Fred Starratt bared his teeth in sudden snapping anger. "Well, and what do you do, Mr. Hilmer, for your clerks?"
"Nothing … absolutely nothing … unless they demand it. And even then it's only the exceptional man who can force me into a corner. The average clerk in any country is like a gelded horse. He's been robbed of his power by education … of a sort. He's a reasonable, rational, considerate beast that can be broken to any harness."
"What do you want us to do? Go on a strike and heave bricks into your plate-glass window?… What would you do in our place?"
"I wouldn't be there, to begin with. I've heaved bricks in my day." He leaned forward, exhibiting his smashed thumb and forefinger. "I killed the man who did that to me. I was born in a Norwegian fishing village and after a while I followed the sea. That's a good school for action. And what education you get is thrashed into you. The little that sticks doesn't do much more than toughen you. And if you don't want any more it does well enough. Later on, if you have a thirst for knowledge, you drink the brand you pick yourself and it doesn't go to your head. Now with you … you didn't have any choice. You drank up what they handed out and, at the age when you could have made a selection, your taste was formed … by others… I don't mind people kicking at the man who works with his hands if they know what they're talking about. But most of them don't. They get the thing second hand. They're chock full of loyalty to superiors and systems and governments, just from habit… I've worked with my hands, and I've fought for a half loaf of bread with a dirk knife, and I know all the dirty, rotten things of life by direct contact. So when I disagree with the demands of the men who build my vessels I know why I'm disagreeing. And I usually do disagree … because if they've got guts enough in them they'll fight. And I like a good fight. That's why potting clerks is such a tame business. It's almost as sickening as a rabbit drive."
He finished with a gesture of contempt and reached for his goblet of water.
Starratt decided not to dodge the issue; if Hilmer wished to throw any further mud he was perfectly ready to stand up and be the target.
"Well, and what's the remedy for stiffening the backbone of my sort?" he asked, with polite insolence.
"Stiffening the backbone of the middle class is next to impossible. They've been bowing and scraping until there's a permanent kink in their backs!"
"The 'middle class'?" Helen echoed, incredulously.
Hilmer was smiling widely. There was a strange, embarrassed silence. Starratt was the first to recover himself. "Why, of course!… Why not? You didn't think we belonged to any other class, did you?"