HARNESS. [Ironically.] Is that your opinion too, sir—and yours— and yours? [The Directors do not answer.] Well, all I can say is: It's a kind of high and mighty aristocratic tone I thought we'd grown out of—seems I was mistaken.
ANTHONY. It's the tone the men use. Remains to be seen which can hold out longest—they without us, or we without them.
HARNESS. As business men, I wonder you're not ashamed of this waste of force, gentlemen. You know what it'll all end in.
ANTHONY. What?
HARNESS. Compromise—it always does.
SCANTLEBURY. Can't you persuade the men that their interests are the same as ours?
HARNESS. [Turning, ironically.] I could persuade them of that, sir, if they were.
WILDER. Come, Harness, you're a clever man, you don't believe all the Socialistic claptrap that's talked nowadays. There 's no real difference between their interests and ours.
HARNESS. There's just one very simple question I'd like to put to you. Will you pay your men one penny more than they force you to pay them?
[WILDER is silent.]