human
I guess that about covers my views, Grant--if any one should ask you.
gpt
It's you men who have no sense, he cried.
human
You think because I declare war on the profit system that I propose to sail out and overturn it with a few bombs over night. Look here, men; what I propose to do is to demonstrate right here in the Wahoo Valley, where there are all sorts of laboring people, skilled, unskilled, continuous, overpaid and underpaid, foreign and American--utterly unlike, incoherent, racially and industrially--that they have in them capacities for organizing; unused abilities, untried talents that will make them worthy to take a higher place in the economic scale than they now have. If I can amalgamate them, if I can weld them into a consistent, coherent labor mass--the Irish, the Slav, the Jews, the Italians, the Poles, the French, the Dutch, the Letts, and the Mexicans--put to some purpose the love of the poor for the poor, so that it will count industrially, you can't stop the revolution.
gpt
Go ahead, Grant, said Perry.
human
Play out all your line--show us your game.
gpt
Well, then--here's my game. For five years we've been collecting a district strike fund--all our own, that doesn't belong to any other organization or federation anywhere. It's ours here in the Wahoo. It's independent of any state or national control. I've collected it. It's been paid because these men here in the Valley have faith in me. We have practically never spent a penny of it. There are about ten thousand workers in the Valley--some, like the glassblowers, are the aristocracy of labor; others, like the breaker boys, are at the bottom of the scale. But we've kept wages up, kept conditions as high as they are anywhere in the country--and we've done it without strikes. They have faith in me. So we've assessed them according to their wages, and we have on hand, with assessments and interest, over a third of a million dollars.
human
You fellows think I'm a cream-puff reformer. I'm not. Now, then--I've talked it over with our board--we are going to invest that money in land up and down the Valley--put the women and children and old men on it--in tents--during the growing season, and cultivate that land in three-acre tracts intensively. Our Belgian glassblowers and smelter men have sent for their gardeners to teach us. Now it's merely a question of getting the land and doing the preliminary organization. We want to get as much land as we can. Now, there's my game. With that kind of a layout we can win any strike we call. And we can prove to the world that labor has the cohesive coöperating faculty required to manage the factories--to take a larger share of the income of industry, if you please. That's my revolution, gentlemen. And it's going to begin right here in the Wahoo Valley.
gpt
Well, returned Nate Perry,
human
Go it while you're young, piped the Doctor.
gpt
In just about eighteen months, you will be coming to me to go on your bond--to keep out of jail. I've seen new-fangled revolutions peter out before.
human
Just the same, replied Grant,
gpt
I've pinned my faith to these men and women. They are now working in fear of poverty. Give them hope of better things instead of fear and they will develop out of poverty, just as the middle class came out under the same stimulus.
human
I don't know anything about that, interrupted Perry,
gpt
When the day of the democracy of labor comes--and it will come and come soon--men like you will take leadership.
human
That's from his new opera, father,
gpt
Good Lord, exclaimed the Doctor,
human
I've heard so much of that opera that I caught myself prescribing a bar from the opening chorus for the grip the other day!
gpt
Well, Amos--that's mostly why I asked you to come up to-day. It wasn't for the society of your amateur revolutionist--you may be sure of that.
human
I suppose we may as well consider Lila and Kenyon as before the house?
gpt
Kenyon came to me last night, said Grant,
human
And that is what I wish to talk about, Grant, said the Doctor gently.
gpt
They don't know who Kenyon is--I mean, they don't know about his parentage.