with ten times my knowledge were barred. I remember
with a touch of shame the institute of scientific research where the
chief of the place took a whole afternoon to show me around, and while I
looked wise and tried to feel thrilled over glass tubes and jars and
microscopes through which I peered at microbes, a simple old country
doctor, one of the thousands of _common_ visitors, by my invitation
followed humbly in my wake, murmuring from time to time,

"Miraculous, by George, astounding!" And gratefully pressing my hand at
the end, "This has been the chance of a lifetime," he said.

Perhaps the principal reason why I got so warm a welcome was the name I
had already made as a writer of glory stories. I liked these men; I
liked to enthuse over all the big things they were doing. And still true
to my efficiency god, the immense importance of getting things done
loomed so high in my view of life as to overshadow everything else. My
sense of moral values changed.

It was a strange unmoral world.

In the institute of science these keen laboratory gods (who had seemed
so cold and comfortless to me but a few short years ago) were perfecting
a cure for syphilis. Strong men were removing the wages of sin!

In Chicago I met the president of a huge industrial company who had
found it necessary at times to use money on politicians. For this he had
been sent to jail, but later his influence got him out. Promptly he was
made treasurer of another company. In one year, through his energy, now
more intense than ever, the business of that company increased some
thirty-five per cent., whereupon the directors of the original
corporation, after a stormy meeting in which two church deacon directors
fussed and fumed considerably, unanimously decided to ask him to come
back. He did. He told me the story quite frankly himself. I admired him
tremendously.

The head of a mining company sat in his office one afternoon and talked
of the labor problem. There was no right or wrong involved, he said, it
was simply a matter of force. Once when a strike threatened he had
called in a "labor expert" who had used money wholesale and there had
been no strike.

"Well?" he asked, smiling. "What do you think of it?"

"I think I can't print it." He still smiled.

"Naturally not. But what do you think? If you yourself were responsible
to several hundred stockholders, what would you do? Risk a strike that
might wipe out their dividends? Or would you res