"How much more, then?"
"Why, a whole lot more!"
"What do you know?"
"I know what I've learned for myself and by myself. Gentlemen, it's on the table! Play the game! I did. I've had some of those college professors at work for me—they're the people that first got us locoed, anyhow. Rawn, or rather his son-in-law, got his first notion from his own professor in his college."
VI
"The real trouble with business to-day," interrupted the gray-bearded man, reverting to his universal and invariable grievance, "is that things are all going wrong with the American people. These Progressives down there at Washington have set this whole country by the ears—not even the Supreme Court can square things any more. The suspiciousness of the average man is getting to be almost criminal, that's what it is. The public thinks every man with money is a rascal. The public is damnably ungrateful. Look what we have done for this country, this little set of men sitting right here—what we've built for them, what we've paid out to them for wages! What are we getting in return? They envy us our daily bread, and by the Eternal! they'll come near putting us where we can't get that much longer! Look at the railway rate cases—it's robbery of the railways. Capital hasn't any chance any more! The public seems to be getting ready for anarchy; that's all."
"Isn't it the truth?" remarked the slender man sympathetically. "Still, we have to handle men as we find them, my friends. In my own case, I've been fighting the devil with a little of his own fire."
"How's that?"
"Well, for instance, I went out to see if I couldn't land that little secret of the receiving motor myself, as I just told you. If International doesn't want to take me in, or if I can't break in, maybe there can be another company formed—there's considerable corporation room left in New Jersey. You folks on the International have been having your own troubles with labor, haven't you?"
"Well, rather!" growled Ackerman. "We put that up to old Colonel J. R. Bonehead, our president! He seems to have got in about as nearly wrong as any one could with our esteemed friends of the labor unions!"