DR. JONATHAN. Frye is a good man.
ASHER. George is hit by a shell and almost killed nearly a month ago, and not a word do I hear of it until I get that message in your house yesterday! Then comes this other telegram this morning. What's to be said about a government capable of such inefficiency? Of course the chances of his landing today are small, but I can't leave for New York until tonight because that same government sends a labour investigator here to pry into my affairs, and make a preliminary report. They're going to decide whether or not I shall keep my property or hand it over to them! And whom do they send? Not a business man, who's had practical experience with labour, but a professor out of some university,—a theorist!
DR. JONATHAN. Awkward people, these professors. But what would you do about it, Asher? Wall up the universities?
ASHER. Their trustees, who are business men, should forbid professors meddling in government and politics. This fellow had the impudence to tell me to my face that my own workmen, whom I am paying, aren't working for me. I'm only supposed to be supplying the capital. We talk about Germany being an autocracy it's nothing to what this country has become!
DR. JONATHAN (smiling). An autocracy of professors instead of business men. Well, every dog has his day. And George is coming home.
ASHER. And what is there left to hand over to him if he lives? What future has the Pindar Shops,—which I have spent my life to build up?
DR. JONATHAN. If George lives, as we hope, you need not worry about the future of the Pindar Shops, I think.
AUGUSTA. If God will only spare him!
ASHER. I guess I've about got to the point where I don't believe that a God exists.
(A flash and a loud peal of thunder.)