nt man would have done. But in
America we have become a hodge-podge of every race. We have no national
ideals. You can't tell me now of a single national ideal you and I are
working for or even thinking about. You can't tell me what an American
is, or I you. Get me?"

Oscar nodded, his tanned face keen with interest.

"Now the time has come when if you or I want any particular one of the
old New England ideals to live in this country we have got to fight for
it, start an educational campaign for it. If we don't, the Russian Jews
or the Italians or the Syrians will change things to suit their own
ideals. Now they may be all right. Their ideals may be as good as mine.
They have every right to be here and to rule if they can. But I don't
like the kind of government they stood for in their native countries.

"I'm a pig-headed Anglo-Saxon, full of an egotism that dies hard. I
believe that the Reclamation Service idea is an outgrowth of the fine
democracy that our fathers brought to New England. I believe that the
folks that are going to inherit America can't afford to lose the idea of
the Service and I'm going to fight for it now till they get me. Am I
clear?"

"Sure," said Oscar. "Ain't I of Puritan stock myself?"

"That's why I'm talking to you," said Jim. "Now I take the central idea
of the United States Reclamation Service to be this. It is a return to
the old principle of the people governing themselves directly, of their
assuming individual responsibility for the details and cost of
governing. It is the fine outgrowth of the industrial lessons we have
learned in the past years, combined with the town meeting idea, brought
up to date.

"One central organization can do work better and cheaper, if it will,
than a dozen competing interests. If the central organization is
privately owned it demands a heavy profit. But if it is owned by the
government it takes no profit. On a Project, free individuals
voluntarily combine to do business and to directly administer the
products of that business to themselves. The Service is merely the tool
of the people on the Projects.

"Oscar, it's up to you and me. In antagonizing you farmers, I've opened
the way for the enemies of the Service to reach you. And you, in being
reached, are endangering the Service. Is it true that you are going to
help Saradokis and Fleckenstein get your honest debts repudiated?"

The two men sat and stared at each other, Oscar with his years of
unutt