"I don't know whether it seems to me very clever to bring on a strike," said Osmond. "It would seem to me a great triumph to make ten thousand men feel justly. Resistance isn't the greatest thing to me. I should want to know whether it was noble to resist."
"Ah, but it is noble! Resistance—for themselves, their children, their children's children."
Osmond was looking away at the horizon, a whimsical smile coming about the corners of his mouth.
"Yes, Pete," he said. "But you paint your pictures."
"Now you own I'm right! Isn't it anything to move ten thousand men to throw down their tools and go on strike?"
"Well, by thunder!" Osmond had awakened. "Now you put it that way, I don't know whether it is or not. That phrase undid you. Lay down their tools? Show me the man that makes me take up my tools in reverence and sobriety, because good work is good religion. That's what I'd like."
"But it means something,—starvation, maybe, death. You don't recognize it, do you? You won't recognize the war that's on—oh, it is on!—between Capital and Labor, between the high places and the low. It's war, and it's got to be fought out."
"I do recognize it, lad." He spoke gently, thinking of his own lot, and the hard way through which he had come to his almost fevered championship of whatever was maimed or hurt. "Only, Pete, do you know what your opposing forces need? They need grannie."
"To say it's the will of God?"
"To be wheeled out in her chair, and sit at the head of your armies and say, 'Love God. Love one another.' If they love God, they'll listen to Him. If they love one another your strikes will end to-morrow, and your rich man will break bread with your poor one, and your poor one will lose hatred for the rich. You need grandmother."