Bull's ejaculation was sharp.
"They hold meetings there. They dope out Capital and Labour stuff there, instead of pushing games at each other. Guess they got the bug of politics an' are scratching themselves bad. It ain't the old Labrador guys, Skert says. It's mostly new hands passin' their stuff on. Skert reckons we got a whole heap of the Skandinavia 'throw-outs,' around here now. That don't say Skandinavia's workin' monkey tricks. Though they might be. You see, this sort of dope's been talked most everywhere, except on Labrador, years now. I guess we need to go through the bunch with a louse comb. But maybe the mischief's done. I'm dead crazy to shut that darn place down."
"Don't!" Bull was emphatic. "Shut it down and you'll make it a thousand times worse. No, sir. Let 'em shout. Let 'em blow off any old steam they need. Just sit tight. If it's the usual hot air there's nothing much coming of it up here on Labrador. There's this to remember. We're a thousand miles of hell's own winter, and a pretty tough sea, from the politicians who spend their lives befooling a crowd of unthinking muttons. Pay 'em well, and feed 'em well, and they've the horse sense to know there ain't no electric stoves out in the Labrador forests in winter. That way we don't need to worry. If it's the Skandinavia tricks it's different. They'll play the game to the finish. It don't signify a curse if you close down the recreation shanty or not. We've got to meet it as a competition, and fight it the way we'd fight any other."
Bat's eyes snapped.
"That's the kind of dope Skert Lawton's handed me," he protested.
"And Skert's a wise guy," came the prompt retort.
Quite suddenly Bat flung out his gnarled hands.
"Hell!" he cried violently. "Have we got to sit around like mush-men, while the rats are chawin' our vitals. Fifteen or sixteen year I've handled this lay-out without a growl I couldn't kick plumb out o' the feller who made it. Now—now, because of a fool play I made, I've got to set the kid gloves on my hands, sayin' 'thank you,' while the boys git up and plug me between the eyes. No, sir. It ain't my way. It's me for the shot gun in the stern of the gopher all the time. It's me to mush up the features of any hoboe who don't know better than to grin when I'm throwin' the hot air. I can't stand for the politics of labour where I hand out the wage. A man's a man to me, not one darn slobber of policy. I'm goin' to jump in on that talk. And when I'm thro'—"
"You'll get all the trouble in the world plumb on your neck." Bull's fine eyes were alight with humour. He revelled in the fighting spirit of the older man. "Here, Bat," he cried, "I'm a fool kid beside you. I don't begin to know my job when I think of you. But I'm up sides with all the politics games. Politics are ideals, notions. They haven't real horse sense within a mile. They're just the fool thoughts of folk who haven't better to do than sit around and think, and talk, an' see how they can make other folk conform to the things they think. That's all right. It's human nature in its biggest conceit, or it's another way of helping themselves without pushing a shovel. It don't matter which it is. But what I want to impress on you is, it's the biggest thing in life. It's the whole thing in life. Get a notion and think it hard enough, and talk it hard enough, and you'll hypnotise a hundred brains bigger than your own, and sweep the crowd with you. You'll even hypnotise yourself into believing the truth of a thing your better sense knows isn't true, never was true, an' couldn't be true anyway. And when you're fixed that way you'll die for your notion. Oh, a politician ain't yearning for any old grave. He wouldn't get an audience there. Politicians 'ud hate to die worse than a condemned man. But that's the queer of it; he'd die rather than give up a notion he's built up. He'd hate to death to push a blue pencil through it and—try again. All of which means, bar the doors of this recreation room parliament, and you'll start up a hundred such parliaments, and worse, throughout your enterprise here on Labrador, and you'll finish by wrecking the whole blessed concern."
If Bull looked for yielding he was disappointed. But he appreciated the twinkle that had crept into the lumberman's stern eyes. The answer he received was a curiously expressive grunt as the man took out his timepiece and consulted it. When he saw him rise abruptly from his chair, Bull felt that if his talk had not had the effect he desired it had not been wholly wasted.