"It'll pull labor down on us. They'll say we can afford to pay such wages if you can."
"Well," said Bonbright, "can't you?"
"You've sowed a fine crop of discontent. It's damned unfair. You'll have every workingman in town flocking to you. You'll get the pick of labor."
"That's good business, isn't it?" Bonbright asked, with a smile. "Now, Mr. Lightener, there isn't any use thrashing me. The plan is going into effect. It isn't half baked. I haven't gone off half cocked. It is carefully planned and thought out—and it will work. There'll be flurries for a few days, and then things will come back to the normal for you fellows…. I wish it wouldn't. You're a lot better able than I am to do what I'm doing, and you know it. If you can, you ought to."
"No man has a right to go ahead deliberately and upset business."
"I'm not upsetting it. I'm merely being fair, and that's what business should have been years ago. I'm able to pay a five-dollar minimum, and labor earns it. Then it ought to have it. If you can pay only a four-dollar minimum, then you should pay it. Labor earns it for you…. If there's a man whose labor earns for him only a dollar and seventy-five cents a day, and that man pays it, he's doing as much at I am…"
"Bonbright," said Malcolm Lightener, getting to his feet, "I'm damn disappointed in you."
"Come in a year and tell me so, then I'll listen to you," said
Bonbright.
"This nonsense won't last a year. It won't pan out. You'll have to give it up, and then what? You'll be in a devil of a pickle, won't you?"
"All you see is that five dollars. In a day or two the whole plan will be ready. I'm having it printed in a pamphlet, and I'll send you one. If you read it carefully and can come back and tell me it's nonsense, then I don't know you. You might let me go under suspended sentence at least."