"My sower of wheat!" murmured Lenore, seeing his rapt face through tears.
"Dreams are coming true," he said, softly. "Lenore, just after I saw you the second time—and fell so in love with you—I had vain dreams of you. But even my wildest never pictured you as the wife of a wheat farmer. I never dreamed you loved wheat."
"But, ah, I do!" replied Lenore. "Why, when I was born dad bought 'Many Waters' and sowed the slopes in wheat. I remember how he used to take me up to the fields all green or golden. I've grown up with wheat. I'd never want to live anywhere away from it. Oh, you must listen to me some day while I tell you what I know—about the history and romance of wheat."
"Begin," said Dorn, with a light of pride and love and wonder in his gaze.
"Leave that for some other time," interposed Anderson. "Son, would it surprise you if I'd tell you that I've switched a little in my ideas about the I.W.W.?"
"No," replied Dorn.
"Well, things happen. What made me think hard was the way that government man got results from the I.W.W. in the lumber country. You see, the government had to have an immense amount of timber for ships, an' spruce for aeroplanes. Had to have it quick. An' all the lumbermen an' loggers were I.W.W.—or most of them. Anyhow, all the strikin' lumbermen last summer belonged to the I.W.W. These fellows believed that under the capitalistic order of labor the workers an' their employers had nothin' in common, an' the government was hand an' glove with capital. Now this government official went up there an' convinced the I.W.W. that the best interest of the two were identical. An' he got the work out of them, an' the government got the lumber. He dealt with them fairly. Those who were on the level he paid high an' considered their wants. Those who were crooked he punished accordin' to their offense. An' the innocent didn't have to suffer with the guilty.
"That deal showed me how many of the I.W.W. could be handled. An' we've got to reckon with the I.W.W. Most all the farm-hands in the country belong to it. This summer I'll give the square harvesters what they want, an' that's a big come-down for me. But I won't stand any monkey-bizness from sore-headed disorganizers. If men want to work they shall have work at big pay. You will follow out this plan up in the Bend country. We'll meet this labor union half-way. After the war there may come trouble between labor an capital. It begins to seem plain to me that men who work hard ought to share somethin' of the profits. If that doesn't settle the trouble, then we'll know we're up against an outfit with socialist an' anarchist leaders. Time enough then to resort to measures I regret we practised last summer."
"Anderson, you're fine—you're as big as the hills!" burst out Dorn. "But you know there was bad blood here last summer. Did you ever get proof that German money backed the I.W.W. to strike and embarrass our government?"
"No. But I believe so, or else the I.W.W. leaders took advantage of a critical time. I'm bound to say that now thousands of I.W.W. laborers are loyal to the United States, and that made me switch."