“I don’t mean the men in these works, but all workingmen everywhere.”
“Rather a large order, Marsten.”
“I know it is, but I feel equal to filling it.”
“I don’t suppose you imagine I make you this offer because I am afraid of you as secretary of the Union.”
“Oh, no. I am well aware that you want to avoid a fight, and I know you are afraid of nothing except that your directors will not back you through to a finish.”
“Do you imagine that your own backers are as adamant?”
“No. My weakness is Gibbons and his gang. Yours is the board of directors. One neutralizes the other, so it will be an interesting fight.”
“Make no mistake, my boy; a capitalist will back his man ten times as long as a worker will his.”
“I haven’t your intense admiration for the capitalist. Mr. Hope promised me, almost with tears in his eyes, to look after my future when he found I was working to settle the other strike which so terrorized him. I and my friends succeeded in breaking up the strike, yet you discharged me a week after, and I doubt if Mr. Hope ever gave a thought to his promise from that day to this. Your capitalist is notoriously timid and thoroughly selfish. The workingman has his faults, of course, and he is himself the greatest sufferer from them; but in generosity he is miles ahead of any capitalist that ever lived.”
“Then you are determined to fight, Marsten?”