"No," says J. Q., "and I have no desire to. I haven't been inside one of our mills in fifteen years."
"I see," says Eggy. "You keep in touch with your employees through—er—your bankbook? But is it fair to judge them as men and women wholly on their ability to produce dividends for you?"
"As an employer of labor, what other test would you have me apply?" says J. Q.
"Then you are classing them with machines," says Eggy.
"No," says Mr. Hubbard. "I can depend upon my looms not to go on strike."
"But you own your looms," says Eggleston. "Your loom tenders are human beings."
"When they mob strike breakers they behave more like wild animals, and then you've got to treat 'em as such," raps back J. Q.
"Are you quite certain that the standards of humanity you set up are just?" asks Eggy. "You know people are beginning to question your absolute right to fix arbitrarily the hours and wages and conditions of labor. They are suggesting that your mills produce tuberculosis as well as cloth. They are showing that, in your eagerness for dividends, you work women and children too long, and that you don't pay them a living wage."
"Rot!" snorts J. Q. "These are all the mushy theories of sentimentalists. What else are these foreigners good for?"
"Ah, there you get to it!" says Eggy. "Aren't they too valuable to be ground up in your dusty mills? Can they not be made into useful citizens?"