s I
have to take everybody's lip, because I can't strike. I can't go to my
boss and demand higher wages and easier hours, because my boss is the
market. But I don't suppose there's anything on earth that interests
you less than labor problems."

"They might if I knew the first thing about them."

"Well, the first thing is that they are the next war, the big war
after this one's over. The job is to keep it down till peace comes.
Then hell will pop--if you'll pardon my French. I'm all for labor
getting its rights, but some of the men don't want the right to
work--they want the right to loaf. I say let the sky be the limit of
any man's opportunity--the sky and his own limitations and ambitions.
But a lot of the workmen don't want opportunity; they've got no
ambition; they hate to build things. They talk about the terrible
conditions their families live in, and how gorgeously the rich men
live. But the rich men were poor once, and the poor can be rich--if
they can and will.

"The war is going to be the fight between the makers and the breakers,
the uplifters and the down-draggers, you might say. And it's going to
be some war!

"The men on the wrong side--what I call the wrong side, at least--are
just as much our enemies as the Germans. We've got to watch 'em just
as close. They'd just as soon burn an unfinished ship as the Germans
would sink her when she's on her way.

"That little ship I'm building now! Would you believe it? It has to be
guarded every minute. Most of our men are all right. They'd work
themselves to death for the ship, and they pour out their sweat like
prayers. But sneaks get in among 'em, and it only takes a fellow with
a bomb one minute to undo the six months' work of a hundred."

"Tell me about your ship," she said.

A ship she could understand. It was personal and real; labor theories
were as foreign to her as problems in metaphysics.

"Well, it's my first-born, this ship," he said. "Of course I've built
a lot of other ships, but they were for other people--just jobs, for
wages or commissions. This one is all my own--a freighter, ugly as sin
and commodious as hell--I beg your pardon! But the world needs
freighters--the hungry mobs of Europe, they'll be glad to see my
little ship come in, if ever she does. If she doesn't I'll-- But
she'll last a few trips before they submarine her--I guess."

He fell silent among his visions and left her to her own.

He saw himself wandering about a shipyar