Bonbright's father had left the office an hour before he and Rangar had finished their tour of the works. It was always his custom to leave his business early and to retire to the library in his home, where daily he devoted two hours to adding to the manuscript of The Philosophical Biography of Marquis Lafayette. This work was ultimately to appear in several severe volumes and was being written, not so much to enlighten the world upon the details of the career of the marquis as it was to utilize the marquis as a clotheshorse to be dressed in Bonbright Foote VI's mature reflections on men, events, and humanity at large.

Bonbright VII sat at his desk motionless, studying his career as it lay circumscribed before him. He did not study it rebelliously, for as yet rebellion had not occurred to him. The idea that he might assert his individuality and depart from the family pattern had not ventured to show its face. For too many years had his ancestors been impressing him with his duty to the family traditions. He merely studied it, as one who has no fancy for geometry will study geometry, because it cannot be helped. The path was there, carefully staked out and bordered; to-day his feet had been placed on it, and now he must walk. As he sat he looked ahead for bypaths—none were visible.

The shutting-down whistle aroused him. He walked out through the rapidly emptying office to the street, and there he stood, interested by the spectacle of the army that poured out of the employees' entrances. It was an inundation of men, flooding street from sidewalk to sidewalk. It jostled and joked and scuffled, sweating, grimy, each unit of it eager to board waiting, overcrowded street cars, where acute discomfort would be suffered until distant destinations were reached. Somehow the sight of that surging, tossing stream of humanity impressed Bonbright with the magnitude of Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, even more than the circuit of the immense plant had done.

Five thousand men, in a newspaper paragraph, do not affect the imagination. Five thousand men in the concrete are quite another matter, especially if you suddenly realize that each of them has a wife, probably children, and that the whole are dependent upon the dynasty of which you are a member for their daily bread.

"Father and I," he said to himself, as the sudden shock of the idea impacted against his consciousness, "are SUPPORTING that whole mob."

It gave him a sense of mightiness. It presented itself to him in that instant that he was not a mere business man, no mere manufacturer, but a commander of men—more than that, a lord over the destinies of men. It was overwhelming. This realization of his potency made him gasp. Bonbright was very young.

He turned, to be carried on by the current. Presently it was choked. A stagnant pool of humanity formed around some center, pressing toward it curiously. This center was a tiny park, about which the street divided, and the center was a man standing on a barrel by the side of a sign painted on cloth. The man was speaking in a loud, clear voice, which was able to make itself perfectly audible even to Bonbright on the extreme edge of the mass.

"You are helpless as individuals," the man was saying. "If one of you has a grievance, what can he do?… Nothing. You are a flock of sheep…. If ALL of you have a grievance, what can you do? You are still a pack of sheep…. Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, owns you, body and soul…. Suppose this Foote who does you the favor to let you earn millions for him—suppose he wants to buy his wife a diamond necklace…. What's to prevent him lowering your wages next week to pay for it?… YOU couldn't stop him!… Why can an army beat a mob of double its numbers? Because the army is ORGANIZED! Because the army fights as one man for one object!… You are a mob. Capital is organized against you…. How can you hope to defend yourselves? How can you force a betterment of your conditions, of your wage?… By becoming an army—a labor army!… By organizing…. That's why I'm here, sent by the National Federation—to organize you. To show you how to resist!… To teach you how to make yourselves irresistible!…" There were shouts and cheers which blotted out the speaker's words. Then Bonbright heard him again:

"Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, is entitled to fair interest on the money it has invested in its plant. It is entitled to a fair profit on the raw materials it uses in manufacture…. But how much of the final cost of its axles does raw material represent? A fraction! What gives the axles the rest of their value?… LABOR! You men are paid two, three, some of you even four dollars a day—for your labor. Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, adds a little pig iron to your labor, and gives you a place to work in, and takes his millions of dollars a year…. Do you get your fair share?… You do NOT, and you will never get a respectable fraction of your fair share till you organize—and seize it."

There was more. Bonbright had never heard the like of it before and it fascinated him. Here was a point of view that was new to him. What did it mean? Vaguely he had heard of Socialism, of labor unions, of the existence of a spirit of suspicion and discord between capital and labor. Now he saw it, face uncovered starkly.

A moment before he had realized his power over these men; now he perceived that these men, some of them, realized it even better than he…. Realized it and resented it; resented it and fought with all the strength of their souls to undermine it and make it topple in ruin.

His mind was a caldron into which cross currents of thought poured and tossed. He had no experience to draw on. Here was a thing he was being plunged into all unprepared. It had taken him unprepared, and shaken him as he had never been shaken before. He turned away.

Half a dozen feet away he saw the Girl with the Grin—not grinning now, but tense, pale, listening with her soul in her eyes, and with the light of enthusiasm glowing beside it.

He walked to her side, touched her shoulder…. It was unpremeditated, something besides his own will had urged him to speak to her.

"I don't understand it," he said, unsteadily.

"Your class never does," she replied, not sharply, not as a retort, but merely as one states a fact to give enlightenment.

"My father," she said, "was killed leading the strikers at Homestead.
… The unions educated me."

"What is this man—this speaker—trying to do? Stir up a riot?"

She smiled. "No. He is an organizer sent by the National Federation.
… They're going to try to unionize our plant."

"Unionize?"

"Bonbright Foote, Incorporated," she said, "is a non-union shop."

"I didn't know," said he, after a brief pause. "I'm afraid I don't understand these things…. I suppose one should know about them if he is to own a plant like ours." Again he paused while he fumbled for an idea that was taking shape. "I suppose one should understand about his employees just as much as he does about his machinery."

She looked at him with a touch of awakened interest. "Do you class men with machinery?" she asked, well knowing that was not his meaning. He did not reply. Presently he said:

"Rangar told you you were to be my secretary?"

"Yes, sir," she said, using that respectful form for the first time. The relation of employer and employee had been re-established by his words. "Thank you for the promotion."

"You understand what this is all about," he said. "I shall want to ask you about it…. Perhaps you even know the man who is speaking?"

"He boards with my mother," said she. "That was natural," she added, "my father being who he was."

Bonbright turned and looked at the speaker with curiosity awakened as to the man's personality. The man was young—under thirty, and handsome in a black, curly, quasi-foreign manner.

Bonbright turned his eyes from the man to the girl at his side. "He looks—" said Bonbright.

"How?" she asked, when it was apparent he was not going to finish.

"As if," he said, musingly, "he wouldn't be the man to call on for a line smash in the last quarter of a tough game."

Suddenly the speech came to an end, and the crowd poured on.

"Good night," said the girl. "I must find Mr. Dulac. I promised I would walk home with him."

"Good night," said Bonbright. "His name is Dulac?"

"Yes."

Men like Dulac—the work they were engaged upon—had not fallen within the circle of Bonbright's experience. Bonbright's training and instincts had all been aristocratic. At Harvard he had belonged to the most exclusive clubs and had associated with youths of training similar to his. In his athletics there had been something democratic, but nothing to impress him with democracy. Where college broadens some men by its contacts it had not broadened Bonbright, for his contacts had been limited to individuals chipped from the same strata as himself…. In his home life, before going to college, this had been even more marked. As some boys are taught arithmetic and table manners, Bonbright had been taught veneration for his family, appreciation for his position in the world, and to look upon himself and the few associates of his circumscribed world as selected stock, looked upon with especial favor and graciousness by the Creator of the universe.

Therefore this sudden dip into reality set him shivering more than it would another who entered the water by degrees. It upset him…. The man Dulac stirred to life in him something that was deeper than mere curiosity.

"Miss—" said he, and paused. "I really don't know your name."

"Frazer," she supplied.

"Miss Frazer, I should like to meet this Dulac. Would you be willing?"

She considered. It was an unusual request in unusual circumstances, but why not? She looked up into his boyish face and smiled. "Why not?" she said, aloud.

They pressed forward through the crowd until they reached Dulac, standing beside his barrel, surrounded by a little knot of men. He saw the girl approaching, and lifted his hand in acknowledgment of her presence. Presently he came to her, casting a careless glance at Bonbright.

"Mr. Dulac," she said, "Mr. Foote has been listening to your speech. He wants to meet you."

"Foote!" said Dulac. "Not—"

"Mr. Bonbright Foote," said the girl.

Evidently the man was nonplussed. He stared at Bonbright, who extended his hand. Dulac looked at it, took it mechanically.

"I heard what you were saying, Mr. Dulac," said Bonbright. "I had never heard anything like it before—so I wanted to meet you."

Dulac recovered himself, perceived that here was an opportunity, and spoke loudly so that the staring, interested workingmen, who now surrounded them, could hear distinctly.

"I'm glad you were present," said he. "It is not often we workingmen catch the ear of you employers so readily. You sit apart from your men in comfortable offices or in luxurious homes, so they get little opportunity to talk straight from the shoulder to you…. Even if they had the chance," he said, with a look about him, "they would not dare. To be respectful and to show no resentment mean their bread and butter."

"Resentment?" said Bonbright. "You see I am new to the business and to this. What is it they resent?"

"They resent being exploited for the profit of men like yourself….
They resent your having the power of life and death over them…."

The girl stood looking from one man to the other; from Dulac, tall, picturesquely handsome, flamboyant, conscious of the effect of each word and gesture, to Bonbright, equally tall, something broader, boyish, natural in his unease, his curiosity. She saw how like he was to his slender, aristocratic father. She compared the courtesy of his manner toward Dulac with Dulac's studied brusqueness, conscious that the boy was natural, honest, really endeavoring to find out what this thing was all about; equally conscious that Dulac was exercising the tricks of the platform and utilizing the situation theatrically. Yet he was utilizing it for a purpose with which she was heart and soul in sympathy. It was right he should do so….

"I wish we might sit down and talk about it," said Bonbright. "There seem to be two sides in the works, mine and father's—and the men. I don't see why there should be, and I'd like to have you tell me. You see, this is my first day in the business, so I don't understand my own side of it, or why I should have a side—much less the side of the men. I hadn't imagined anything of the sort…. I wish you would tell me all about it. Will you?"

The boy's tone was so genuine, his demeanor so simple and friendly, that Dulac's weapons were quite snatched from his hands. A crowd of the men he was sent to organize was looking on—a girl was looking on. He felt the situation demanded he should show he was quite as capable of courtesy as this young sprig of the aristocracy, for he knew comparisons were being made between them.

"Why," said he, "certainly…. I shall be glad to."

"Thank you," said Bonbright. "Good night." He turned to the girl and lifted his hat. "Thank YOU," said he, and eyes in which there was no unfriendliness followed him as he walked away, eyes of men whom Dulac was recruiting for the army of the "other side" of the social struggle.

He hurried home because he wanted to see his father and to discuss this thing with him.

"If there is a conflict," he said to himself, "in our business, workingmen against employer, I suppose I am on the employer's side. THEY have their reasons. We must have our reasons, too. I must have father explain it all to me."

His mother called to him as he was ascending the stairs:

"Be as quick as you can, Bonbright. We have guests at dinner to-night."

"Some one I know?"

"I think not," His mother hesitated. "We were not acquainted when you went to college, but they have become very prominent in the past four years…. Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm Lightener—and their daughter,"

Bonbright noticed the slight pause before the mention of the daughter, and looked quickly at his mother. She looked as quickly away.

"All right, mother," he said.

He went to his room with another disturbance added to the many that disquieted him. Just as certainly as if his mother had put it into words he knew she had selected this Lightener girl to be Mrs. Bonbright Foote VII—and the mother of Bonbright Foote VIII.

"Confound it," he said, "it's started already…. Dam Bonbright Foote
VIII!"