of the fightingest."

"That's what I'm comin' to believe," said Iddings. "The workman will
never get his rights unless he fights for 'em."

"Never."

"And if he wants to get rich he's got to fight the rich."

"No. He wants to make sure he's fighting his real enemies and fighting
with weapons that won't be boomerangs."

"I don't get that last."

"Look here, Iddings, there are a lot of damned fools filling workmen's
heads with insanity, telling them that their one hope of happiness is
to drag down the rich, to blow up the factories or take control of
'em, to bankrupt the bankers and turn the government upside down. If
they can't get a majority at the polls they won't pay any attention to
the polls or the laws. They'll butcher the police and assassinate the
big men. But that game can't win. It's been tried again and again by
discontented idiots who go out and kill instead of going out to work.

"You can't get rich by robbing the rich and dividing up their money.
If you took all that Rockefeller is said to have and divided it up
among the citizens of the country you'd get four or five dollars
apiece at most, and you'd soon lose that.

"Rockefeller started as a laboring-man at wages you wouldn't look at
to-day. The laboring-men alongside could have made just as much as he
did if they'd a mind to. Somebody said he could have written
Shakespeare's plays if he had a mind to, and Lamb said, 'Yes, if you'd
a mind to.' The thing seems to be to be born with a mind to and to
cultivate a mind to.

"You take Rockefeller's money away and he'll make more while you're
fumbling with what you've got. Take Shakespeare's plays away and he'll
write others while you're scratching your head.

"Don't let 'em fool you, Iddings, into believing that rich men get
rich by stealing. We all cheat more or less, but no man ever built up
a big fortune by plain theft. Men make money by making it.

"Karl Marx, who wrote your 'Workmen's Bible,' called capital a
vampire. Well, there aren't any vampires except in the movies.

"Speaking of vamping wealth, did you ever hear how I got where I
am?--not that it's so very far and not that I like to talk about
myself--but just to show you how true your man Marx is.

"I was a working-man and worked hard. I put by a little out of what I
made. Of nights I studied. I learned all ends of the ship-building
business in a way. But I needed money to get free. It never occurred
to me to claim somebody else's m