 
 that mood as in their most serious temper. The answer was 
 ready: — "Don't you suppose the gum-shoe man thinks it's 
 
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 very flippant of the watchman to snap his dark lantern and 
 show up the job? And if objections to the jocundity were 
 spoken out, don't you suppose, under the circumstances, the 
 levity would be likely to continue? If I illuminate a little 
 vividly, it's just the jovial way old-fashioned honesty some- 
 times has with certain types of shrinking innocence that pre- 
 fer to operate in the dark." 
 
 The three men spontaneously granted themselves a brief 
 interlude of unbending over the invasion of this variety of 
 esthetic criticism into the argument; but the intermission 
 ended as suddenly as it had begun, and Graham forged ahead 
 with his line of thought : — 
 
 "I might have remained so stupidly technical that nothing 
 but the Uriah Heepish old fictions would have appeared in 
 the general effect; but since you have called my attention to 
 it, I may as well play up the lights and shadows with a lurid- 
 ness that will bring out some resemblance to reality. I had in 
 mind a historical disquisition at this point, on how we hap- 
 pened to be tangled up in the philosophy of life that the Avery 
 Company represents. No sane man could find that set of 
 connections in present-day facts, if he didn't carry it to them 
 from some snap-judgment in the past. In deference to your 
 appreciation of my poetic gifts, Mr. Lyon, I will vary the treat- 
 ment and put it this way : — 
 
 "Adam Smith missed the chance of his life to smother 
 capitalism in the cradle, by not having the courage of his in- 
 sight. He started out to say that nature and labor were the 
 only producers ; but British society stared him out of counte- 
 nance, and he forgot it. He saw Englishmen divided into 
 landlords, capitalists and laborers; whereupon he intoned a 
 Gloria over the eternal fitness of things, and improvised the 
 Holy Gospel that ever since heads all the rest in upper-class 
 prayer books: — 'Land, labor and capital are the factors of 
 production, therefore landlord, laborer and capitalist must 
 be the parties in distribution.' It was a little looser thinking 
 than we should do if we observed that owners, passengers and 
 crew are the classes visibly connected with an Atlantic liner; 
 and forthwith concluded: — 'Owners, passengers and crew 
 make the ship go; therefore, owners, passengers and crew 
 divide the proceeds of the trip.' " 
 
 "Let's see," arrested Lyon, with further backslidden irrev- 
 'isn't that the old refrain, instead of a new stanza?" 
 
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 Graham saw at once that there was something to be said for 
 the charge, but he brushed it away in the same tone in which 
 it was made. "You're evidently not keen for this style of art, 
 Mr. Lyon. It's not the old refrain but the second movement 
 in the symphony. Your ear sifts out some of the original mate- 
 rial, but doesn't locate the new purpose. I'm not going to 
 argue the productivity question over again; but I am now 
 showing that your metaphysic of production commits you to 
 an entirely disqualifying preconception of distribution. Your 
 assumption of something that isn't so about production puts 
 you in a position where you can no more see straight about 
 distribution than you can forecast the behavior of a kaleido- 
 scope. When it is called on to the limit of its liabilities, your 
 traditional capitalistic philosophy has no consistent way of 
 denying that legal holders of property deserve a share of cur- ■ 
 rent earnings, whether they help along the work that creates 
 the earnings or not. I will not match that stupidity by a 
 sweeping denial that landlords and capitalists deserve a share 
 of the world's earnings. That would be as silly as the mis- 
 take it is up to us to correct. I am not going to enter a so- 
 cialistic extreme in competition with the capitalistic extreme, 
 and of course, whether I have a saner mean or not, we haven't 
 time to argue the matter through to a demonstration. I want 
 at least to get one proposition clearly before your mind. It 
 is this : — Instead of resting on unquestionable facts, another 
 angle of modern business principles has for its sole logical 
 support a perfectly juvenile fiction. You oppose to the claims 
 of laborers in distribution of surplus the preferred claims of 
 landlord and capitalist. Now, to be perfectly literal, and neg- 
 lecting the landlord factor for the sake of simplicity, the 
 reasoning which business theory takes for granted, — and I 
 will give it credit in this digest for more than it deserves — 
 amounts to this : — first, there is a distinctly defined function 
 for the capitalist in the industrial process ; second, the capital- 
 ist always performs that function ; therefore, the capitalist is 
 always entitled to any surplus that remains after covering the 
 cost of production." 
 
 "Don't let it stop the good work, Mr. Graham," Lyon en- 
 couraged, with an expression suggestive of a water-poloist com- 
 ing to the surface after a submerged scrimmage. "I want to 
 express my gratitude, however, while I have a chance, for a 
 few words that I can understand without a libretto." 
 
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 "Thanks for the remittance, which we have duly entered in 
 our books," acknowledged Graham, neither swerving from his 
 course nor crumpling his serenity. "If I do not run short 
 of the same pellucid parts of speech, I may make myself still 
 further understood. I wanted to submit for your considera- 
 tion a parallel case. For instance, we all agree that a trader is 
 presumably a useful member of society. Does that major 
 premise take away your right to refuse payment of a bill pre- 
 sented by a particular trader, until you have checked up the 
 itenas to see whether he has delivered the goods? What I am 
 getting at is this : — There are normal and necessary functions 
 of management in connection with land and capital ; and a 
 corresponding return is due to landlord and capitalist who 
 perform the functions. Our laws of property, however, make 
 it possible for many people to be in the landlord or capi- 
 talist class, while they evade the functions normally per- 
 formed by the class ; yet they collect the emoluments due to 
 the functions, and many of them a great deal more. This is 
 where I over-credited your fundamental reasoning. In order 
 to get your capitalistic premises adopted at all, something of 
 the functional idea had to be in them at the start, and it is 
 always smuggled back into them when they are brought to 
 book. In its workings, however, your metaphysics, both of 
 production and of distribution, assigns the emolument to the 
 status of landlord or capitalist, not less than the functions. 
 It follows that you are helpless to show sound reasons why 
 not, when directors vote to themselves and their stockhold- 
 ing pals a return that is all out of proportion to their services ; 
 or when a worthless son of an industrious father becomes a 
 riotous spender of the income his father's capital fur- 
 nishes ; or when his weak-headed daughter takes the income 
 to Europe and invests it in experimental husbands. A theory 
 of economic distribution which assigns an income to landlord 
 or capitalist for any other reason than that which assigns a 
 wage to the manual laborer — namely, that each after his kind 
 is expected to be a useful worker, and when he meets the ex- 
 pectation is entitled simply to the fair wage of his work — is 
 not merely a rape of justice, but an insult to ordinary in- 
 telligence." 
 
 In this instance it was not so much his usual feeling that 
 the unrepresented interest needed protection, which disturbed 
 
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 Lyon's passive attitude, as it was the patience of assured 
 strength deciding itself no longer a virtue. Lyon did not 
 reckon himself anywhere near admission that the whole tra- 
 ditional substructure of business was as flimsy as Graham rep- 
 resented. It was not as true of him as of his father that busi- 
 ness seemed as self-affirmative as the tides or the seasons. The 
 difference, however, was merely in degree ; and Logan unsus- 
 pectingly accepted this self-sufRciency of business as confirm- 
 ing the theories by which business had been explained. The 
 instability of his position was in precisely this relation. Un- 
 der close scrutiny it turns out that the one arc of this vicious 
 circle has no necessary connection with the other arc. Lyon 
 had not found this out. He was like the hearties who had 
 sailed the Mediterranean in the good old times when Jerusa- 
 lem was the centre of the world, and its outer edge was the sky 
 line beyond the Pillar.-^ of Hercules. So long as that was the 
 radius of their world, the theory was good enough for them, 
 and they wasted no time prying underneath it. Simply be- 
 cause he had never had the conceit up for examination, but 
 had given it storage room along with other souvenirs of his 
 college days, Lyon was as unafraid as the hosts appealing to 
 Baal, when he called up, as he supposed, a fact which would 
 put an end to this whole trifling with the unchangeable : — 
 
 "How would it do, Mr. Graham," he demanded, in a man- 
 ner which was meant and understood as mandatory, in spite 
 of its studied politeness, "to consider some of the things that 
 we all know are here to stay, instead of harping any longer on 
 aspects of the ease which you claim to regard as debatable? 
 For instance, we might progress if we started with the fact 
 that nothing can rob the capitalist of the merit of his ab- 
 staining from consumption of his wealth, or of his title to the 
 reward due for reserving the wealth as capital." 
 
 "Last stowaway aboard! Cast off your stern line!" jeered 
 Graham with a burst of glee that was schoolboyish on the sur- 
 face, but sufficiently drastic in effect. "Perhaps you haven't 
 been noticing how I was rattling the pennies in my pocket 
 while I was looking for that perennial 'pity-the-poor-blind- 
 man' to turn up? 'Productivity' and 'Abstinence!' The 
 Angel Twins of Capitalism ! Whose soul is so congealed as 
 not to be stirred to its depths by the privations of Avery stock- 
 holders, eating their frugal bread without butter, and their 
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 their ground-floor apportionment of the next 'good thing!' 
 If it would not mEike a too appalling exhibit, we might reckon 
 in the game suppers they pass every now and then, when they 
 can't Turkish-bathe away in time the effects of the one before. 
 It is enough to draw scalding tears from the painted eyes of 
 the wooden Indians in all the back counties !" And Graham 
 raised a cheer that must have made the people outside won- 
 der ; as no drinks had been ordered. 
 
 "Mr. Lyon," moderated Graham, but with no less accusa- 
 tive sarcasm in his inflections, "that 'abstinence' gag is the 
 most give-away specimen in the entire collection of capitalistic 
 antiquities. It shows up your whole speculation of making 
 wheelbarrow propositions cover aeroplane processes. When it 
 was a question between wearing the old shoes another season, 
 and getting a new saw to use in the shop ; or between short ra- 
 tions through the Winter and seed to plant in the Spring, ab- 
 stinence meant something large in the industrial process. But 
 do you want me to believe that, since you stopped swallow- 
 ing things as they were told, you are still taken in by the sanc- 
 timonious pretensions of 'abstinence' as a nietaphysic of mod- 
 ern distribution? Couldn't you just as easily believe that 
 Atlas carries the world on his shoulders, as that 'abstinence,' 
 in the sense of self-denial, cuts any considerable figure in the 
 case of large capital and modern capitalists? You know as 
 well as I do that there would be no capitalistic problem if the 
 only capital concerned were the kind that exists by grace of 
 the self-sacrifice of its present holders. When you assume the 
 contrary, your special pleading for capitalism makes a good 
 pair with the Henry George argument that, because savages 
 get their food without capital, therefore capital is not neces- 
 sary for civilization. The capital that makes the problems is 
 not the tool capital that its owners deny themselves necessities 
 and luxuries to get; it is the finance-capital that its owners 
 couldn't consume if they would — the surplus above all possible 
 capacity of its individual possessors to use in any way except 
 to procure them unwarranted power over their fellow men. 
 Crediting anything to such capital on the score of abstinence 
 is as far-fetched as defending winnings in a poker game and 
 with marked cards at that, on the ground that they were 
 earned by abstinence from work. If we were talking about 
 constructive financiering, that hunts out unworked resources, 
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 might go as high as you would in appraising the wage-earning 
 value of that service. But for God's sake kick that canting 
 hypocrite 'Abstinence' out of decent company, and give things 
 their honest names ! The place to discover the self-contradic- 
 tion of capitalism is with those capitalists who have to lie 
 awake nights to think out ways of anchoring their capital so 
 it won't drift away with the next tide. Stretching your meta- 
 physic to cover them is like calling it 'abstinence' when the 
 boy hanging around the rear of the grocery doesn't walk away 
 with a hogshead of molasses in his stomach!" 
 
 In the evolution of social species, the variety next beyond 
 the inquirer by curious argumentation is the inquirer by in- 
 ventive experiment. If Lyon's attention had been trained in- 
 ward instead of outward during Graham's latest iconoclasm, 
 he might have observed beginnings of revaluations which, if 
 let alone, could have no other outcome than development of 
 the more advanced type. Not that Graham had said any- 
 thing new. Although in recent years Lyon had given hardly 
 more thought to this second link in the chain of Graham's 
 reasoning than to the one before ; and although he could not 
 have told where he had come across similar opinions ; there 
 was, on the one hand, the staleness about them of lessons 
 learned but not assimilated, then forgotten and recalled. On 
 the other hand, the personal force and assurance that Graham 
 put into his destructive criticism was irrefutable. If it did 
 not carry conviction, it destroyed the self-evidence of the pre- 
 vious basis of belief. 
 
 Lyon could not remember whether he had heard his father's 
 comparison of business principles with the laws of climate, 
 before it was so unsuccessfully tried on Hester. He would 
 have said, however, that the parallel was fairly close. All 
 the schemes or longings for social readjustment which he had 
 ever thought worth notice, even as academic propositions, 
 were to his mind as though they took the facts of climate for 
 granted, but deliberately undertook the task of artificially 
 controlling climate. The possibility had never before pre- 
 sented itself to his imagination that the business system might 
 be more like a conservatory than like climate. Contact with 
 a man who had been a brilliant success in business on a large 
 scale, who nevertheless believed that the principles on which 
 the conservatory had been run were not only ridiculous but 
 
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 contemptible, supplied a new object-glass which rearranged 
 his whole field of vision. 
 
 Since he was facing the argument, rather than his own 
 subjective reactions, Lyon had no thoughts for effects upon 
 his personal make-up, but only for the strategic value of Gra- 
 ham's moves. He had never allowed himself the false security 
 of underrating an opponent's strength. He was too judicial 
 to coddle himself with pretense that his position had improved 
 during the engagement. In stark truth, he felt as though he 
 had been guilty, as he never had been in reality, of 
 going into court with a superficially prepared case, and had 
 found himself confronted by rules of law which he had never 
 considered. 
 
 If Lyon had followed the impulse of the moment, he would 
 have announced himself on the spot a volunteer to test Gra- 
 ham's allegations, and to devise remedies for the conditions, 
 if the charges were sustained. But he was a part of the system. 
 He was retained in its interest. It was his business to repre- 
 sent its claims. He had not even Kissinger's freedom to re- 
 sign his position. Filial duty held him tighter than profes- 
 sional obligations. The only immediate recourse was stout 
 assertion of 'not proven,' with reserve purpose of going into 
 Graham's attack at once in detail, to discover whether any- 
 thing in his theory really demanded practical recognition. 
 
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 XXII 
 
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 "Everything fair and reasonable in property would be 
 affirmed and strengthened if it were readjusted on the 
 service basis." 
 
 GRAHAM had no means of choosing between the possible 
 explanations of Lyon's failure to strike back. It might 
 be a confession. It might be sheer inability to see things ex- 
 cept through the capitalistic prejudice. It might be retreat 
 into unthinking defiance. With nothing to go by in decid- 
 ing what state of mind to infer, the wisest course was return 
 to the pure logic of the case. There was no doubt that Lyon's 
 attention was still pacing its beat ; and Graham took the chance 
 of forcing his position by massing his attack on the centre. 
 
 After the silence had lasted long enough to afford each 
 party a fairly clear retrospect of the ground covered by the 
 discussion, and for each to cast up his account of the other's 
 offensive and defensive strength, as revealed to the kind of 
 muscular sense called into action by the encounter, Graham 
 started again in a tone which retained no trace of his previous 
 heat. 
 
 "One of the things that men of your type are never able to 
 shut out of their minds, Mr. Lyon, when any one questions 
 the metaphysics of our economic system, is the ghost of the 
 bill which the questioner is supposed to be carrying around 
 in his pocket, ready for railroading through the legislature 
 the minute his clique gets the balance of power, and tooted as 
 an instantaneous cure for everything which the questioner 
 calls bad. You can't or you won't separate the question of 
 principle from the problems of policy. When I say that the 
 property basis of economic distribution is a burlesque of jus- 
 tice, and that the only sure a,pproach to distributive justice 
 will have to be on a service basis, you refuse to give the propo- 
 sition a hearing, because you suppose I have a scheme up my 
 sleeve to dispossess property holders and distribute the loot 
 to the public per capita. Or rather, you don't suppose any- 
 thing of the sort, but you dodge the responsibility of run- 
 ning down a fundamental proposition, by pretending that 
 
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 every one who sees through your mythological metaphysics 
 is in the crazy class. 
 
 "If we should compare notes all along the line, I fancy it 
 would turn out that I have quite as radical contempt as you 
 have for scoldings at things that serve a necessary purpose in 
 the course of evolution, and are bad only when they are set 
 up as finalities to block further evolution. I don't want the 
 savings banks to stop paying interest — partly because their 
 deposits come about as near as anything in our day to the 
 fabulous conception of capital that deserves a reward for its 
 own sake — and I don't need to be told that the savings banks 
 couldn't pay interest unless investments yielded profits. Be- 
 sides that, the savings banks do a big service, on the one hand, 
 in bunching small sums for use in large enterprises, and on 
 the other hand, the interest on deposits provisionally takes 
 the place of the deferred payments which will endow the old- 
 age of all the industrious, when we have learned to apply the 
 insurance principle for all it is worth. With different de- 
 tails, all legitimate uses of capital, and payments of dividends, 
 are justified in a way, and to a certain limit, which I will not 
 discuss, by the value of their service in putting savings at 
 the disposal of productive workers, and in proxying partially 
 for the old age insurance that will provide for the non-pro- 
 ductive yoars of all the world's workers when we have ration- 
 ally developed our economic system. 
 
 "While the regular workings of solid business do not con- 
 firm the grotesque theories that have been fabricated to jus- 
 tify them, they have a much better reason for existence in the 
 literal fact that they are the best approach we have thus far 
 been able to make to an ordering of industry in accordance 
 with the netual values involved. This does not remove the 
 other fact that it i* up to us to recognize the snap- judgments 
 incorporated in our capitalistic institutions, with the intolera- 
 ble consequences that appear as incorporated capital increases 
 in amount; and to put less mischievous judgments in their 
 place. 
 
 "Everything fair and reasonable in property would be af- 
 firmed and strengthened if it were readjusted on the service 
 basis. Everything obstructive and abusive and perversive in 
 property is protected and instigated by the satanic negation 
 of humanity in our capitalistic mythology. Day and night, 
 and change of seasons, and advance of civilization didn't stop 
 
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 when we found out that it was the earth that revolved, not 
 the sun. We have understood things better, and managed 
 ourselves more successfully, since we have reckoned with the 
 facts as they are, instead of trying to fit ourselves to fictions. 
 Business won't stop, and justice won't disappear, and human 
 progress won't halt, when we retire the sardonic old lies I 
 have been talking about — that capital produces, and finan- 
 ciering manipulation is abstinence, and haAdng some wealth 
 confers an inherent right to more. I would willingly quit 
 fighting capitalism for life if I could get the fundamental 
 concession that business theory shall henceforth be shifted 
 over from the property basis to the service basis. I don't 
 pretend to see very far ahead as to how the accounting will 
 work out, and it would be foolish to try. Coming generations 
 will have to develop the details, just as we are only getting 
 fairly settled down now to the job of finding out what political 
 democracy actually involves, although the eighteenth century 
 substituted the principle of government by the people for the 
 principle of government over the people. The details will 
 take care of themselves, and T am not so very much con- 
 cerned about the how or the when of them. They will get 
 into shape as fast as men are fit for them, if we only carry 
 through the fundamental revolution from mystification into 
 matter-of-fact in our conceptions of the primary economic re- 
 lations. Whether it comes soon or late, the world will be in 
 its next great era of human achievement the moment there 
 is a working majority for calculating our economic course ac- 
 cording to the human factors in the process, instead of blund- 
 ering along further in this capitalistic trance. 
 
 "You think this is an infinitesimal issue to start a strike on, 
 Mr. Lyon. I am trying to show you, on the contrary, that it 
 is an issue that goes to the roots of modern men's connections 
 with one another. When men see the facts as they are, they 
 are not long in perceiving that the logic of events is rapidly 
 forcing choice between two alternatives. One or the other is 
 inevitable. We may go on in an endless series of trials of 
 strength between economic classes, with decision of nothing 
 except survival of the type that the system makes strong ; or 
 we may appeal to elementary principles of the human proc- 
 ess, and reorder the system so that fitter types will be the 
 strong, and will survive to fill the world with a better process. 
 This strike means that a social will which may be only a cloud 
 
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 as big as a man's hand on the world's horizon — but none of us 
 have taken its measure yet — has made itself up for the forward 
 end of this dilemma." 
 
 The two men were leaning so far over the little table be- 
 tween them that their faces nearly met. They were looking 
 each other fixedly in the eye, and there was no more energy in 
 Graham's assault than in Lyon's repellant resistence. 
 
 Perhaps it was well that Graham did not know how far 
 Lyon had convinced himself before the argument began. He 
 might have scattered his fire if he had suspected how many 
 of the things he was saying affected Lyon like graphophon- 
 ings of mind readings from his own off-duty reflections. In 
 fact, Lyon had to keep his will power at high pressure to hold 
 the business side of the interview foremost. By vigilant use 
 of force, he centered his interest on the strike issues trembling 
 in the balance, and possibly to be settled one way or the other 
 by some slight turn of the talk. The prospect of arriving at 
 anything practical, however, seemed so remote that it was 
 hard to resist the allurements of the argument as a purely 
 speculative exercise. In that light his sympathies would have 
 led him so far from his professional position that Graham 
 would have been at a loss to place him. In fact, although it 
 was not yet quite clear to Lyon himself, his business ideals 
 were not so very different from Graham's. For Lyon, how- 
 ever, these ideals belonged in a detached realm of the mind. 
 They had a coherence and a desirability of their own as ab- 
 stractions. He still considered it visionary to suppose that 
 working connections could ever be established between them 
 and actual affairs. 
 
 If Graham had been able to ferret out so much, it would 
 probably have decoyed him into the tactical mistake of mov- 
 ing directly on Lyon's will, instead of continuing preliminary 
 operations on his ideas. His confinement to surface indica- 
 tions for clues to Lyon's state of mind imposed persistence 
 along the line of logical and psychological rudiments; while 
 a little more knowledge would have stimulated efforts which 
 would have been strategically far less effective. 
 
 "Just one more fling at this distribution matter," Grahain 
 indexed, with a breezy sort of suggestiveness that he had so 
 far merely been getting bothersome trifles out of the way, 
 "and then I'll come to something a little nearer home. 
 
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 "I don't want to reopen the productivity question, but of 
 course it has to be the background of our ideas about distri- 
 bution. And after what I have said, it would be dishonest to 
 accuse me of promoting a scheme that would put one man's 
 dues into other men's pockets. I am trying to show you that 
 we have such a scheme in operation now. It is backed by 
 solemn codes of owl-eyed law and philosophy. I am after a 
 scheme that will get each man's dues into his own pocket, 
 and that daylight law and philosophy can stand for. In the 
 system of distribution that the realities of life will finally 
 sanction, everybody that contributes to the values of life will 
 get a share, and for the good and sufficient reason that he 
 contributes to those valu&s. If any one gets a share who does 
 not so contribute, it will be either because the social scheme 
 has broken down enough, at the point where he occurs, to be 
 defenseless against his brand of thieving, or because he comes 
 in on some minor qualifying clause that needn't embarrass 
 the main argument. You have no fear coming that any- 
 body, from the bank president and the captain of industry 
 down to the scrub woman, will be thrown out of any job that 
 really contributes to the values of life, or will lose the pay that 
 belongs with the job. But our present theory of distribution 
 is an unmixable fluid, made up of unequal and variable parts 
 of the oil of wages and the water of bonuses. The process of 
 squeezing out the water that is going on in the world of practi- 
 cal finance, has also got to go on in the theories behind the 
 finance. When the process is complete, nobody that helps the 
 world along will be short of his equity in the process. Only 
 the polite hangers-on will find that they've either got to starve 
 or go to work. 
 
 "To change the figure, our present scheme of distribution 
 is trying to support itself with one foot on the ground and the 
 other in the clouds. When it gets planted with both feet 
 where sole leather can get a purchase, the procession will be 
 less picturesque, but it will be an ablerbodied column, with a 
 much reduced percentage to be accounted for by the hospital 
 service and the missing list. 
 
 "Libraries have been written in the forlorn hope of work- 
 ing off on the rank and file of us any old thing except unadul- 
 terated truth about distribution. "The facts always get there 
 in the end. I can't silence all the libraries in this skirmish. 
 I can only show you the location of my main batteries. The 
 
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 key to this particular part of the situation is that property is 
 privilege. Sounds like diluted Proudhon, doesn't it? 'Twould 
 save lots of trouble if I could leave you the satisfaction of 
 damning it with that label ; but truth compels me to bar such 
 short cuts by adding that property is one of the privileges that 
 make life worth living. 'Maintain property' is writ large be- 
 tween the lines of the Ten Commandments, and it is not much 
 less rudimentary than the best of them. 
 
 "On the other hand, property is a sort of privilege that can 
 be saved from abuse only when it is controlled by infallible 
 moral perceptions; and they are the factors in the case that 
 the game keepers of property have been sedulously stirpicul- 
 turing out of our intellects for more than a hundred years. 
 
 "If I had a dollar, and I lived in a society that did not main- 
 tain property, instead of having my hands free to work for 
 another dollar, it might cost more strength and worry to keep 
 the first one than it took to get it. Property is the privilege 
 of falling back on our neighbors' help to defend us in pos- 
 ?es.sion of what rightfully belongs to us. When all of us see 
 that the only way to keep all of our hands untied for prof- 
 itable work is to stand by one another in guarding what our 
 work has gained, each of us has the benefit of a privilege that 
 is equivalent to the work of a big machine added to our feeble 
 labor power. When ray neighbors pledge themselves to guard 
 my dollar, they are my servants, and I may put in my whole 
 strength getting another dollar, or I may do what I please 
 till I need my dollar. 
 
 "But capitalism has actually made us believe that, instead 
 of owing my neighbors something for their protectorate over 
 my dollar, they are bound to pay me something for allowing 
 them to act as my private watchmen ! I would rather lounge 
 in the shade than hoe corn; so I turn over the hoe, that I 
 have bought with my dollar, to my neighbor Jones. All my 
 neighbors go on his bond as surety for the hoe, and he be- 
 comes the agent of my neighbors in guarding the hoe. When 
 the season is over, if he doe.'^n't do it of his own will, my neigh- 
 bors close in on him with their property laws and make him 
 return not only the dollar which I put into the hoe, but ten 
 cents more to compensate me for doing my work. In other 
 words, our capitalistic system is the great original Tom Saw- 
 yer getting his fence whitewashed !" 
 
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 Lyon was reminded of Hester's similar way of putting it 
 the previous Sunday, and he wondered whether she had been 
 working on a clue from Graham. This seemed to him, how- 
 ever, a far more extravagant caricature of the real transaction, 
 than hers; but he merely interrupted dryly, "While you were 
 about it, Mr. Graham, couldn't you also have barred the short 
 cut from the sublime to the ridiculous?" 
 
 Graham reacted instinctively. He dramatically advanced 
 to the higher emphasis of reducing the physical elements of 
 speech to almost inaudible suggestion. 
 
 "The span from the sublime to the ridiculous in the case, 
 Mr. Lyon, is precisely the one dimension of the chasm that 
 capitalism has channeled in modern society. This strike is a 
 preliminary survey for the engineering feat of closing the 
 crevasse. The only desperate element in the situation is the 
 fatuity of capitalism in reversing the identities of the ridicu- 
 lous and the sublime. The most stupendous deception ever 
 lodged in the minds of men is the uncontrollable element in 
 capitalism's disrupting force. It is the incredible hallucina- 
 tion that absentee ownership can entitle a man to levy tribute 
 on the fellowman who stays by the stuff and makes it useful for 
 human purposes. The reality of this moral upsetting has been 
 hid from the wise and prudent but it is dawning on babes. 
 Capitalism and its intellectual panders refuse to see it; but 
 all that is human in men is beginning to feel it; and install- 
 ing the truth in place of this cynical perversion is going to be 
 the work of the next great era." 
 
 The three men were equally affected by this compression of 
 a crisis into a breath. The words had been put into Gra- 
 ham's mouth, and another age might have told the story as 
 a speaking of the supernatural. In the form dictated by the 
 circumstances, the perception which had been guiding him 
 for years was almost as revealing to Graham as to Lyon and 
 Halleck. The judgment of neither was at once changed by 
 it. On the contrary, its first effect on each was to confirm 
 him in the position he was trying to maintain. Sharpness of 
 outline, if not depth of insight, had been added to the view of 
 each. The time needed for the back-spring from the strain 
 of the moment was filled with readjustment of vision to the 
 altered outlook. 
 
 When Graham spoke again, it was in the emotionless and 
 decisive tone of ordinary office affairs. "Our whole wise- 
 
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 acrely last-century literature on the calculus of capitalistic in- 
 comes is as sophistical from the start as if it had been dis- 
 quisitions to prove the moral harmonies of winnings from 
 loaded dice. Our business routine conceals this vitiating ele- 
 ment in our economic system in the mass of details that are 
 entirely rational. When I pay six cents for the dollar I bor- 
 row at the cashier's window, the service the bank does me is 
 in so many ways like the service of the grocer who sells me a 
 dollar's worth of sugar, that it would be wanting something 
 for nothing if I quarreled with paying a profit to either. If 
 we were all attending strictly to fair exchange of services with 
 our fellow men, and had no ways of collecting for services 
 not rendered, there would be as little to go on in fighting the 
 profits in the one case as in the other. The six cents which I 
 pay to the banker under the name 'interest,' total up mostly 
 from items that would have to be covered in any solvent sys- 
 tem of doing business that could ever be invented. First is 
 the fair wage to the banker for his labor. Then there are all 
 the necessary expenses of doing the business of keeping money 
 in stock for the use of worker's who haven't it in stock. Then, 
 besides other items, there is insurance on the risk the banker 
 takes of not getting his money back, in spite of the big secur- 
 ity system which business and law maintain. I am quite will- 
 ing to admit that the six cents I pay for a particular dollar 
 may be no more than enough to cover all these items in that 
 transaction. What I am pointing out is that our capitalistic 
 theory permits and encourages the loading of that interest 
 charge with an unearned bonus to the owner of the money, 
 simply and solely because he is the owner. More than this, 
 the ways of collecting this charge, and others that look like 
 it but are really raised counterfeits of it, are so many and so 
 complicated, that the banker's fair compensation may be 
 exceeded over and over again, by levies which property is able 
 to make on production, on account of the fictitious merits 
 which the capitalistic metaphysics credits to capital. Wage 
 and cost of the service are the only proper fixed charges for 
 economic goods, whether supplied by landlord, capitalist, 
 manager or laborer. Capitalistic inflation of the rent, inter- 
 est, profit, and salary elements of distribution, in excess of 
 the price necessary to cover these charges, is the only an- 
 archism which modern society has seriously to fear. There 
 is no compensating social function to which this graft cor- 
 
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 responds. Capitalism standing by Have in forcing hold-up 
 money from Have-not, is the most misanthropic enemy left 
 in the path of socialization." 
 
 In spite of the extensions which the talk was giving to his 
 abstract theory, the unavailable quality of these refinements 
 loomed up to Lyon at this moment more than ever. He was 
 not disingenuous, but merely practical, when he again ap- 
 pealed from speculation to common sense in the unshaken ulti- 
 matum : — "Well now, Mr. Graham, bring this thing right 
 down to application. Honestly, supposing every capitalist in 
 the world should paste your proposition in his hat, and on his 
 office door, tomorrow morning. What earthly chance is there 
 that swapping one metaphysic for another could make the 
 slightest impression on the ways in which we've always got 
 to do business?" 
 
 "That is the very least of my troubles," was Graham's quick 
 rejoinder; and something in his manner forbade suspicion 
 that he was either disregarding facts or falsifying their indi- 
 cations. The curl of his lip showed that he had discounted 
 Lyon's sort of incredulity ; but his words showed plainer that 
 he was not deluding himself about the lapse of time to be 
 reckoned with before dividends could be expected from in- 
 vestments in moral principle. "So far as I know, it has been 
 rather the rule than the exception for the social principles 
 that we now regard as settled to drag out a period that looked 
 like still-birth, after the date which History selects as mark- 
 ing their accession. The case of English constitutionalism is 
 the whole thing in a nutshell. In outward appearance things 
 went on in pretty much the same old way for two or three 
 hundred years after Runnymede; yet the historians tell us 
 that Magna Charta marks the great divide between the regime 
 of kings over the law and kings under the law. To the dis- 
 passionate observer at our distance nothing worth getting 
 very excited about, one way or the other, seems to be involved 
 in letting the word 'Autocrat' stand in the Eussian constitu- 
 tion or in running a pen through it. But the Douma knows, 
 and the Czar knows, and the Czarocrats know that a constitu- 
 tion with the word 'Autocrat' left out would be the Magna 
 Charta of Russian liberties. Neither the unsocial spirit nor 
 the social machinery of capitalism would disappear if we 
 should serve notice tomorrow that capital's term of office had 
 expired, and that human interests would henceforth admin- 
 
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 ister economic and political affairs. Suppose nobody in our 
 day cashed in anything on the readjustment. Suppose peo- 
 
 Kle would have to wait for returns as long as they did after 
 lagna Charta or the Cross. Do you want seriously to set up 
 the contention, Mr. Lyon, that it is not worth bothering about 
 whether a subversive principle or its opposite sets the pace for 
 the society we belong to?" 
 
 The prospects along this line did not flatter Lyon, and he 
 shifted to another question. "Has one of these great moral 
 principles ever been known to ride into power on the back 
 of such attenuated esoteric abstractions as we have been dis- 
 cussing?" 
 
 "Don't deceive yourself on that score either, Mr. Lyon," 
 countered Graham instantly. "The minutes contain no rec- 
 ord of anything passing from mouth to mouth faster or far- 
 ther since the world began, than knowledge of the miswork- 
 ings of capitalism among the plain people. They don't have 
 to twist their minds around theorists' ways of telling it. They 
 know the facts; and their instincts are growing truer every 
 day about the sort of leadership that fits the facts. It isn't a 
 question any longer whether the majority can be roused 
 against capitalism. The question is how to keep them from 
 being too much aroused, and by the wrong people. The 
 straight line has never been the path of society on any long 
 route, and it wouldn't pay to waste regrets over the unlikeli- 
 hood of an exception in progress from capitalism to hu- 
 manism. The costs of all kinds will be kept down though, 
 and the readjustment will get into running order with least 
 loss of time, the sooner men whom capitalism has trained to 
 manage large affaiis sign up with the policy of the future and 
 give it their loyal service. 
 
 "But before I get to that," outlined Graham, "I have one 
 more specification in the case against capitalism. It is con- 
 nected in a way with the two chief counts that I have argued, 
 but it goes on its own merits, and does not stand or fall with 
 the others. In a word, a programme of economic distribu- 
 tion in which capitalistic interests decide contested claims be- 
 tween themselves and service interests, may be tolerated as a 
 transition expedient. As a principle and a system it is 
 damnaVjle. 
 
 "The world's wage-earners are today in the situation a 
 farmer would be in if a manufacturer of farm implements 
 
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 had the legal right to decide how much of the annual crop 
 should be invested in his goods. The interest of the farmer 
 is to invest his surplus so as to do the most for the comfort 
 and happiness of his family. The interest of the manufac- 
 turer is to get as much as possible of the crop as dividends on 
 his capital. If the farmer is free to act for his own interests, 
 he may make foolish investments, but in the end he will 
 probably look out for his family better than he would if the 
 manufacturer were free to make him turn his whole surplus 
 into machinery, regardless of the comfort of his family. The 
 advantage of capital in the capitalistic system tends to become 
 a strangle-hold of the something-for-nothing parties in dis- 
 tribution, upon all the other claimants to a share in the out- 
 put." 
 
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 XXIII 
 THE DOVE OF PEACE 
 
 "Each in his way was suffering for peace. Neither could 
 quite believe that the apparently unattainable was within 
 such easy grasp. Each feared to trust his own senses 
 that he was not being played upon by some spiteful 
 illusion." 
 
 IN spite of his previous qualifications, Graham seemed to 
 have exposed a weakness at last, and Lyon was on him like 
 a ferret : — "Do you mean that the men who hustle around and 
 find new places to use capital, and make plans so that the in- 
 vestment will be secure, and give the people with a hundred 
 dollars apiece a chance to put their money where it will be 
 both safe and profitable, and carry on the business so that it 
 will yield returns — do you mean to say that such men as that 
 deserve nothing for their work?" 
 
 "That is precisely the reverse of what I mean to say, and 
 already have said," assured Graham ; and although he could 
 not see how Lyon found any such implication in his latest 
 remark, he was glad to be called on for the repetition. "In 
 the freest and justest society I can imagine, there would be a 
 constant demand, with good pay, for just that type of men. 
 More than that, they would have a fair chance to bargain 
 with the promoter, so that his work would not get more than 
 its fair wage at their expense. But one of the things to be pro- 
 vided for, before financier or organizer is settled in his place, 
 must be that all their fellow workers shall collect the full 
 worth of their work ; so that they, and not somebody else, shall 
 have the decision whether surplus shall be capitalized at all, 
 or consumed in raising their standard of life ; and if it is to 
 be capitalized, the producers of it must be consulted about in- 
 vestments to be made with their own surplus. Every man that 
 joins in making nature productive, or people happy, whether 
 he hoes cotton, or assembles capital or composes music, de- 
 serves his pay for his work. But that is all wage. It isn't in- 
 terest nor profits in the capitalistic sense. And I am not pre- 
 tending to lay down a rule about the scale of wages, as be- 
 tween the man with the hoe and the man with the hoard. I 
 
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 am denouncing a system of book-keeping that credits to in- 
 come what belongs to expense. As to a scale of incomes, I 
 would venture the guess that from a thousand dollars a year 
 up to the salary of the President of the United States would 
 fairly represent the range between the service value of the 
 man that might be taken as the labor unit, and that of the 
 most efficient man in the process. 
 
 "But the main point is, who shall put the valuation on the 
 different kinds of work? Under our system, within certain 
 limits, of course, capital can fix its own wage and that of labor 
 too ; besides having the power to distribute hand-outs by the 
 million that are not wage but rake-off. In a fairly rational 
 system all the people who did the work would be represented 
 in deciding how the product should be distributed." 
 
 "That means," investigated Lyon, "you would give every- 
 body a chance to vote himself a share of the capital of the 
 world?" 
 
 "In effect, yes," promptly assented Graham. 
 
 "In other words, you would cure what you call 'capitalism' 
 by inoculating everybody with the disease?" 
 
 "If the world couldn't produce more than two or three 
 drops of alcohol per capita," Graham conceded cheerfully, "I 
 suppose its pro rata consumption as flavoring extract might 
 abolish alcoholism ! But seriously, you can't afford to throw 
 dust in the air by jumbling the distinction I've been making 
 all along between capital and capitalism. You can't make it 
 too strong for me that civilized men need capital as much as 
 they need land. Capital in itself, and humanly used, is an 
 unmixed good. Capitalism is an inhuman use of capital. 
 Capitalism has turned capital into a gigantic beast of prey 
 that grows by what it feeds on ; while the actual workers have 
 to go without the food it consumes." 
 
 In spite of his interest in the speculative side of the argu- 
 ment, Lyon's impatience was again asserting itself. He was 
 summing up the lack of practical proposals in Graham's talk, 
 as confirmation of the Company's ultimatum that theories are 
 not to be taken seriously till a practicable way of applying 
 them is invented. He thought it was time to bring up his an- 
 nounced reliance for defense. "But you have had a free 
 hand all the evening, Mr. Graham, to conduct the case in your 
 own way, and you haven't come down near enough for your 
 drag ropes to touch the earth with anything that had the re- 
 
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 motest resemblance to a practical proposition. Don't you 
 know that you haven't come within striking distance of my 
 original position that your whole case is air-castles and not 
 business?" 
 
 Quite as disconcerting to Lyon as the substance of Gra- 
 ham's argument, was just the faintest trace of conscious and 
 playful superiority in his way of handling the opposition. 
 Instead of appearing surprised or baffled, he received every- 
 thing which he took as strictly candid on Lyon's part with 
 the patronizing confidence of the kindly pedagogue who puts 
 himself in his pupils' place, and gauges his answers to the 
 liberal reflection, "Those things puzzled me too at their stage 
 of my education." Not even this latest challenge turned Gra- 
 ham from his general plan, which he had varied only in de- 
 tail. His answer, therefore, again seemed at first evasive: — 
 
 "If I asked the Avery Company to throw all its power-gen- 
 erators into the junk-heap, and buy substitutes of my make, 
 wouldn't it first order its experts to spend all the time neces- 
 sary testing the principles on which my generator was con- 
 structed? The fundamental question would be whether I 
 had exploited some mechanical fallacy, or had found a new 
 application of physical laws. 
 
 "Now let me tell you one or two facts, Mr. Lyon. These 
 are not theorizings. They are things I know, although no one 
 has the means yet of stating them with numerical exactness. 
 
 "In the first place, there never has been a great constructive 
 era in the world, a time when men pooled their forces, and 
 moved things, and changed things, that did not get a part of 
 its power from some sort of common faith. It might not have 
 been in logical form in the minds of many men, but it made 
 many men feel alike, and hope alike, and look in the same 
 direction, and march in the line of their outlook. 
 
 "In the second place, since the era of household industries 
 closed, and capitalistic industry began, many things have 
 combined to queer men's fundamental faiths. The men with 
 overgrown genius for accumulation have developed a tech- 
 nique, and their Boswells have lackeyed together a theory to 
 match, which would beautifully account for everything if the 
 world were nothing but a big quartz-mill, and the majority 
 fulfilled their destiny by running it, while a few made off 
 with the product. The rest of mankind have been in a sort 
 
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 of daze, from which here and there groups have emerged with 
 a faith more or less frantically advertised to carry in itself the 
 regeneration of things; but on the whole the quartz-mill 
 theory and practice have been the only consistent ground 
 gainers. 
 
 "In the third place, a faith is diffusing through our genera- 
 tion, and is fast winning all but the men who have sold their 
 souls to things, that the meaning of life is the survival of 
 types that are superior in all 'round values, not merely in 
 brute power. It is faith that the world belongs to the workers, 
 and in proportion to the merit of their work. It is faith that 
 our governments and our businesses, and the one no more nor 
 less than the other, are merely machineries to furnish the 
 means by which this progress of human types may proceed. 
 They are not ends in themselves, entitled to take tribute of 
 human sacrifice for their separate satisfaction. They are 
 worth what they are worth as valets of men devoted to the 
 main pursuit. It is faith that capital, which a pagan faith 
 was binding as the cumulative burden of their servitude upon 
 most men's shoulders, is to be sanctified as a medium of hu- 
 man realization. From the mass of men who have only inar- 
 ticulate feelings of this faith, to the few who speak some of 
 its simplest words, and here and there the ones who have 
 thought it through as a philosophy, it is marshalling modern 
 men in a new migration to a promised land. It is a recon- 
 structing Weltanschauung, as the Germans say; a way of put- 
 ting things together so that they merge into one meaning; a 
 morality of promises in the place of prohibitions; a religion 
 that grows out of life and with life, instead of descending upon 
 life to stunt it. 
 
 "In the fourth place, the Avery strike is a calmly thought- 
 out movement to secure a sample public profession of this 
 faith in application to the practice of a big concern. Incredi- 
 ble as everybody called it in advance, men and means enough 
 have supported this faith to create the situation which exists 
 between us today. Everybody called it an utterly impractical 
 attempt to make working men fight for a proposition that 
 meant nothing tangible to any of them, even if they won out. 
 Here we are, however. You have no doubt whether we have 
 been fighting and are fighting still. And the thing that we 
 are fighting about, as it stands in the mind of the average 
 fighter, may be reduced to this: — 'We demand a definite 
 
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 promise to begin the working out of plans to manage capital 
 in a democratic way.' " 
 
 "In the fifth place, 'the democratic way' is getting a 
 meaning as fertilizing today for economics as it was in the 
 eighteenth century for politics. The plain man hasn't a cut 
 and dried definition of democracy now, but he knows a lot of 
 things that make in its direction, and others that make against 
 it, and it is getting harder to fool him about the sort of thing 
 that shall have his support. I find the working-man calls it 
 the real thing when I tell him that democracy means living 
 together in such a way that everybody gets his full share of 
 backing from everybody else in doing his best to make the 
 most of life ; and in return everybody does all that is in him 
 to deserve his neighbor's support. 
 
 "I don't mean to say that many men have thought their 
 democratic faith much further into detail; but whenever I 
 tell working men what democracy means to me, the response 
 I get convinces me that a humaner faith is tugging harder 
 at the hearts of more people than any of us imagine. 
 
 "So far as I can sense the meaning of the tide of democracy 
 behind this strike, it is a passionate feeling, reaching deep 
 below the mental level where it is a reasoned theory, that our 
 social agreements have right soon got to make a place for three 
 things ; and you needn't look far to find the pressure for each 
 of these three things behind every move the strike has made. 
 
 "First, — and at this transition point out of the capitalistic 
 aberration into sanity practically most important — ^is that the 
 theories and policies of business shall frankly recognize the 
 literal fact of the operative partnership of workers, and shall 
 honestly accept the moral consequence of corresponding 
 right to partnership in control. I said enough at the start 
 about the fact of partnership wherever useful work is going 
 on. This reality of partnership is filling the minds of work- 
 ers, and it will not rest till it refashions their democracy. The 
 fact that every business is an organization of men who are 
 necessary to one another on the operative side, foreordains 
 sooner or later a regime of partnership in information, part- 
 nership in influence, partnership in deciding policies, partner- 
 ship in adjusting principles of distribution; an active part- 
 nership of every worker in giving spiritual meaning to the 
 work ; not merely dumb and menial partnership in physical 
 operation. 
 
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 The second thing grades up in importance with the first, 
 because it is the most necessary means to that end. Because 
 partnership is cooperation in getting a common result; be- 
 cause the working partners in business are not cogs but men ; 
 the man-to-man relations in the economic process imply com- 
 munity of knowledge among the partners about the purposes 
 of the process, the policies pursued in promoting the purposes, 
 and all the reasons why these policies, and not others, are the 
 best. There is no democracy where some of the partners deny 
 to other partners information which affects the interests of all. 
 Everything which it is right to do in a democracy it is right 
 to do in the open. Democracy needs publicity as a disinfec- 
 tant. 
 
 "The third thing is merely the last and largest look we can 
 get at present at the meaning of democracy. What are we 
 driving at? What is our standard of value ? What is the last 
 test we can apply to human programmes, to decide whether 
 they are wise and just or foolish and selfish? 
 
 "This is where it is hardest not to give license to what I 
 confess I regard rather literally as my prophetic office. I 
 don't apologize to any one for my belief that I've made out 
 more reliable landmarks than most men who call themselves 
 practical are willing, on week days at any rate, to be suspected 
 of laying their course by. The papers have reported me so 
 often on this subject, and you have probably kept tab on me 
 so closely, that a reading by title is enough for the present. 
 The democratic faith is substantially a belief in men as a 
 standard of value. It doesn't quarrel with any one who thinks 
 he can see beyond human values, provided that his assump- 
 tion of larger vision does not in practice depress these nearer 
 values. The most worthful things we know are the qualities 
 of men, and their reciprocities with one another on the basis 
 of a rational scale of valuation of the qualities. The goal of 
 democracy is not a point where the human process may be 
 supposed to end. It is an illimitable development through 
 conditions progressively favorable to the production of the 
 highest types and most harmonious assortments of human 
 values. Life is worth while, and all the material conditions 
 and machineries and organizations of life get their scale of 
 importance, just in the ratio that the whole and the parts are 
 adjusted to the supreme purpose of realizing the possibilities 
 
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 of persons. Everything intermediate is means. The end of 
 life is transformation of all other power into personality. 
 
 "It sounds occult, I admit, and a syllable or two of it at a 
 time has to be diluted with much every-day experience to 
 make it reveal itself to the man on the street. I'm giving it 
 to you in its lowest terms, as an algebraic formula of the vital 
 faith that is actually settling itself into position, in the minds 
 of this generation, to mould the democracy of the future. It 
 may strike you as grotesque, but without stopping to argue it, 
 I'm prepared to defend this way of expressing the whole situa- 
 tion : — The eighteenth century democracy of 'Liberty, Equal- 
 ity, Fraternity' was to the twentieth century democracy of 
 'Partnership, Publicity, Personality,' as the boy with the 
 penny whistle to the trumpeter of the troop. 
 
 "Now, Mr. Lyon, I'm prepared to answer for the 'upper 
 ether and angels' food.' While everybody back of the strike 
 has not gone into all this philosophizing of its animus, in 
 some shape or other everybody behind the strike has had in 
 mind the general drift of what I have been saying; and all 
 these shares in the faith of democracy are massing up the 
 momentum of the movement. The spirit of the crusade is 
 packed into the perfectly specific battle cry. Partnership with- 
 out representation is undemocratic. You will have to forget 
 your American history to believe that this is too abstract a 
 proposition for a popular slogan. We do not pretend to know 
 the form or the extent of wage earners' representation that 
 will finally prove to be fair. We have merely started with the 
 irreducible minimum that the unrepresented haven't a square 
 deal. Our demand for an employees' member on the Avery 
 Board means simply that our faith in democracy does not 
 stop with words ; but from this out democracy is prepared to 
 get itself realized in more consistent deeds." 
 
 It is seldom easy in the darkness to take it as a sign of dawn. 
 Since he last spoke, Lyon had been listening to Graham with 
 deepening conflict between sympathy with his ideals and con- 
 viction that practical use of them in ending the strike was 
 impossible. He wanted to be as candid about one side of the 
 case as the other ; but his sense of responsibility held him back, 
 and Graham threw in his ultimate appeal. 
 
 "I didn't come here as a bully, Mr. Lyon, and a conference 
 like this is no place for threats. You have called on me for 
 
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 the practical side of our theories though, and there hasn't been 
 a time since the strike began when the practical side could be 
 stated with more confidence than at this moment. Instead 
 of being at a loss for means of making our campaign effective, 
 fate is taking active operations out of our hands, and fighting 
 our battle to a more decisive finish than we want. Next to los- 
 ing this fight, the worst thing that could happen to us would 
 be for the Avery Company to go to the wall. I can't believe 
 you are worse informed than we are about the New Jersey 
 scheme. I presume you know at least as well as we do that 
 unless you can settle the strike within two weeks the Avery 
 Company might as well wind up its affairs." 
 
 Of course Lyon could admit no knowledge of the kind ; and 
 instead of meeting the hint directly he put in evidence an- 
 other fact, leaving Graham to draw his own inferences, but 
 with the feeling that it would show the hopelessness of further 
 discussion. "Perhaps the Company's estimate of that factor, 
 Mr. Graham, may be inferred from an action of our Board 
 this morning. It took a vote in which it more emphatically 
 reaffirmed what it had already declared a hundred times, that 
 sooner than elect to its membership a man named from the 
 outside, it would sell its machinery as scrap iron, and turn the 
 
 Elant into a roast peanut emporium. If the strikers are really 
 eginning to see that they have some interests in common 
 with the Company, and if they believe the situation is as pre- 
 carious as you assume, the only rational course is a modifica- 
 tion of their demands." 
 
 For an hour Halleck had been scribbling busily on a blot- 
 ting pad, while taking in every shading and modulation of 
 the talk. He had torn off sheet after sheet and shredded them 
 into the waste basket. He had that afternoon found some- 
 thing to work on in a pamphlet containing the terms of a 
 proposition made by English employers to strikers in the ship- 
 yards. The circumstances were so different from those in 
 Chicago that Halleck was handicapped almost as much as he 
 was stimulated by the proposals. While the gloom was clos- 
 ing in on the prospect during the last few minutes, his senses 
 seemed to be quickened in the same ratio. He shook off the 
 encumbrance, and reduced the ideas he had been struggling 
 with to a series of clauses which made a possible meeting 
 ground between the two extremes. He read them a second 
 
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 time, then a third, a fourth and a fifth. They conceded so 
 much, yet reserved so much ; they left with the company all its 
 power, while committing it to a profession of faith and a 
 practical policy which affirmed all the principles for which 
 the strikers contended ; they did not disturb the company in 
 its one absolute refusal, while they granted all that the strik- 
 ers had claimed as essential in the meaning of the one impos- 
 sible item — all in all they were so balanced, yet so construc- 
 tive, that Halleck was obliged to set the brakes on his own 
 assurance. He did not see how either party could afford to 
 reject the solution ; yet it almost passed belief that an adjust- 
 ment so simple could end such a mighty conflict. 
 
 He had reached this eager state just as Lyon and Graham 
 were dropping into moody contemplation of their nullifying 
 result. They had been so centered upon their task that Hal- 
 leck was left outside their range of attention. Each had an 
 obscure feeling that it was a call to begin life over again, after 
 writing off the irreparable, when he reappeared to them with 
 the manner of completing the last thing said, instead of in- 
 troducing a wholly unexpected innovation. "Listen to this!" 
 and he read : — 
 
 Memorandum of a Basis of Agreement 
 
 Between 
 
 the Avery Company and its Employees. 
 
 1. The Company acknowledges the principle that work in its employ 
 creates an equity in the business. 
 
 2. Since no more exact way to calculate this equity has been dis- 
 covered than the adjustment secured by established business practices, 
 the Company holds that the only practical method of giving effect to 
 Clause 1, is cooperation between the Company and its employees in dis- 
 covering how the operations of the Company may more closely apply 
 the aforesaid principle. 
 
 3. To that end the Company agrees to designate a standing com- 
 mittee of conference, to act with a similar committee of the employees, 
 in taking into consideration all the affairs of the Company, particu- 
 larly everything affecting the interests of the employees, and from time 
 to time to propose modifications of the general policies of the Company, 
 whenever the conferees are able to unite on recommendations which 
 in their judgment would tend better to protect all the interests con- 
 cerned. 
 
 4. The Company agrees to accept any method, satisfactory to the 
 employees, of constituting the membership of the employees' committee; 
 provided only that all such members shall be on the pay roll of the 
 Company. 
 
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5. The Company agrees to instruct its committee to cobperate with 
 the employees' committee in working out specifications of the kinds of 
 information about the affairs of the Company which shall be put at 
 the disposal of the committee, together with the rules which shall gov- 
 ern access of the committee to this information, and its transmission to 
 the body of employees. 
 
 6. The Company agrees in good faith to cooperate with the employees 
 in carrying out the spirit of this agreement, by adoption of details 
 which experience may from time to time show to be necessary in order 
 to give it full effect. 
 
 7. As rapidly as the different departments can employ their full 
 force, the Company agrees to restore all its employees to the places 
 which they held before the strike. Preference in reinstatement will be 
 in accordance with length of previous service. 
 
 8. The Company agrees to put its employees as far as possible in 
 possession of the tenements which they occupied before the strike. If 
 this is not feasible, the Company will extend its building operations so 
 as to provide rents for all employees who desire to occupy the Company's 
 tenements. 
 
 9. The employees agree to return to work as soon as these terms 
 have been accepted by the Company and by the strike organization. 
 
 10. The employees agree, upon returning to work, to sign individual 
 contracts not to join in a strike against the Company for a term 
 of . 
 
 11. The employees agree to join in constituting and controlling an 
 employees' committee, as provided for in Clauses 3 and 4, and to make 
 that committee their medium of communication with the Company. 
 
 It was SO obvious that it was incredible ! Virtually the same 
 reaction was in Lyon's mind and in Graham's. "If a thing 
 so plausible does not conceal some fatal flaw, how could we 
 have kept up this frightful fight so long before finding it out?" 
 The detective glances that the three men interchanged were 
 both tragic and pathetic. Each in his way was suffering for 
 peace. Neither could quite believe that the apparently unat^ 
 tainable was within such easy grasp. Each feared to trust 
 his own senses that he was not oeing played upon by some 
 spiteful illusion. 
 
 After a space of oppressive blankness, Lyon took up the 
 inquest: — "Read it again, Halleck, and slow!" 
 
 Halleck spaced off the words, stopping at the end of each 
 clause for it to register its total effect. There was no comment 
 till he had finished; and the long pause when he was done 
 proved that the document at least stood the test as something 
 that must be considered. 
 
 Lyon expressed the first opinion: — "If anything can be 
 counted on more certainly than a business man's contempt 
 
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 for generalities, it is his suspicion of them. Pocketing a loss 
 of almost any definite amount is easier for him than signing his 
 name to a blanket clause like the first." 
 
 "But what harm can it do," defended Halleck, "when no 
 rights whatever are surrendered by it, except license to re- 
 fuse to hear advice?" 
 
 "Of course," Graham submitted, "that first clause is the 
 meat of the matter. In form, it isn't what we have fought for. 
 In substance it is all we demand. At the same time it leaves 
 the Company standing pat on its original refusal, while it 
 yields everything that we expected from the thing refused." 
 
 Then the sitting passed into executive session before put- 
 ting the memorandum on its final passage. Halleck's word- 
 ing was not changed by the inspection, but the three men had 
 to face the fact that they were after all not the court of last 
 resort. When they had done their work, Graham simply 
 recorded his personal decision : — "I am not a Czar. My opin- 
 ion will go a good way with our organization, but it may be 
 overruled. I promise you, however, gentlemen, that so far 
 as my influence goes it shall be exerted in favor of settlement 
 on these terms." 
 
 Lyon was equally explicit: "It is needless to say that for 
 more than one reason I have no way to affect the action of the 
 Company except by advice. I believe it would be on the whole 
 an advantage for business if it could put itself on this 
 plane. In my judgment it would be perfectly safe and feasi- 
 ble for our Company to make this experiment, but I can make 
 no predictions about its adoption. I shall advocate it, how- 
 ever, to the best of my ability with the directors." 
 
 It was long after midnight when Halleck locked the door 
 of the deserted resort behind the fagged debaters. They took 
 the same car for a short distance. Graham had hardly taken 
 leave at his transfer point when Lyon was aware of a change 
 in Halleck. His quicker breathing, his pallor, his evidently 
 constrained composure, were symptoms that Lyon had never 
 seen in him before. He was alert in an instant. There was 
 no one near to listen, but Halleck spoke in a rapid husky 
 whisper. "The best service you can do a man sometinies, 
 Logan, is to give him a rest from his own troubles by loading 
 him with yours. I've put this off too long. Perhaps you and 
 the rest of the town know better than I do what came to me 
 
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 in full only a few days ago. I have struggled against my 
 better judgment, and have hoped to avoid extremes. I wanted 
 to rescue my wife from herself, and I wanted to avoid throw- 
 ing a feather's weight of my own affairs against my possible 
 power to help bring good out of the evil in this labor situation. 
 Since Bobbie was born, I have not been Mrs. Halleck's hus- 
 band, but her guardian ; and it turns out a miserably unsuc- 
 cessful one. The end has come. What remains must be seen 
 through other eyes than mine. I must have your help and 
 Barclay's. Perhaps I may be able to do without you till you 
 can give me some time that doesn't belong to the Company. 
 Barclay knows things that must have their weight. I have 
 written him he must be ready to oome at any moment. Un- 
 less something new happens I can let the time depend on 
 you." 
 
 After giving Lyon's hand a grip that he felt till the next 
 shock came, Halleck caught a car headed in a diverging 
 direction. 
 
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 XXIV 
 THE DEGENERATE 
 
 "The one credit to the orgy was a currish sense of 
 accountability." 
 
 BUCK LYON had been running strictly true to form. 
 Judicious handling by relays of experienced coaches 
 had at last landed him among the certificate holders of the 
 most select forcing establishment for cub intellects in the city. 
 
 With fewer flunks and conditions, he had meanwhile passed 
 the entrance examinations of several other types of institu- 
 tions, whose hall-mark had left a much deeper impress on his 
 propensities. 
 
 Buck's Chief of Staff was Kid Granniss. 
 
 This young gentleman had made Buck's acquaintance at 
 an inter-school track meet. For reasons not ascertained, he 
 had found it convenient to follow up the opening. A trial 
 trip or so put the two youths on rather easy terms, and latent 
 affinities rapidly ripened intimacy into inseparability. 
 
 The Kid was a friend of the trainer of the Pan-University 
 School team. The precocity and affluence of his jewelry ex- 
 hibit were sign and seal of his prowess in the junior heavy- 
 weight class. 
 
 The advent of the Kid occurred at a peculiarly convenient 
 juncture in Buck's affairs. 
 
 The juice had been squeezed out of all the innocent fruit 
 in sight, and Buck was casting about for something with a 
 livelier flavor. 
 
 The concurrent conditions were also remarkably pro- 
 pitious. 
 
 Buck's mother had discovered that his devotion to study 
 had been excessive for one of his tender years. If she had 
 been fully advised of his frequent associations and employ- 
 ments, between the time of locking himself into his room at 
 night and letting himself into the house through a rear door 
 at the approach of morning, her correlation of antecedents 
 and consequents might have been somewhat disarranged. 
 Nothing so untoward had cast doubt, however, upon the 
 inerrancy of her maternal affections. 
 
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THE DEGENERATE 
 
 The fashionable specialist who had lately displaced the fam- 
 ily physician in Mrs. Lyon's councils had never been obliged 
 to undergo treatment for moral farsightedness ; but the vogue 
 of that astute auxiliary was visible testimony that he had 
 qualified as an accomplished utilitarian within the shorter cir- 
 cuits. His impressiveness was accentuated by the profound 
 and protracted consideration through which he arrived at the 
 conclusion that he must prescribe precisely what he had seen 
 at the start his patients were bound to have. 
 
 The doctor's ratification of Mrs. Lyon's diagnosis was to be 
 expected from a scientific man of his rare good sense. "A 
 young fellow of his spirit mustn't be allowed to go to the limit 
 of his ambition. He will overhaul the slow coaches soon 
 enough. Give him a year in the pasture. Plenty of out- 
 doors. No fret about a harness. Let him kick up his heels all 
 he pleases. He will be the better for it in the end if his body 
 has a turn, after this long pull at the books." 
 
 While the family arrangement did not include formal 
 adoption of The Kid as companion to the delicate scion, and 
 keeper of his conscience ; while it must even be admitted that, 
 until his variation of Pilgrim's Progress was relatively far ad- 
 vanced, Buck neglected mention of his mentor at home ; nat- 
 ural selection took care of that detail, including the usual pro- 
 visions of nature for guarding against premature exposure of 
 her more subtile workings. 
 
 In the language of less circuitous and inconsequent judg- 
 ment than Mrs. Lyon's fond-motherly type of opinion, Buck 
 was turned loose on the town. In the parental version, he 
 was giving his body a chance to get even with his brain. The 
 unfeeling vulgarity of the street simply placed here and there 
 a bet on the Lyons' chances in the familiar game ; "Given a 
 boy with nothing to do, with plenty of money, and all his 
 time to do it in, and the steering in proper hands, how long 
 will it take to find the answer?" 
 
 Promotion through the early grades of restaurant, and pool 
 room and theatre wisdom had been rapid and eventless. It 
 had been more a mass process than an individual venture; 
 but it had served to sift out a half dozen likely candidates 
 for faster company. 
 
 It was at this auspicious moment that Buck and The Kid 
 discovered each other. 
 
 The latter probably numbered in his collection of trophies 
 
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 no honor medals in the methodology of education ; but if our 
 present purpose permitted digression to a remotely relevant 
 theme, we might show that this was an evidence of the clan- 
 nishness of institutions. Kid Granniss needed no arbitrary at- 
 testation of attainments nor of regularity. He respired in- 
 terest-psychology. He exuded inductive pedagogy. He ex- 
 uberated in progressive experience. He had not been led 
 astray by the mutation theory. He believed in variation by 
 continuity. He seemed never to lack resources for daily 
 change of programme ; but no more did he fall into the bad 
 management of setting the date of a number before appetite 
 for that particular type of offering had been developed, or 
 after the demand had appeared for a more highly seasoned 
 bill of fare. 
 
 Mrs. Lyon did not believe in nagging a boy. She wanted 
 her son to be let alone, and to form his own character. She 
 was sure a boy must be independent, in order to learn re- 
 sponsibility and self-control. Of course she expected Chester 
 to confide in her ; but the fact that his tastes tended from the 
 beginning in lines which even his mother's partiality could 
 not have approved, early gave a color of romance to his ac- 
 counts of himself; and this embellishment necessarily grew 
 more and more imaginative as the action advanced. 
 
 It was also a matter of curious speculation to Mrs. Lyon that 
 Chester was so little attracted to any of the young ladies of 
 his own age in her circle of acquaintance. The "proms" and 
 "informals" that he talked about seldom drew from lists of 
 young women which she could very precisely verify ; but so far 
 as she could infer from guarded allusions by the mothers of 
 some of his boy friends, Chester was not singular in this re- 
 spect. Mrs. Lyon was too tactful to pry into the matter ; and es- 
 pecially after an inadvertent reference to it had drawn from 
 the sensitive young man the annoyed exclamation, "All those 
 girls with the tabby-cat attachments make me weary ! What's 
 the fun of girls anyway, if they've always got to be practic- 
 ing their Sunday School lessons!" From this time, Mrs. 
 Lyon leaned towards the view that refined society had be- 
 come too artificial, and had needlessly restricted young peo- 
 ple's freedom. 
 
 The second house maid might have thrown some light upon 
 the subject ; but to do so would hardly have been for her in- 
 terest, as she saw it. That discreet young person ordered her 
 
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 conduct toward Mrs. Lyon's son with a reserve at certain 
 points in notable contrast with her responsiveness, and even 
 complaisance, in other matters usually regarded as more vital. 
 On none of the occasions for instance when she had engaged 
 in conversation with the young man of the family, had she 
 given him reason to suppose that she was advised of the ex- 
 istence of The Kid, still less that they had a mutual under- 
 standing. Under all the circumstances, it was quite out of the 
 question that any member of the household should have ob- 
 served a coincidence between her application for employment 
 at the Lyon homestead and Buck's formation, a few weeks 
 previous, of an offensive and defensive alliance with the em- 
 bryo pugilist. 
 
 It would be fruitless to inquire how much information, and 
 of what sort, Mrs. Lyon would have found necessary before 
 deciding upon a change of policy toward her son. She had, 
 for example, never seen him in company with this same 
 young woman, during runs of an hour or two from the city. 
 Data not in Mrs. Lyon's possession would certainly have been 
 requisite to satisfy her of the purposes which may have ac- 
 counted for their tarrying at certain points during these trips. 
 It would accordingly be idle to conjecture what her theory 
 might have been of the nature of Chester's interest in the 
 servants. 
 
 Buck's fresh air regimen was not carried to the extreme of 
 unintermittent exposure to the caprices of climate. Indeed, 
 there were intervals of considerable duration when the treat- 
 ment was relaxed by recourse to a variously artificialized at- 
 mosphere. The Kid was even able to suggest a succession of 
 stimulating occupations for which interiors, and indeed some- 
 what isolated and retired apartments were advisable. Cer- 
 tain of these pursuits were most absorbing when confined to 
 select companies of men, preferably of a type so constituted 
 as to find protracted satisfaction in conferring sums of money, 
 without visible return, upon receptive associates. 
 
 Others of these occasions illustrated the resources of mixed 
 society. Here again, Mrs. Lyon might have found material 
 for enlargement of her views upon the wisdom and the un- 
 wisdom of social conventions. She would have observed that 
 Chester seemed more unconstrained than in the surroundings 
 with which she was familiar. At the same time, there would 
 have been food for reflection in the fact that the young ladies 
 
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 who graced these companies, and with whom Chester's man- 
 ner did not lack animation, had quite generally discontinued 
 the use of Pasteurized milk as a favorite beverage ; while their 
 chaperons were either preoccupied elsewhere, or were con- 
 spicuously efficient in removing accidental barriers to en- 
 joyment. 
 
 No slight condiment to Buck's relish of his friend was The 
 Kid's easy-going acquaintance with the leading spirits in these 
 garish social strata. It is one thing to see the town from the 
 cigarette seats in the rubber-neck wagon, and quite a dif- 
 ferent thing to know you would be welcomed by the leading 
 people, at any hour of the day or night, without an invita- 
 tion. In a remarkably short time The Kid's progressive 
 method had brought Buck within the lure of the dizzy ambi- 
 tion to carry a pass-key to the sporting world, and to be every- 
 where on terms of first-name familiarity with the main flash. 
 
 Since it had never been required of Buck that he should toil 
 or spin in order to be fed and clothed, it did not occur to him 
 that there was anything demanding inquiry in the apparent 
 amplitude of The' Kid's revenues. It did not appear that he 
 had parents who might, like Buck's, have felt it a duty and a 
 privilege to furnish an income commensurate with his dig- 
 nity. Neither the Probate Court nor the Board of Equaliza- 
 tion had ever been called upon to take cognizance of his es- 
 tate. If Buck's attention had ever been arrested by the intri- 
 cate subject of commissions, invidious interpretation of The 
 Kid's intimacies with the hierarchy of managers might have 
 been suggested. The detail that the number joining their 
 various expeditions was never large enough to evoke The 
 Kid's protest, so long as Buck did not object, might have been 
 worth consideration. The Kid's fastidiousness in matters of 
 tailoring and haberdashery, and his solicitude that the gang 
 should not be misinformed about the perfectly correct sources 
 of these and other supplies, might have come under cruel 
 suspicion. None of these interferences with the even tenor of 
 their intercourse occurred however ; and The Kid's vocation 
 as leader of leisure and fashion was accepted with a piety 
 which presaged conservative adherence to the orthodoxy of 
 the gospel of privilege. 
 
 But certain seeming reversions presently became prominent 
 in the tastes and occupations of the forceful group of which 
 Buck and The Kid were important members. The means 
 
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 were not at Mrs. Lyon's disposal, to be sure, to explain the 
 new phenomena as withdrawals, or recoveries. To her mind, 
 so far as she was informed of the change at all, the boys were 
 merely becoming interested in a new group of the same sort 
 of young women, respectable of course, but not of the best 
 families, who had attracted them while they were in prep 
 school. 
 
 Others, not specialists in the psychology of degeneracy, if 
 put in possession of the precise facts, might have inferred that 
 association with certain feminine types had at last produced 
 the normal reaction, and that the boys were returning to less 
 equivocal interests. 
 
 At all events the gang had turned its ingenuity to cultiva- 
 tion of acquaintances among the girls in the Lakeside High 
 School. 
 
 Between Buck and the reputed "beauty of the school," Liz- 
 zie Lawton, there had been what was known in school gossip 
 as a "crush" at first sight. 
 
 Lizzie's parents had never been ashamed to be called Cas- 
 sidy, and their modest home in South Halsted Street was not 
 to be despised ; but their oldest daughter's husband had a se- 
 lect grocery trade in Kenwood, and as the family ambitions be- 
 gan to centre around Lizzie, it was decided that she would 
 have a better chance to make the most of herself if she lived 
 with her sister while she was in the High School, and adopted 
 her more genteel name. 
 
 Lizzie Lawton was a fair sample of that product of which 
 the present American blend is so prolific and so prodigal — 
 abounding in body, alert of mind, and vibrant with a thou- 
 sand expectations. Life in all its capacities was pulsing in 
 her, and a little of the sound and sight of others' living had 
 begun to stir her senses and her fancy. Mystery, romance, 
 adventure, admiration, offerings, yes love! and power! were 
 in the world. They were not far away ! They might come 
 to her as well as to other girls ! Each curiosity and eagerness 
 of woman expectant was tuned to the pitch of a vital wave. 
 
 Woman's talisman, as Lizzie made it out, was ability to at- 
 tract men. There was nothing ignoble in the secret, as she 
 understood it. Beauty, of course ; and she was not vain of her 
 beauty. She was just frankly conscious of it, and confident. 
 Wit, she thought, and good temper, and no hysterics, and 
 liking for helping other people have a good time — these must 
 
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 be the things that make the popular girl, and she was glad 
 she seemed to have been bom with them. She was pure 
 minded, generous, affectionate, ready — but so hungrily un- 
 satisfied ! 
 
 Nothing in Lizzie Lawton's most fervid dreams had pic- 
 tured quite as much in the actual world, and for her own self, 
 as appeared to her in Buck Lyon. The family reputation 
 alone would have intoxicated a steadier head ; but Lizzie saw 
 besides in Buck himself everything strong and manly that 
 reading and imagination had made her admire. More than 
 that, he was not an empty handed hero. He came with no 
 end of ability to change school-girl stupidity in a moment into 
 the whirl which she mistook for real life. 
 
 The acquaintance was only two or three weeks old, but 
 youth is time high-geared. In those weeks the gang had 
 piloted an equal number of High School girls through degrees 
 of initiation into world-wisdom for which the boys uncour- 
 iered had required almost as many years. Yet from the pres- 
 ent view-point of the gang, the girls had only completed the 
 sort of rushing stunts that had prepared the way for The Kid's 
 appearance. 
 
 It had been a supper and a box-party. As the curtain fell, 
 and the start was made toward the exit. Buck pulled his lieu- 
 tenant back behind the portiere, and brusquely whispered the 
 directions : — "Chase yourself now, Kid, and call off the rest, 
 I'm taking her over to Madam's. She thinks the actorines 
 go there to amuse themselves after the play. Watch me find 
 out how fast she warms up. Come 'round in an hour or so 
 if you want to. Ta-ta !" 
 
 Buck had his mother's Brougham a block away, and The 
 Kid made it easy for him to give the party the slip and start 
 on the rest of his programme. As they stepped out after a 
 short drive, Buck instructed the coachman, "Pull in at Sat- 
 terlee's, John. I'll 'phone over." 
 
 Next to the groping urgings of blindfolded nature, Buck's 
 busiest accomplice in misleading Lizzie Lawton was her own 
 sensitiveness to the shame of being thought "slow." This 
 was her one morbidness — the fear of betraying some sort of 
 ignorance that men would call unsophisticated. She was not 
 a bad girl. She was finely proud and audacious and femi- 
 nine. Her love of Buck was as blameless as love can ever be 
 
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 when bewildered and bedazzled by lavishings and protesta- 
 tions which it cannot distinguish from love as honest as itself. 
 
 Although she suspected nothing of the sort, these few weeks 
 had been for Lizzie Lawton an almost continuous rehearsal 
 of the prologue to the drama of The Fall. Unless we lodge 
 some of our arbitrary theorizings in her typical healthy de- 
 velopment, she had never been tempted until she found that 
 she wanted everything that Buck wanted. Then, if she only 
 knew ! If there were some one she could a.sk 1 Not her mother, 
 for she wouldn't understand, and hardly more her sister. 
 Were those girls on the Avenue ever in her place? And what 
 did they do? But always when Buck wanted most, and her 
 heart responded most, a preventing shadow had drawn be- 
 tween him and her begun consents. 
 
 Lizzie's mettlesome ambition to be classed by the boys, and 
 especially by Buck, as a "good fellow" was to have its most 
 cynical test in this House of Dread. She wished Buck had 
 not wanted to take her there; but somebody went there, of 
 course, and Buck met other girls there, and she would show 
 less nerve than they if she didn't go. 
 
 The house was one of those landmarks of the period imme- 
 diately following the fire which the wave of expansion had 
 meanwhile left in the belt of desolation between the centre 
 and the newer residence districts. It had been the mansion of 
 a prominent citizen. Space was its chief distinction; yet it 
 had put out extensions rearward since it had become some- 
 thing different from a family residence. 
 
 It was a new experience to Lizzie to be obliged to pretend 
 interest in adventure. Her light-heartedness had never failed 
 her before, but there was nothing natural now in her struggle 
 to appear pleased and unconcerned. 
 
 Her instincts enlightened her instantly that there was noth- 
 ing in the place to which anything healthy could respond. 
 The big, high rooms, with the heavy, stuffy hangings, the dim 
 lights, the smoke-laden air, were suffocating. She had a feel- 
 ing that invisible lurkings and prowlings were all around 
 her. The women who seemed to belong there, and whose 
 evident efforts to attract the men as fast as they appeared 
 were apparently more ingenious than successful, were of a 
 sort that Lizzie had never noticed before. If they were ac- 
 tresses, their costumes were different from anything she had 
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 to dance; and Lizzie's eye caught flirtings of draperies in- 
 tended to allure partners, but they sent her heart into her 
 throat; and only that untaught maidenly self-esteem which 
 could not risk ridicule suppressed her disgust, and her fear 
 and her longing to escape. 
 
 Buck drew her to a little table conveniently placed for 
 watching the visitors. He ordered mint juleps, and while 
 they were sipping the mixtures which answered to that name, 
 he did his best to offset the first impressions, which he was too 
 wise to misunderstand. He told Lizzie not to be bored by 
 these old-timers. The real push would be coming along soon. 
 He tried to entertain her with fictitious gossip about the people 
 in sight. Lizzie had not connected her alarm with Buck. She 
 had no suspicion of him that might have suggested compari- 
 son with a young panther poising for his first spring at live 
 prey. Yet with every word he spoke her efforts to return gay 
 answers became more forced. 
 
 The smell of musk that oozed through the tobacco fumes 
 was sickening. Ever since she could remember, certainly 
 long before her confirmation, Lizzie had always attended mass 
 with her mother on Sunday. As one of the women in the 
 exposive red robes brushed by, shedding her thick odors, the 
 service and all it meant to Lizzie appeared in hideous trans- 
 formation. The scene was the devil's altar, and these women 
 were censers of the incense of hell ! 
 
 The balancing between horror and vanitjr of sophistication 
 was still undecided, when a florid woman, in wilted evening 
 dress, and bespangled with stones which Lizzie was too agi- 
 tated to suspect, swept up to their table and spoke to Buck as 
 though he had forgotten something which she expected of 
 him. 
 
 "The fancy dancing will begin in a minute on the next 
 floor, Mr. Lyon." 
 
 Lizzie thought nothing could be worse than she had seen. 
 There might be a chance up stairs for a sweet breath ; and peo- 
 ple might really be amusing themselves. Though she would 
 have felt like a captive bird released if Buck had let her as- 
 sume the rest, and had taken her home, she triedmore bravely 
 than ever to conceal from him that she was hesitating. And 
 Buck had no more relentings than a python. When he coiled 
 his arm around her waist, and felt the palpitations ; and when 
 her breath came quicker at every step, as he pressed her 
 
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 closer; all the pity in his parched little heart was licked up 
 into the gloatings he had kindled. 
 
 The scene on the second floor was not only not a relief to 
 Lizzie, but her fluttering senses told her at a glance that it 
 was merely a repetition of the first act below, only noisier and 
 bolder, with some of the people more sated, others more fever- 
 ish and greedy. 
 
 Buck found two chairs and pulling them a little distance 
 from the rest urged Lizzie into one of them, adding assur- 
 ingly, "Hold on to the other one, Lizzie, till I pay the next 
 fiddler." 
 
 The bar-keep in butler's attire busy at the sideboard wasted 
 no time, after he had felt the bill that Buck wadded into his 
 hand while hurrying a few words in a low tone into his ear. 
 Two champagne glasses were placed ; something from a small 
 vial was dropped into one of them, and both were filled with 
 the foaming liquid. 
 
 Returning with the two glasses, and playing on the string 
 that he had never found out of tune. Buck put the treacherous 
 drink as lightly to the girl's lips as though it had been water 
 from the spring. "We're going stale, Lizzie. This'U perk us 
 up a lot, and we'll feel like showing 'em a few fancy steps 
 ourselves." 
 
 Ice cream would have been more welcome to Lizzie; but 
 anything cold and acid promised relief from the hot throb- 
 bing terror. She followed Buck's lead in draining her glass, 
 and in spite of a pungent after-taste for a blessed moment she 
 felt restored to herself. 
 
 Added to the compound which she had drunk before, the 
 heady liquor leaped so quickly into Lizzie's brain that at first 
 it more than verified Buck's prediction. In her excitement 
 Lizzie lost care for the surroundings. Her body seemed so 
 light that motion was easier than rest, but rhythm was neces- 
 sary for balance. Spritishly beckoning Buck, she led him an 
 elfish chase back and forth through the rooms filled with 
 jaded revellers. Her laugh was so careless, and her motion so 
 graceful, that its apparent spirit of happiness roused the dull 
 company; and she set the pace for such a deceptive imitation 
 of an innocent frolic as had not warmed those case-hardened 
 walls since they had harbored real merriment in their do- 
 mestic days. 
 
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 Then another change came. The ecstasy in Lizzie's brain 
 became dizzy and drowsy. She sank limp into a chair. Her 
 head rested heavily on Buck's shoulder. Presently she rose 
 to her feet again, clutching at her throat, gasping, trying to 
 resist the lethargy, then throwing herself into Buck's arms 
 and pleading for air. 
 
 He led her, almost carried her, along a corridor. They en- 
 tered the first unoccupied room, and the door closed behind 
 them. 
 
 Kid Granniss, with Tom Sears and Bud Owton, had been 
 trying for more than an hour to amuse themselves with the 
 remnant of the soiled collection. The thrumbing and the 
 blare, the vacant laughter and the joyless songs, the repulsive 
 enticings, and the bleary caressings for the first time affected 
 even The Kid like a view of the spectacle from the back of the 
 stage. The other boys were neither so new to these sights nor 
 so calloused that the tawdry marketings could impose upon 
 them in their present state of mind. The night had not only 
 been enlivened by the unusual episode, but it was keeping up 
 everyone's curiosity. The boys easily learned the story, and 
 they were rational enough to be uneasy that the affair had 
 gone so far, and to be anxious about consequences. 
 
 At last Buck appeared, his face showing so ashen against 
 the murky background that, if they could, the boys would 
 have dodged hearing its meaning in words. He motioned 
 them into an alcove, pulled their heads together, and hissed 
 out his confession. "Great God! fellers, she's dead! and 
 hell's to pay !" 
 
 The one credit to the orgy was the birth of a currish sense 
 of accountability. Buck had been so cowed by the effects of 
 his crime that he had not dared to send for help till he was 
 convinced of the worst. Then his instinct of self-preservation 
 threw all his cunning into circuit. He issued his orders like 
 a brigand at bay: "Stand by me. Kid, to quiet Madam. 
 'Phone for John at Satterlee's, Tom, and stay with the horses 
 till he brings her down. Come up with him. Bud ; then all 
 hike before the cops are on !" 
 
 The brief council had hardly closed, before the house had 
 sensed the danger. The jangling noises seemed to have set- 
 tled sullenly into a choke-damp. Lights were turned down, 
 and all the sounds that remained were spooky whispers, and 
 
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 the swish of women's garments, and stealthy dispersals, like 
 the scurryings of guilty ghosts. 
 
 Blank featured, according to the correctest canons of his 
 profession; resolute with almost canine fidelity to its tradi- 
 tion, "Right or wrong, my people 1" John Cassidy stalked 
 through the deserted halls no more stalwart in body than in 
 his contempt for the smudge which his duty called him to 
 enter. He was under the impression that Buck had been 
 taken ill. He charged all to the keeper of the resort. If he 
 had been pretender enough to remove his hat, an unruly 
 contraction of his brows would have betrayed his rugged in- 
 ward revolt against the dubious law that a man may never lay 
 violent hands upon a woman. 
 
 At sight of Buck in the corridor, opposite an open door, 
 Cassidy curbed his surprise, and impassively took the order, 
 interpreted by a gesture pointing into the room, "We must 
 get her to Kenwood quick ;" but as Buck added the address, 
 Cassidy recoiled and staggered as from touch of a live wire. 
 He took a step or two into the room, then turned wild-eyed to 
 Buck, and stood stammering incoherent sounds that he was 
 evidently trying to form into an exclamation. 
 
 "What are you blithering about, John?" demanded Buck, 
 nervously. "This is no time to be womanish. Get busy and 
 have this thing over with in a hurry I" 
 
 Cassidy was trembling as a strong man trembles when there 
 is nothing more to lose, and no way to make a fight with fate. 
 Buck supposed it was cowardice, and he sneered spitefully; 
 but another tract in his moral sense began to function when 
 he felt himself in Cassidy's strangling grasp, shalcen like a 
 puppy by an angered mastiff, and when another dimension 
 of his liability dawned on him through the shrill cry, "It's 
 our Lizzie I It's our Lizzie !" 
 
 Then sound and motion ceased in the stupefied group, as 
 the father released the whimpering culprit and again turned 
 into the room, softly approaching for a nearer look at the 
 rigid face. The seconds took so long in passing that Buck's 
 unchastened impatience conjured the heartless fancy of Cas- 
 sidy petrifying, as he bent over his child. 
 
 With a groan that would have pierced more impenetrable 
 consciences than those in the awed circle, the stricken man 
 fell to his knees, and clutching at the edge of the coverings 
 that had been thrown over the victim, buried his face in them. 
 
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 while convulsive waves coursed through his body, until his 
 turbulent feelings found utterance in the prayer that seemed 
 to be echoed from the depths, "Holy Mother of God! Blessed 
 
 Mary! Pity! Pity! Pity !" 
 
 The last appeal, sustained as inarticulate tone, died away 
 in a hoarse guttural sigh, that was followed by a torrent of 
 sobs. 
 
 If the prayer was answered on the spot, it was in giving 
 back strength for what remained. The grief was so elemental, 
 and so eloquent, that even the unfeeling haste of the on- 
 lookers did not dare to interrupt it. 
 
 When the storm had passed, the mourner raised his head 
 for a moment and scanned the fig-ure before him, as though 
 making sure that he was not waking from an awful dream. 
 Then he rose to his feet and straightening himself stood plan- 
 ning. He seemed to have forgotten that he was not alone. A 
 white covering had been turned back from the bed. Gently 
 swathing the form of his child in it, and gathering the bur- 
 den in his arms as though it had been an infant in swaddling 
 clothes, he walked firmly to the street and entered the 
 Brougham. 
 
 As Buck stood uneasily at the carriage door, the father 
 simply commanded, "Drive to the mother!" 
 
 The unexpected eleventh hour turn of the debate had so 
 stimulated Logan Lyon that he could not dismiss it until he 
 had reviewed the whole case, and had made memoranda of 
 points that would require the most argument with the direc- 
 tors. Then he dropped asleep in his chair, and at the tele- 
 phone call his first notion was that Halleck was still wrench- 
 ing his hand. He made sure that his father's door was 
 closed, then took down the receiver. 
 
 Buck locked up on a murder charge ! 
 
 Logan Lyon had never felt at liberty to express opinions 
 about the parental policy toward his half-brother. But all 
 that was past. His loyalty to his father was now on duty, to 
 break the force of the blow. 
 
 The chauffeur had been sleeping on his arms for weeks, and 
 the car was promptly at the door. Then came beating the 
 speed limit to the station; the few decisive words with the 
 Lieutenant and with Buck, showing that more time there 
 
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 would be wasted ; the round of the city editors of the morning 
 papers — the mail editions were already off — insuring from 
 all, with possibly one exception, handling of the story with 
 justice to the public tempered by mercy to the parents; then 
 the last slender thread of hope — hope not to remove the guilt, 
 but to find its consequences in different form; hope not to 
 undo the tragedy, but to have the boon of meeting some of 
 its after effects with a fighting chance ; hope which the doc- 
 tors must measure ; there was the assembling of the physicians, 
 the torturing waiting, and at last the report. 
 
 Buck Lyon had not taken Lizzie Cassidy's life, he had only 
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 "My first principle is that it is the chief duty of the Company 
 to adopt the policy which will do most towards enabling 
 each one of its workers to make the most of his life." 
 
 TO the group at The Lodge it seemed as though the period 
 since their gathering a week before reached back an era. 
 
 The change that had come over their outlook was thus far 
 so undefined that they had hardly gone beyond expressing it 
 to themselves in terms of time. 
 
 Kjiowledge of Buck's transition from spoiled child to 
 social problem had been kept from Mrs. Lyon until Edith and 
 Hester reached the Lake on a special train, that left the city 
 after Logan had assigned them their parts in the emergency 
 measures. Edgerly had kept them supplied by long distance 
 with every detail which could be of use in their ministrations. 
 
 On Sunday morning it was evident that the parents wanted 
 to be alone. 
 
 Logan reminded Hester of her outstanding plan to make 
 the circuit of the Lake by the "fisherman's path;" and in fif- 
 teen minutes she was ready for the start. 
 
 If Edgerly had been within hearing distance during the 
 first hour or so, he might have found himself casting about for 
 additions to the rubrics under which he had once attempted 
 to classify Hester. 
 
 She struck into the narrow foot-way and set the pace for a 
 mile or two, as though she were in training and this were a 
 Marathon race. 
 
 Lyon trailed behind, easily holding the speed, though walk- 
 ing had always been too much of a time-consumer for him to 
 afford the luxury as an exercise ; but he amused himself with 
 guesses about the distance they would cover before Hester 
 would drop to a slower stroke. 
 
 Then not so much a physical reaction as a change of mind 
 started Hester botanizing and ornithologizing. Lyon couldn't 
 decide whether the fusillade of questions she turned upon him 
 was result of knowing nothing or everything about the plants 
 and birds of the region ; but he reflected that if he had a law 
 
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 case which would turn upon his ability in this line of cross- 
 examination, he wouldn't know how to load himself to fire 
 her style of questions. He didn't see how she could go into the 
 items more thoroughly if she had been under contract to fur- 
 nish labels for the National Museum ; and he wondered how 
 much more she could do in Spring; before the witherings and 
 the migrations. 
 
 Without warning, this scientific zeal passed into the pranks 
 of a vaudeville girl on an outing. Coming to a broader stretch 
 of path, Hester challenged Logan to a hundred yard dash. 
 She tried skipping stones along the placid surface of the water. 
 She made a swing of a low hanging limb. She chattered and 
 acted a medley of scraps, from the farce comedy to the Greek 
 tragedy level; and in spaces sufficiently remote from the 
 houses she ran over a parallel gamut of musical scatterings, in 
 a voice strong enough for grand opera. 
 
 It was no more certain that Hester was of typical nervous 
 temperament than that she was not neurotic. This volatility 
 was not pathological. It was not even mildly hysterical. It 
 was as natural as a lark's flight or song, and as wholesome in 
 its place as her woman's broodings, with Edith, over the af- 
 flicted mother. 
 
 This strain in Hester's composition had been in retirement 
 most of the time since her father's death. While its liberty 
 this morning was spontaneous, it was not entirely emotional. 
 It was in part an intelligent and purposeful putting of the 
 circumstances to their best use. Logan's pet name, "Gypsy," 
 fairly fitted Hester in the days when she was an avid little 
 child of nature. Ever since she had been old enough to read 
 about them she had avowed affection for Mignon, and envy 
 for the maid of the Lorelei. She had thrown herself into this 
 romp, in a time and place that seemed made for it, just as she 
 would have taken a plunge in the surf of the Lido. 
 
 Not that Hester went through a deliberate course of reason- 
 ing, any more than she did when she sprinkled salt on her 
 butter. In either case she could have accounted for her rea- 
 sons easily enough, if obliged to testify. She not only felt 
 the need of relaxing after the months of anxiety, with the 
 climax of the last few hours, but she knew it would freshen 
 her for the more taxing decisions which could not be long 
 deferred. 
 
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 It would have been less easy for Hester to tell how much 
 her outburst had been for Logan's benefit rather than her own. 
 Until the two days just past, she had never been in a position 
 to see, as Mr. Lyon himself probably did not realize, how jeal- 
 ously Logan was a guardian for his father. This glimpse into 
 the care of the younger man for the older gave her a new 
 view of the burden Logan was carrying ; but she was not aware 
 of the charge on his loyalty in the problem of bearing his 
 double load with his strength divided against itself. She 
 nierely felt as sane appreciation of a little out-door play for 
 him as for herself. 
 
 That the ebullition was under complete control of judgment 
 was plain in Hester's next lead. She accepted the invitation 
 of a rustic bench as shamelessly as though she had made no 
 athletic pretensions ; and as self-possessed as in her most quiet 
 moods, she spoiled Logan's preparations for making fun of 
 her early need of rest : — 
 
 "Spare yourself the trouble of laughing at me, Mr. Know- 
 It-Better," she murmured, with her head bolstered against the 
 high back of the bench, and her eyes closed as though she were 
 settling herself for a siesta. "I'm tired, and I glory in it. A 
 before-breakfast gallop would be the only dangerous com- 
 petitor. And you can't even make me quarrel with you for 
 thinking I won't last to the end of the course. I'm not too 
 sure of it myself. What is it they say at the track? 'Too 
 skittish for a good getaway?' But it was sport for sport's sake, 
 and aren't we having it? If it has toned you up as much as 
 it has me, you are as ready to tell me the latest about the strike 
 as I am to listen. Things can't have stood still a whole 
 week?" 
 
 Then Lyon recited the story of the Casino conference. He 
 not only told the result, but he detailed the conversation. His 
 account would have compared favorably with an expert steno- 
 graphic report, except that he dramatized it here and there, 
 and not at all to Graham's prejudice. 
 
 Hester had kept her eyes closed during most of the repeti- 
 tion ; but without moving her head she opened them full on 
 Lyon when he stopped speaking, and their look left him no 
 need to be told that she was brimming over with exultation. 
 
 "Logan !" she reproved ; "you haven't told which of the 
 three called for the Nunc Dimittis!" 
 
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 Whatever his freedom as chronicler, Lyon was not taking 
 liberties with his liabilities as attorney ; and he dutifully drew 
 the line. "No such infringement on the poetic license con- 
 cession ! When the Muse of History writes it up a thousand 
 years from now, I hope that sort of garnishment will match. 
 Truth compelled me to stop, however, just before I should 
 have been obliged to depose that after they had come down 
 from their Mount of Transfiguration one of the three at least 
 went to sleep to the lullaby, 'The King of France, with twice 
 ten thousand men.' " 
 
 "You can't mean," searched Hester, bending toward him 
 until her arm had to prop her unstable position upon a bar of 
 the seat between them ; "You can't mean that it would be pos- 
 sible to reject this splendid compromise?" 
 
 "Seriously, Hester," concluded Lyon, "while I'm with the 
 plan for all I'm worth, as far as argument goes, in my opinion 
 the only chance in the world that our directors will accept 
 such a proposition is in the greater fear they may have of the 
 New Jersey syndicate than of the strikers." 
 
 "Then I must walk some more to find myself," was Hes- 
 ter's stupefied reaction. 
 
 This time they started off side by side, like a pair of reliable 
 roadsters. Neither spoke for some distance, but Hester's mind 
 was at work, and she showed her progress from thinking to- 
 ward doing when after a little she asked abruptly, "How 
 much do I count in the Company, Logan?" 
 
 "On a stock vot«," Lyon replied, in a strictly professional 
 tone, "if you should go against the Lyon interests, enough 
 smaller holders would probably be with you to beat us." 
 
 It was not slow thinking that retarded Hester's answer. It 
 was one of her habits to project her thought, and to see how it 
 would look under the make-believe that it had nothing to do 
 with herself. This time, halting, she used Lyon's eyes as a 
 reflector; and she tried every angle of light on the picture of 
 herself acting unfilially toward her guardian. 
 
 Hester was not of those chilled souls whose pride of ab- 
 straction hushes their heart beats. The sort of idealism which 
 starts its building of more stately social mansions on the debris 
 of violated personal ties did not stimulate her sense of plausi- 
 bility 
 
 "You know T couldn't, Logan 1 Who was the old Roman 
 that condemned his son to death, that has been passed along 
 
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 in the school books as one of the heroic types we ought to 
 live back to? I have always been grateful that I didn't ad- 
 mire him. Within the past forty-eight hours I have found I 
 could imagine the necessity of telling my own son he deserved 
 the death penalty ; and I might even feel bound to confess it 
 
 in public; but when it came to passing sentence myself 
 
 No! The scheme of things would have to excuse me, and 
 make other arrangements!" 
 
 They tramped another stage in silence, and almost equally 
 oppressed by a feeling of bafflement. 
 
 _ When Hester spoke agayi she seemed to be verifying her 
 vision by a retrospect over the whole theoretical tour of in- 
 spection of which Lyon had heard a few fragments 
 
 "The more I think about property laws, Logan, and es- 
 pecially inheritance laws, the thing that impresses me most is 
 that they are society's inventions for artificial selection of its 
 gardeners, and housekeepers and butlers. If this artificial 
 method proves to breed too many gardeners who huxter off 
 the vegetables on their own account, and housekeepers who 
 play bridge when they should be getting the meals, and but- 
 lers who steal the family spoons and sell them for drinks, the 
 method is bad ; and enlightened self-interest will surely make 
 society change it for a better." 
 
 Then she dropped into a brown study for a moment, and 
 seemed to be picking her way with each word, as she followed 
 out the figure. 
 
 "We hear sometimes of old house servants, who have had 
 things their own way so long that at last the family must 
 choose between discharging them and acknowledging them 
 as masters. Could the cartoonists make that kind of a public 
 servant out of Uncle David?" 
 
 Logan Lyon was prepared to admit to the directors that the 
 scheme to which he was a recent convert owed its availability 
 to pure accident. Standing on its merits, in ordinary times, 
 it would be a quarter section in Utopia. With the beneficent 
 aid of that compulsion which has made such a brilliant his- 
 toric record transmuting men's necessities into their virtues, 
 Lyon believed the Avery Company, although convinced 
 against its will, and in spite of itself and a cold world, might 
 prove that business may be done on that plane. He was not 
 prepared to believe that his father could not adapt himself to 
 the new situation. 
 
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 Indeed the one remnant of mysticism which Logan al- 
 lowed to interfere with his strictly matter-of-fact analysis of 
 the Avery business was the palliating fiction that his father 
 was the Company's agent, instead of its will. He flinched 
 from identifying the Company's policy with his father's per- 
 sonality. It would not have been easy to deceive him about 
 the actual state of affairs in another corporation; but when- 
 ever he had to reflect upon his father's moral relation to the 
 Avery policy he reverted to the conception that the President 
 was merely the executive of a controlling corporate conscious- 
 ness. Accordingly he could not admit to Hester, nor even to 
 himself, that her suggestion was fair. He cogitated so ab- 
 stractedly that Hester was wondering whether he would come 
 back to her query at all ; but he presently passed from silent 
 to audible meditation in speaking out the substitute he had 
 pictured : — 
 
 "After the manager had brought the land under cultivation 
 and had it yielding a high rate of return, it would have to be 
 a cranky lot of owners that would want to interfere with him 
 for calling a halt on the help, if he believed they were turning 
 the farm over to weeds." 
 
 Hester knew that the son's allegiance to the father was at 
 present so loyally enlisted that argument involving the Presi- 
 dent of the Company would be lost on Logan. Her instinct 
 was keener though than his that, entirely apart from the 
 merits of the strike, the outrage which now attainted the 
 Lyon name had put the whole family estimate of moral values 
 on trial. Her loathing for the particular deed in which 
 Buck's foulness had betrayed itself was no more genuine than 
 Logan's ; but he had thought of it so far only as it affected 
 the individuals directly concerned. He had not connected 
 it with business, nor with social standards in general. 
 
 To Hester there seemed no room for question that the fam- 
 ily must put itself right by making its future sacramental. It 
 was equally clear to her that the Avery Company was com- 
 promised, and that only some higher social compact could be 
 its vindication. With this in mind she was assuming that 
 Mr. Lyon would take the same view ; and not referring par- 
 ticularly to the compromise, but to the whole readjustment 
 which his moral standards would demand, she was trying to 
 find a way of making his task easier when she ventured the 
 guarded inquiry : — 
 
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 "Do you think anything I might say to Uncle David would 
 do any good, Logan ?" 
 
 "Not so long as he thinks you don't know the difference 
 between seed corn and thistle blows," gruffly answered Lyon. 
 
 His peal of two voices was growing clangorous. He sus- 
 pected that he was not holding his own in silencing the secret 
 that his sympa-thies were with his father, not with his father's 
 policies. His imagination read accusation of treason in Hes- 
 ter's assumption that "do any good" would mean the same to 
 him as to her. If overruled by his superiors he could fight 
 against his judgment; but he had no rules to go by when he 
 found himself maintaining one horn of a moral dilemma and 
 believing in the other. Lyon was not the sort of man to sulk 
 in his tent if his advice were not followed by the council of 
 war. His lubberly reply, in perfunctory defense of his 
 father's position, was the self-conscious actor's overplaying 
 his part. 
 
 The meaning of Logan's roughness did not fully appeal 
 to Hester. She credited it not to a conflict with divided duty, 
 but to overwrought sympathy with his father. It was rather 
 easy too, in the apartness of that calm, clear, restful atmos- 
 phere, to minimize the realness and the nearness of the labor 
 conflict, and to idealize out of its due proportion the final filial 
 fidelity which took on firmness as the stress increased. 
 
 They had reached a patch of lawn convexing like a stage 
 down toward a pier which, but for its length, might have been 
 the orchestra leader's platform. At one wing a log, from 
 which enough of a great branch had been lopped off to leave 
 a chair-shaped seat, and canopied with thickly woven ever- 
 green, might have been set as Titania's throne. 
 
 As she merged herself into the coziness of the retreat, with 
 no more preliminaries than if it had been a scheduled way- 
 station, and as Lyon stretched himself on the close-cropped 
 turf, Hester intended to dismiss the vexing subject by intro- 
 ducing a character study in the question: — "If his interests 
 didn't cross ours at all, and if you could detach him entirely 
 from our affairs, what would you think of Mr. Graham per- 
 sonally, Logan?" 
 
 The answer itself did not surprise Hester so much as the 
 suddenness with which it seemed to be shot out of a long 
 loaded chamber. "What should I think of a man that spends 
 the income from his capitalism in Idaho subsidizing a turn- 
 
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 ing of capitalism upside down in Chicago? Can you make 
 those two things pull together?" 
 
 "The Boston papers abused him for that," Hester replied 
 composedly, "and he took no notice of them. Channing Hart- 
 ley drew his side out of him though, the last time he called in 
 Brookline. Mr. Graham said he wouldn't be driven into any 
 'see-me-go-up' advertising of himself, even in a good cause ; but 
 he would be glad to pay the expenses of an impartial commis- 
 sion to investigate his Idaho business, and report on its bear- 
 ings upon the labor campaign. Then when Channing urged 
 him he explained that he was actuallj'^ doing in Idaho all that 
 he knew how to ask any capitalist to do under present circum- 
 stances. Indeed, he went so far as to say that he couldn't ask 
 all capitalists to do as much at once, because many hadn't 
 the help who would meet them half way, and a thousand 
 other details would slow down the pace possible at many 
 points. He had taken the trouble to get picked men into his 
 employ. He had offered a better scale of wages than any 
 competitor paid. He had opened up the books of the business, 
 and under formal agreement he had talked its affairs through 
 regularly with the help, as freely as if they had all been stock- 
 holders. He had introduced a sickness, accident and old-age 
 insurance system, besides committing the business to an ex- 
 panding plan of local improvements. He had credited him- 
 self personally with the salary which his grade of managerial 
 work commands on the average throughout the country, plus 
 the same percentage of premium which the other employees 
 drew. Over and above all this, the business showed a sur- 
 plus. Some of the men of course didn't know when they were 
 well off, and demanded a pro rata division of the whole net 
 income. The majority heartily supported the policy of turn- 
 ing that surplus into an endowment, to spread the gospel of 
 democracy till all the business of the country should adopt 
 the same platform. The men as a rule accepted Graham's 
 argument that it would be the same capitalism they professed 
 to hate, if they should grab all there was in their lucky 
 chance. He called on them to meet him in giving up some 
 of his legal rights for the benefit of workers in general. They 
 had not only done so much, but they had an organization of 
 their own to help his scheme of campaigning and education. 
 One of Channing's clients has interests in Idaho, and he ex- 
 pressed the opinion that the whole story of the Graham en- 
 
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 terprises there would talk louder on the economic and moral 
 side of his case than all his public speeches." 
 
 The subject seemed to have exhausted its drawing powers 
 with Lyon ; and conversation lapsed till Hester mischievously 
 threw out the more provocative hint: — "Would it be very un- 
 expected to you, Logan, if Elsie should marry Graham?" 
 
 For an instant the question seemed to have made no im- 
 pression. Then, with a long meaning whistle, Lyon suddenly 
 swung hinaself about from his facing the Lake, he pivoted his 
 head on his elbow, he pried for more evidence into Hester's 
 expression, and as a climax he exploded the accusing re- 
 joinder : "How long does this date back of Kissinger's leav- 
 ing us?" 
 
 "You're making a wrong connection, Logan," was Hester's 
 quiet denial. "When he hears it, Mr. Kissinger will be more 
 surprised than you are. Elsie herself doesn't know that she 
 knows it's decided ; and I know it only by cooking up a ragout 
 of odds and ends, and serving it with a little faith that the 
 awkward old world can't mess everything that ought to 
 happen." 
 
 But there were other close-al^hand things which even Hes- 
 ter's intuitiveness had not fathomed. Not a few far less pre- 
 scient persons had often allowed themselves to indulge a some- 
 what unrestricted freedom of thought and speech upon one 
 ought-to-be which had never so much as cast its image across 
 her imagination. If there had been anything untypical in 
 Hester's commerce with life, it would be found in the un- 
 ashamed eagerness with which her virgin fancy had consulted 
 the oracles. She had never affected the defensive feminine 
 fiction of unconcern about men ; but none of the astrologers 
 of girlhood had pointed out a way which promised anything 
 for her most intimate quest. She had no index to the seizure 
 of Logan's mind, in the past week, by the feeling, that all the 
 unavailables he had ruled out of his practical program might 
 easily be listed in the day's work, if he could have the help 
 of a light which was probably beyond his reach. She did not 
 know that the associating of Elsie's name with Graham's had 
 affected Logan as bringing the light within the range of ap- 
 propriation. She saw nothing but uninterest in a promising 
 romance, and summons to take up the line of march, when he 
 rose and stood looking down at her. There even seemed to 
 
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 be a threatening quality in the cloud on his face, which made 
 her think the load of the family troubles was settling back on 
 him with dulling weight. She did not know that Logan felt 
 himself hanging on the decree of fate whether he should end 
 among the inglorious majority of the overcome-of-the-world, 
 or should win his spurs as a fighter for ideals. Her self-com- 
 mand would have had to be more mechanical than it was, if 
 she could have controlled every mark of surprise when the 
 most highly charged words she had ever heard seemed to 
 struggle from his lips: — 
 
 "Have I been all along too much a brother to you, Hester, 
 to be thinkable in a closer relation?" 
 
 Lyon had to wait so long for a positive sign, that he suffered 
 from a sense of having committed an offense against nature. 
 
 It required some seconds for the blur in Hester's mind to 
 resolve itself into accountable impressions. 
 
 All the scenery seemed to have been instantly shifted, with 
 no change in the stage directions. 
 
 The first coherent association which Hester could make out 
 was that an unrecognized image of Logan had been the lay- 
 figure for every sketch of a pattern husband she had ever 
 drawn. 
 
 From her earliest recollections he seemed to have been cast 
 for such a matter-of-course part in her drama, that she had 
 never been aware of starting with an inventory of his traits 
 as the working nucleus of specifications for the more import- 
 ant character. 
 
 The truth came into sight so suddenly, and at first it 
 amounted to such a probable case against her innocence 
 through years of composing from one model, that Hester was 
 almost abject in her inability to persuade herself of anything 
 extenuating. 
 
 Then, as her steady gaze at Logan seemed to erase physical 
 lines, and to leave the spiritual picture, Hester saw a partial 
 explanation ; and she spoke so gently that he was at once ab- 
 solved of his self-accusation, while the possibility of a favora- 
 ble decision appeared still farther removed. "If it is unthinka- 
 ble, Logan, it is not because you are too much brother, but 
 because you are too little something else." 
 
 "The worst i.s the kindest, Hester;" Logan smiled dismally. 
 "Soothe me with a few of the most damaging items out of the 
 roll of my deficiencies." 
 
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 Hester was farthest from trifling, but the picture flashed 
 across her fancy of Logan hsted on the Board of Trade, and 
 the mothers of marriageable Chicago daughters boosting the 
 quotations. That they would have nothing to say about de- 
 ficiencies, except to keep the price from going beyond their 
 range, was however not wholly a matter for cynicism ; and the 
 scornful turn of Hester's thoughts was self-reproved into the 
 reflection that the only deficiencies she had found in Logan 
 were either rather microscopic matters of taste, or they were 
 wholly hypothetical. 
 
 Yet this summary did not explain Hester to herself; nor 
 added to the reason which Logan suggested did it account for 
 his negative place in her estimate. She was conscious of a 
 blank in her acquaintance with Logan, but since the ques- 
 tion had been thrust upon her she could not tell whether this 
 lack, or the domestic familiarity, had been more responsible 
 for keeping him out of her thoughts in the role in which he 
 was now presented. 
 
 Hester's artless recurrence to Logan, from childhood to the 
 present moment, for the groundwork of her notion of a man, 
 put her in a self-contradictory plight in her own eyes when 
 she tried to show cause for her inability to focus him in the 
 new perspective. She was not quite sure whether she was 
 more defending herself or shielding him when she evaded his 
 demand with the temporizing modification: "You put the 
 word 'deficiencies' into the case Logan. Would that be the 
 way to express it, if I had never thought of you as an archi- 
 tect or a physician?" 
 
 "In my inexperience," Lyon gruesomely admitted, "I may 
 not have used the precise technical language of examiners for 
 the classified civil service !" 
 
 The laugh that they had to share was humanizing; and 
 both returned to the subject a little less predisposed to behave 
 absurdly. They were no longer stilted, and even the f acetious- 
 ness which had become the later form of the teasing and de- 
 fense that had been their gradually maturing medium of in- 
 tercourse since Hester's childhood, would not ring true in 
 their present temper. 
 
 "If the values of the unknown quantities made you out the 
 missing term in my life-formula, Logan, I should be the hap- 
 piest girl in the world," confided Hester, without the least 
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 know about the real center of your interests. What have you 
 ever shown me about your business aims, to give me any hope 
 that we could work for the same ends?" 
 
 "I have always assumed, Hester," fumbled Lyon in genu- 
 ine bewilderment, "that it was a mitigating circumstance if a 
 seven-day-in-the-week overtime-working wage-laborer in a 
 non-unionized employment didn't make his friends miserable 
 between whiles with his worries. It may be unpardonable, 
 but whatever else I may have had to be ashamed of I have 
 always rather frankly approved of myself for letting my work 
 do all the touting of my good intentions. It's a pretty hum- 
 drum sort of merit, in spite of being less common than com- 
 monplace; but I didn't suppose I was mistaken in my idea 
 that you gave it a little credit. If your standard of a man 
 calls for a type that spends half its time press-agenting its 
 doings in the other half, of course, I must withdraw my 
 credentials." 
 
 "You know I think you are splendid, Logan, for these same 
 things, and lots of others," was Hester's impulsive protest; 
 but do you not see that we are strangers from the very point 
 where our acquaintance most needs to begin? Whether Mr. 
 Graham is right or not that all the workers in the Company, 
 from the fuel yard to the directors' room, are partners, you 
 and I cannot help being partners in the Avery business. There 
 is something wrong about our partnership, and it must run 
 deep into the business itself, if I am left out of its affairs that 
 worry you, and am not even trusted to know whether you 
 agree with your father that my seed corn is his thistle blows." 
 
 If Hester had known that Logan had no more sincere wish 
 than to make her his absolute confidante in testing his busi- 
 ness standards, and that loyalty to his professional and filial 
 codes was his sole reason for not following his inclination, she 
 would have been more certain that business was confusing 
 life; but she would also have begun to see possibilities that 
 Logan might find his vocation in helping to transform the 
 confusion into progress. As Logan did not answer, and could 
 not without, as it seemed to him, betraying a double trust, 
 Hester had no recourse but to take his silence as confession, 
 and consequently as decision. 
 
 She felt that Logan must recognize the force of the reason- 
 ing, just as she did, when she tried to put the conclusion of the 
 whole matter in another form. 
 
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 "If you had found, Logan, that the rest of your work for 
 life must be done in the other hemisphere, would your near- 
 est friend, even if he were the best fellow in the world, be the 
 man you would join forces with, in spite of his having no use 
 for operations beyond the boundaries of his own country?" 
 
 Logan had no doubt about Hester's meaning, nor was he 
 sure that the facts which she did not know would alter her 
 opinion. He could not believe however that his motives, even 
 from her point of view, were as incorrigible as she imagined ; 
 yet the utmost liberty that he felt in self-defense was mildly 
 interrogative. "Do you really think, Hester, it is a perfectly 
 clear case that our worlds lie that far apart?" 
 
 Not distrust of her forecast, but uncertainty about the right 
 way to represent it, made Hester knit her brows and puzzle 
 like a backward pupil in arithmetic. After she had worked 
 off some of the unusable stimulus to her thoughts by scatter- 
 ing, one by one, the wild flowers she had gathered, the conceit 
 that her behaviour must seem to Logan more demented than 
 Ophelia with her rosemary and rue recalled her to further ex- 
 planation. 
 
 "If nothing more difficult than oceans were between us," 
 she qualified, "we might understand each other and be of 
 mutual assistance. Since it is ideas, of a sort that have no 
 means of exchanging traffic, but can simply come into colli- 
 sion, the only safety is to route them over different lines. You 
 and Uncle David agree with me on the fundamental thing 
 that I must undertake the responsibility of opinions about 
 business. Is it not your first business principle that your duty 
 to the Company is to help it get all the dividends that the 
 laws put within its reach ? My first principle is that it is the 
 chief duty of the Company to adopt the policy which will do 
 most towards enabling each one of its workers to make the 
 most of his life. Could there be anything better than mutual 
 interference between persons with such antagonistic aims?" 
 
 With the same inquisitive method, Logan demurred: — 
 "Would it make any difference, Hester, if I should tell you 
 that I didn't know it till lately, but I have accepted your prin- 
 ciple, and hold it as candidly as you do?" 
 
 "It would make this difference, Logan," — and Hester was 
 hardly more surprised by the admission in the question than 
 by the readiness of her own reply; "I should have to suspend 
 
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 judgment until you had told me whether you had foreseen 
 what putting your hands to such a plow means." 
 
 "Tell me what you think it means," urged Lyon. 
 
 "Why I" exclaimed Hester, with a sudden exaltation which 
 might befit the Jeanne d'Arc of tradition; "It means that you 
 would have to be a motor in the most radical revolution I have 
 seen any mention of in history. It means that you would do 
 your part towards freeing the world from the blight of the 
 conservative conscience. It means that you would retire the 
 type of conscience that is a time lock closed forever at some 
 day of doom in the past, and that you would put in its place 
 a time lock which would open with the day's work of every 
 tomorrow. It means that you would put the property con- 
 science, and the propriety conscience, and the policy con- 
 science where they belong in the department of etiquette, and 
 install an exploring conscience at the head of your depart- 
 ment of justice." 
 
 "But if I acknowledged that you have only put more pic- 
 turesquely what the last few months had made me believe?" 
 was Logan's corroborative testimony. 
 
 "Why then, Logan," decided Hester, in the eagerness of 
 the momentary triumph of her intellect at the expense of her 
 affections, "you would prove your sincerity by making a 
 martyr of yourself, if necessary, to force the compromise !" 
 
 Logan's failure to answer at once meant to Hester that his 
 new creed was less ready for duty in the real world than he 
 supposed. The reliability of her own reasoning was, how- 
 ever, immediately thrown under doubt. It might be, after 
 all, that she needed as much as he to arrange a settlement with 
 reality. The possibility became almost a conviction when she 
 considered the question in which Logan reconstrued the prob- 
 lem : — "Haven't you set up a more Spartan standard for me, 
 Hester, than you could tolerate a moment ago for people with 
 human affections ? Can you demand that the time factor and 
 the personal factor shall have nothing to say about my mak- 
 ing a steam hammer of myself, when you deny the right of 
 the scheme of things to turn us into machines? 
 
 The launch had just rounded into sight. It had been or- 
 dered to follow with the lunch basket, but it was ahead of time 
 and place. Its signals showed that it was intentionally in ad- 
 
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 vance of the schedule, and was trying to attract attention. 
 Logan hurried down the pier, and after a few words with the 
 skipper he beckoned for Hester to follow. A message from 
 Chicago called for Lyon's immediate return to the city. 
 
 Hardly a word was exchanged as they sat through the short 
 trip on the little hurricane deck over the wheelhouse. Lyon 
 was reflecting whether, in telling Hester everything, he had 
 strained his allegiance to his father and the Company. Hes- 
 ter had been introduced to such an unsuspected phase of Logan 
 that she was already seeing visions of what they might ac- 
 complish together, if their purposes proved to be as harmo- 
 nious as this revelation foreshadowed. 
 
 Hester drew into both of hers the hand that Logan held out 
 to balance her step from the rail ; and she held it while her 
 eyes steadily meeting his spoke as candidly as her words : — 
 "If you knew how much I want to be persuaded, Logan, you 
 couldn't believe I am hesitating!" 
 
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THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
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THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 XXVI 
 
 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 "We will make it a part of the business to find out how many 
 instead of how few of its workers may have a property 
 interest and a shareholder's voice in it." 
 
 BARCLAY'S trip was unexpected. His messages sent from 
 the train had not been delivered, and it was late Sunday 
 forenoon when he got a long distance connection with The 
 Lodge. 
 
 Logan Lyon motored across to the main line, and was in 
 the city for an evening's conference with Barclay after they 
 had dined at the Club. 
 
 The essential addition which Barclay brought to the evi- 
 dence in hand more than confirmed Graham's prediction about 
 the New Jersey syndicate. 
 
 The Company must start up at full capacity in less than 
 two weeks, or the odds would increase every day against its 
 possible recovery of a fighting position in the market. 
 
 As David Lyon sat at his desk in the private office Monday 
 morning, he was outwardly a symbol of serenity, and strength 
 and assured purpose. 
 
 Hichborn had noticed an unusually kindly quality in his 
 chief's greeting, and had inferred that the week had begun 
 with more favorable indications. 
 
 A directors' meeting had been called for twelve o'clock, and 
 Hichborn assumed that the President's rapidity in disposing 
 of routine matters mean that he wanted to be free for consid- 
 eration of new business as long as possible before that hour. 
 
 The Secretary could not understand, however, why he was 
 displaced this morning, in his ordinary duties with Mr. Lyon, 
 by his son. 
 
 Without explanation, Logan Lyon instructed Hichborn to 
 give him the necessary pointers on the items which called for 
 the President's decision, and he carried the papers to and from 
 his father's room. 
 
 To one not committed to some theory, no signs would have 
 appeared in Mr. Lyon's demeanor that his son's thoughtful- 
 ness was needed, nor that it was appreciated. 
 
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THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 Although Logan was in doubt on neither point, not even 
 his sympathetic study of his father's character, and habitual 
 watchfulness of his, needs, had given him the means of pene- 
 trating far into the effects of the latest incidents upon the 
 paternal mind. 
 
 Since the morning of Friday, father and son had been 
 chiefly occupied with provisional details. Their questions had 
 been, What is to be done next? There had been neither time 
 nor desire for comment and expression of opinion. Logan 
 had reported, in the briefest terms, the Casino interview, and 
 he had 'phoned the bare facts brought by Barclay. 
 
 With his desk cleared of the morning's work, Mr. Lyon put 
 Hichborn under the strictest orders against interruption, and 
 motioned Logan to a chair. 
 
 It was some minutes before Mr. Lyon gave a clue to the di- 
 rection of his thoughts. With his head thrown back, and 
 his eyes closed, he presented the picture which Logan would 
 most naturally recall in his father's absence. It was his ha- 
 bitual attitude when collecting his thoughts. As Logan 
 waited, watching his father's features for some telltale move- 
 ment, not a shading of expression gave notice of the specific 
 qualities of thought and feeling striving for mastery in the 
 supreme earnest of David Lyon's life. 
 
 His first words showed less emotion than he had often ex- 
 hibited in asking about the record of a superintendent. "I 
 understand you and Barclay to think we must decide today 
 between withdrawal in favor of the New Jersey people, merger 
 with them or acceptance of Halleck's memorandum?" 
 
 "We think there are more reasons than ever for ruling out 
 the merger," Logan cautiously amended. 
 
 Mr. Lyon took from his pocket the notes which Logan had 
 handed him on Friday. "What am I to suppose this first 
 clause means, Logan? 'The Company acknowledges the prin- 
 ciple that work in its employ creates an equity in the 
 business?' " 
 
 "In ordinary times, and as a statement of general business 
 ideas, it would be simply a rhetorical flourish," Logan frankly 
 answered. "In our case, with the choice between abdication 
 to enemies, and accommodation of ourselves to a some- 
 what idealistic arrangement with our friends, it means a 
 pledge to experiment with an idea which the business world 
 at large will call Quixotic." 
 
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THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 "Would it not be more correct to say experiment with words 
 which do not express an idea?" was Mr. Lyon's quiet criti- 
 cism. 
 
 "Perhaps the words suit the case all the better, Father, be- 
 cause they contain an idea without fully expressing it. I 
 have been wishing I knew more about history, to see whether 
 it hasn't been the rule that the ideas which people have fol- 
 lowed in their creative eras have been suggestive, rather than 
 legally precise; more like pillars of fire or cloud than like 
 literal statutes. Isn't the Golden Rule an instance of that 
 sort? Are we through learning what it means, when we try 
 to apply it in new circumstances?" 
 
 "But what beginnings of an idea do these words stand for?" 
 pursued Mr. Lyon. His manner was neither intolerant nor ag- 
 gressive. He had the bearing of a candid inquirer, yet in 
 every word Logan recognized his father's grief that their af- 
 fairs were drifting, as he believed, into an uncharted sea. 
 
 "It is rather hard for me, Father, to be the mouthpiece of a 
 faith that in one sense has been stamped on me by force. If 
 it had not been for the stress of necessity, I might never have 
 considered it practicable for the Avery Company to applythe 
 idea. I make no predictions whether it will take generations 
 or centuries for the idea to set the standard for business in 
 general. I am simply convinced that circumstances have put 
 us in a position where honest experiment with the idea is the 
 only practical policy. In another sense belief in the policy 
 has grown up in me from the inside. You were shocked at 
 some of the things I said to a bunch of the directors last Spring, 
 the day of the strike decision. They were simply sproutings 
 that I didn't know the meaning of myself ; but this war has 
 affected me as wars on a larger scale always affect the ideas of 
 people. Things that I saw in a haze now look clear. The 
 idea that I rated as too abstract and refined for this world now 
 seems to me as much in order as any progressive thought that 
 an active age has substituted for its rule-of-thumb notions. If 
 it were not for your inability to accept the idea. Father,! 
 could vote with all my heart for pledging the Company to it, 
 and I could stake my life on it with the zeal of a new convert." 
 
 "But you have not yet told me what the idea is," reminded 
 Mr. Lyon. 
 
 "Why, it's merely carrying one step farther into industry 
 the idea which we have been working amateurish experiments 
 
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THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 with in politics. It's the democratic idea admitted to one 
 more range of application. As it appeals to me, it is the idea 
 that this human life of ours is men s affairs. That is, every 
 time the race as a whole, or some picked specialist in the race, 
 hits on a new value, the social programme thereupon has to 
 begin to make room for the new details of the problem: — 
 first. What place belongs to this new value in the whole scale 
 of human interests? and second, How may we open the fairest 
 field for every man in the world to earn his way toward his 
 share of this new value? Not to go off too far into theory, 
 we people in the Avery Company are all men together, in the 
 sense that we all alike want to get all the values of life we can ; 
 and to most of us the Company is the principal means of mak- 
 ing headway toward the purpose. Now having some prop- 
 erty, and having some of the right to an opinion, and some 
 of the influence that opinion backed by a little property ex- 
 erts with our fellow men, are among the values that most men 
 want. They need them, whether they know enough to want 
 them or not, in order to be in the line of making the most of 
 life. Adding by one's own efforts something necessary to the 
 processes of life, is the only title to property and influence that 
 the logic of life can in the long run recognize. We are oper- 
 ating a property system which already looks to me, and I be- 
 lieve it will some day look to everybody, as primitive as the old 
 cable cars now look to Chicago people, in contrast with electric 
 equipment. The strike has turned the spot-light on this 
 property system with the Avery Company as the illustration. 
 We have several thousand employees who, in the aggregate, 
 are as necessary to the Company as its capital. The 
 business is those men's means of leading a man's life, and 
 filling out a man's destiny. But there are men who own a 
 share apiece of the Company's stock, to whom the law gives 
 more right to say their say, and influence the Company's 
 policy, than those thousands who have put their whole labor 
 time for years into the service of the corporation. Now the 
 democratic idea is that business is a product of all the work- 
 ers, and that the legal status of all the workers should corre- 
 spond with their share in creating and maintaining the busi- 
 ness. It implies that there should be a corporate policy and a 
 due process of law, without which no worker in the business 
 could be put out of his job nor deprived of the voice in the 
 business that belongs with the job, any more than the owner 
 
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THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 of a share of stock could be deprived of his stock and his vote. 
 If I were authorized to put a meaning into that first clause, it 
 would start this way : 'We will make it a part of the business 
 to find out how many instead of how few of its workers may 
 have a property interest and a shareholder's voice in it, and 
 also how the distribution of this property and influence may 
 be made proportional with each man's service to the 
 corporation.' " 
 
 "Is there anything to distinguish that from communism?" 
 and Mr. Lyon's manner indicated anxiety more than oppo- 
 sition. 
 
 "I'm not sure that I know what communism is," Logan 
 answered cautiously ; "but if it is a scheme to distribute eco- 
 nomic goods on any basis except the proportional value of 
 service rendered, it is the precise opposite of the type of de- 
 mocracy this memorandum contemplates. The most vital 
 thing in Graham's idea of democracy, and I think he is right 
 about it, is that it must work out a way for every member of 
 society to count at his full manhood value in every part of 
 life in which he is interested. Of course our property system 
 as it stands represents more than anything else the relative 
 fighting force of different economic strata. The farther we 
 go toward making reason instead of force the legislature of the 
 world, the more we shall see that our present laws of property 
 tend to establish a capitalistic oligarchy always growing into 
 a hierarchy with a diminishing number of individuals at the 
 head. This oligarchy is gaining cumulative power by oper- 
 ating an ingenious system of laws based on the fallacy of the 
 paramount rights of capitalistic interests. As we recover our 
 sanity about the scale of human values, we shall see that the 
 system is no longer the best for keeping human achievements 
 at their highest level, any more than rubbing two sticks to- 
 gether is the best method of getting fire. Whatever may be 
 the value of the hierarchy of capital in economizing produc- 
 tion, it is probably offset by its arrest of fairness in distribu- 
 tion. Even if the hierarchy permitted distributive justice, all 
 the humanity in men would sooner or later revolt against 
 oligarchy in business, just as it has declared itself against the 
 rule of the few in politics. Proportional representation in 
 appraising service values in the industrial system must in- 
 evitably take the place of capitalistic assignment of stipends 
 to the many by the few." 
 
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THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 For an hour Mr. Lyon continued his inquiry. 
 
 He did not attempt to argue the points, but seemed bent 
 solely on finding out exactly what Logan understood the 
 proposed compromise to involve. 
 
 In his turn Logan could not help wondering at the ease 
 with which he adapted himself to the advocate's part, and at 
 his growing zeal for his expanding democratic ideal. 
 
 Nothing in the examination had prepared Logan for its 
 sequel. After he saw that his father's questioning was done, 
 he had the first feeling that the most serious meaning of the 
 interview had not appeared. 
 
 For a few moments Mr. Lyon closed his eyes and resumed 
 his posture of reflection. His face was not as immobile as be- 
 fore. The play of strong emotion was visible, but beyond 
 this Logan had no key to the situation. 
 
 Then the older man evidently passed into a struggle to 
 maintain his self-command. He controlled himself other- 
 wise, but in spite of his effort his voice was tremulous. His 
 look reminded Logan of pictures he had seen of martyrs ut- 
 tering their last farewell to earth. His words did not at first 
 explain his agitation, but presently their finality told Logan 
 that they meant to his father the knell of an era. 
 
 "I have seen the signs of change in this direction for many 
 years," Mr. Lyon began, slowly and sadly. "I did not be- 
 lieve they would have to be counted with in my day. I can- 
 not see how good can come of them, but I believe a higher 
 Wisdom overrules. I see that the Company must yield to 
 circumstances and accept this compromise as the lesser evil. 
 That is my defeat, and it must be my release. I shall resign 
 today, and you must take my place. So long as I live I shall 
 do my best to help you as loyally aa you have supported me." 
 
 Then the solemnity in his voice and look changed to that 
 of the penitent. As he spoke out his heaviest grief, he seemed 
 to himself to be reading items from the debit side of The 
 Great Book of Remembrance: — "I may live long enough to 
 make some reparation to the father, and the mother and the 
 child. I may earn forgiveness for devoting to business what 
 I owed to my boy. I thought it was an irreverent joke of 
 Halleck's, but he is right. It is the hardest lesson I have ever 
 learned. The only Atonement for any one of us is deliver- 
 ing his own lin6 of goods." 
 
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OBITER DICTA 
 
 Every hour is a crisis ; every day a transition. 
 
 Today's vision is tomorrow's foundation. 
 
 H insight fails the wise and prudent, it may 
 
 empower the innocence of babes. 
 The strong, the fit, the competent may be no 
 
 part of the column of conquest, and may 
 
 not know it is on the march. 
 The world's virility is so rich that humanity 
 
 reaches its goals at last, helped or hindered 
 
 by the most capable. 
 The great bad is fear that the end is come. 
 Men's discontents dig the channels of their 
 
 progress. 
 The world is young ; its destinies are unde- 
 veloped ; the potency of its future endorses 
 
 the audacity of its ideals. 
 Let us pray not to be there when men's faith 
 
 ceases to proclaim, A better era dawns 
 
 tomorrow I 
 
 FINIS. 
 
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