"Oh, he gives me enough to do. It's not that. It's the kind of thing."
"What's he want now?" Anne was going to say: "Another Christmas tree?" but the subject had closed itself naturally on Christmas night and neither had again referred to it.
"He wants to call a meeting of the strike leaders; the heads of the other unions he's afraid are going out in sympathy—a bunch of charity buttinskies, Rockefeller Foundation people and Russell Sage investigators, and—some of his own stock-holders. The thing's to be a cross between a directors' meeting and a church social. He's going to have refreshments served—after a friendly, informal talk, served by his private butler, brought down from the house for the occasion!"
Anne laughed. Roger smiled, and then laughed with her. "If it wasn't pitiful, wicked in a way, it's so dense and stupid, it would be a scream. Black Tom O'Connell, and the Reverend Kenneth Peabody Smythe—being buttled with expensive sandwiches."
Now that he had really started to talk about it, Roger felt the enthusiasm of communication sweep him. It was nice to talk again like this to Anne. The habit had dropped out lately, ever since the Christmas dinner.
"He's obsessed with the idea that if he can persuade Capital and Labor to eat a sandwich together, all will be harmony and brotherly love."
"The men will swallow their claims with their sandwich, as it were?"
"Exactly. And his directors will swallow their just grievances at the men's obstinacy, and everything will be exactly as it was before."
"Did you try to dissuade him?"
"No. It would do no good. He cannot or will not see the thing as an indicator. To him, each strike is a separate act of obstinacy, or anger, or a monetary demand on the part of the men. He concedes some to be just and some unjust, but the just ones are getting fewer, rapidly fewer. He sees the whole labor situation as a kind of rising shriek on the part of the workers, higher and higher, like angry and perverse children who have found a way to terrify their nurses. He's looked the shrieking baby over and can find no pins in its clothing and so he's going to give it a lollypop and tell it to be good. If it doesn't obey—he'll set it down with a thump and leave it to itself."