Davidge went on:
“That’s a business man’s life, my dear––eternally making things that won’t sell, putting his soul and his capital and his preparation into a pile of stock that nobody will take off his hands. But he has to go right on, borrowing money and pledging the past for the future and never knowing whether his dreams will turn out to be dollars or––junk!”
Mamise realized for the first time the pathos, the higher drama of the manufacturer’s world, that world which poets and some other literary artists do not describe because they are too ignorant, too petty, too bookish. They sneer at the noble word commercial as if it were a reproach!
Mamise, however, looked on Davidge in his swivel-chair as a kind of despondent demigod, a Titan weary of the eternal strife. She tried to rise beyond a poetical height to the clouds of the practical.
“What will you do with all the workmen who are on that job?”
Davidge grinned. “They’re announcing their monthly strike for higher wages––threatening to lay off the force. It’d serve ’em right to take ’em at their word for a while. But you simply can’t fight a labor union according to Queensbery rules, so I’ll give ’em the raise and put ’em on another ship.”
“And the Mamise will be idle and neglected for three months.”
“Just about.”
“The Germans couldn’t have done much worse by her, could they?”