"Not yet! We're still working on the clothes! There's a couple of hundred tons more to burn. After that, I don't know how many thousand tons of food!"
Bewildered, I returned to my original supposition that the men were mad. Yet it seemed to me that they looked normal enough.
"Beg pardon, friends," I asked, stepping to within a few feet of them, "I don't like to intrude, but I'm a stranger around these parts. Wonder if you'd mind telling what's in those boxes?"
I was now so close to the men that they could not see me clearly.
"You must be a stranger, if you don't know what's in them!" ejaculated one of the laborers. "I thought everyone knew!"
"Just what we've been saying!" added the other. "Food and clothing, of course!"
"Not good food and clothing?"
The two workers stared at me oddly. "Why not?" demanded the first of the pair. "The very best! We're getting rid of the country's overproduction!"
"Say, haven't you ever been to school?" challenged the second. "Don't you know that overproduction is bad for business? It causes depressions, low dividends, and low wages! So when we've made more of a product than anyone can buy, the only thing to do is to burn it! 'Burn your way to prosperity'—that's an old motto! The more we burn, the more prosperity!"