stomachs.

This convinced me that the investigator was a false alarm. If corned
beef was poison, as he said, there wouldn't be a working man alive in
America. But millions have eaten corned beef all their lives and have
thrived on it. Things are never one tenth so bad as the agitators
say. They merely take the heart out of men and send them back to work
weakened and unhappy.

This fellow had a favorite joke which he sprang every meal. After
sniffing at the soup and meat and cabbage he would exclaim: "Hebrews,
13-8." We thought it was some jibe about the fat pork, and after he had
sprung it every day for a week we learned that he was hitting at the
monotony of the diet. The verse in the Bible reads:

"Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever."

The fellow came into the mills and sympathized with us because we worked
with our shirts off. To withstand the heat we stripped to the waist.
We didn't want to wear a shirt. It would have clung to our flesh and
hampered our moving muscles. We were freer and cooler without any cloth
to smother us. It was a privilege to go shirtless. Adam enjoyed that
blessing in the Garden of Eden. And when he sinned they punished him by
putting a shirt, collar and necktie on him. And yet this theorist in the
mills demanded working conditions that would let us wear shirts. Why?
Who was asking for shirts? Only he, and he had a shirt. In their own
words, the fellows would have enjoyed making him eat it.

CHAPTER XXXV. AN UPLIFTER RULED BY ENVY

The uplifter saw the men between heats drinking beer out of tin pails.

"Why do those big fine fellows drink beer," he asked me, "when they have
plenty of water?"

I asked him: "Why don't you drink beer?"

"It makes me bilious," he replied. "If I drink one glass of beer every
day for a week it upsets me and I get weak and dizzy."

"Do you think that one drink of beer a day will upset those fellows and
make them dizzy?"

"Evidently not."

"Then when you oppose beer you are doing it to keep yourself from
getting sick, aren't you? Do you really care a darn whether those
fellows get sick at the stomach or not?"

"Certainly, I--"

"You don't want them to get sick at the stomach?"

"Then, why did you give that lecture on corned beef and make those
strong fellows all sick at the stomach while you enjoyed your own
dinner?"

"I didn't know it would disturb them so. Besides I wanted to keep them
from getting sick later."

"We