"I've had my eye for some time on a tract of land down in Texas, forty thousand acres. It shall never be said of John Rawn that he forgot either his state or his fellow-man in the time of his success. When we get our motors going here—it will be, of course, a few years before the full effect of it all is felt—why then I'm going to colonize hundreds of these discarded workmen on this land in Texas. They can put in their labor there, where it will be useful, and can produce a living for themselves and a surplus for others. In short, it has been my plan to put them where they could continue to be useful to society. I wouldn't want to see them starve!" Mr. Rawn's lip quivered at this thought. He felt himself to be a very tender-hearted man.
V
"Yes," said Halsey grimly, "the Czar of Russia had some such notion regarding the serfs. Yet he freed them eventually."
"Nonsense! They'll be not in the least serfs, but will simply be men transferred by a higher intelligence to a plane of life which otherwise they could not reach—a plane where they can be of use not only to themselves but to others."
"You're always talking, my son," went on Rawn, harshly, "about helping your fellow-man, loving him like a brother—human equality, and all that sort of rot. What have any of you ever really done for each other, I'd like to know, except to meet up there in garrets, with lanterns hanging around, and discuss plans for taking away from stronger men the property they have accumulated? Now, I'm not going to take it out in talk—I'm going to do something for these people. I'm going to make Texas the place for my colony, because I don't want to deprive my native state of the credit of producing a man who had two big ideas—cheap power, and common sense in labor. There's two big ideas."
"I wouldn't dare tell the men anything of that," was Halsey's comment. "It's hard enough as it is."
"No, certainly not. We'll just go on and take our chances with these men; and they take their chances with us. You have my instructions to discharge any man who kicks on the wage cut, if he doesn't fire himself. The town's full of men with families, who aren't earning enough to eat. You can get all the help you want. Tell them we're open shop, and if they don't like it they can do their worst. Let them bring on their dynamite, if they want to try that—they can have all the fight they want; and I'll stay with it until I see them crawl."
"There's something I don't understand about it, Mr. Rawn. The men are very sullen. The foremen tell me that they never had so much trouble. Of course, they don't understand it themselves, but it's just as though our secret was getting out, and as if the men were afraid of cutting their own throats when they build these machines. Not that they understand what it's all about—it's air tight yet, that's sure."
"You begin to see some of the practical results of your infernal socialistic ideas, don't you, then? You'll come to my notion of life after a while."
"Mr. Rawn, what's the end of that? What's the logical conclusion?"