enjoy it, as if it were possible or
desirable to choke off initiative and adventure or to devise a society
in which the man whose ambition is to avoid work will set the pace for
the man who loves it for itself and whose discontent goads him on to
self-improvement! As if it were possible or desirable for the man who
works half-heartedly eight hours a day to keep down the man who works
whole-souledly eighteen hours a day! For time is power.

Even the benefits the modern laborer enjoys are largely the result of
intervention in his behalf by successful men of enterprise who thrust
upon the toiler the comforts, the safeguards, and the very privileges
he will not or cannot seek for himself.

During the war the employers of labor, the generals of these
tremendous armies, were everlastingly alert to find some means to
stimulate them to do themselves justice. The best artists of the
country devised eloquent posters, and these were stuck up everywhere,
reminding the laborer that he was the partner of the soldier. Orators
visited the yards and harangued the men. After each appeal there was a
brief spurt of enthusiasm that showed what miracles could be
accomplished if they had not lapsed almost at once into the usual
sullen drudgery.

There were appeals to thrift also. The government needed billions of
dollars, needed them so badly that the pennies of the poorest man must
be sought for. Few of the workmen had the faintest idea of saving. The
wives of some of them were humbly provident, but many of them were
debt-runners in the shops and wasters in the kitchens.

A gigantic effort was put forth to teach the American people thrift.
The idea of making small investments in government securities was
something new. Bonds were supposed to be for bankers and plutocrats.
Vast campaigns of education were undertaken, and the rich implored the
poor to lay aside something for a rainy day. The rich invented schemes
to wheedle the poor to their own salvation. So huge had been the
wastefulness before that the new fashion produced billions upon
billions of investments in Liberty Bonds, and hundreds of millions in
War Savings Stamps.

Bands of missionaries went everywhere, to the theaters, the
moving-picture houses, the schools, the shops, the factories,
preaching the new gospel of good business and putting it across in the
name of patriotism.

One of these troupes of crusaders marched upon Davidge's shipyard. And
with it came Nicky Easton a