RUTH. But that is impossible!
PLIM. Nothing of the kind, Rutherford! No, no... we must go back of all that! It is in the hearts of the people that we must erect our defenses. It is the spirit of this godless and skeptical age that is undermining order. We must teach the people the truths of religion. We must inculcate lessons of sobriety and thrift, of reverence for constituted authority. We must set our faces against these new preachers of license and infidelity... we must go back to the old-time faith... to love, and charity, and self-sacrifice...
HAGEN. [Interrupting.] That's it! You've got it there!
IS. [Amazed.] Why...
PLIM. Sir?
HAGEN. You've said it! Set the parsons after them! Teach them heaven! Set them to singing about harps and golden crowns, and milk and honey flowing! Then you can shut them up in slums and starve them, and they won't know the difference. Teach them non-resistance and self-renunciation! You've got the phrases all pat... handed out from heaven direct! Take no thought saying what ye shall eat! Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth! Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's!
IS. Why... this is preposterous!
PLIM. This is blasphemy!
HAGEN. You're Plimpton... Plimpton, the coal baron, I take it. I know you by your pictures. You shut up little children by tens of thousands to toil for you in the bowels of the earth. You crush your rivals, and form a trust, and screw up prices to freeze the poor in winter! And you... [to RUTHERFORD] you're Rutherford, the steel king, I take it. You have slaves working twelve hours a day and seven days a week in your mills. And you mangle them in hideous accidents, and then cheat their widows of their rights... and then you build churches, and set your parsons to preach to them about love and self-sacrifice! To teach them charity, while you crucify justice! To trick them with visions of an imaginary paradise, while you pick their pockets upon earth! To put arms in their hands, and send them to shoot their brothers, in the name of the Prince of Peace!
RUTH. This is outrageous!