cooked-up wage-scales and minimum salaries and
government commissions and labor federations and all that poppycock.

"What is not generally understood is that this whole industrial matter
isn't a question of economics. It's essentially and only a matter
of Love, and of the practical application of the Christian religion!
Imagine a factory--instead of committees of workmen alienating the boss,
the boss goes among them smiling, and they smile back, the elder brother
and the younger. Brothers, that's what they must be, loving brothers,
and then strikes would be as inconceivable as hatred in the home!"

It was at this point that Babbitt muttered, "Oh, rot!"

"Huh?" said Chum Frink.

"He doesn't know what he's talking about. It's just as clear as mud. It
doesn't mean a darn thing."

"Maybe, but--"

Frink looked at him doubtfully, through all the service kept glancing at
him doubtfully, till Babbitt was nervous.

II

The strikers had announced a parade for Tuesday morning, but Colonel
Nixon had forbidden it, the newspapers said. When Babbitt drove west
from his office at ten that morning he saw a drove of shabby men heading
toward the tangled, dirty district beyond Court House Square. He hated
them, because they were poor, because they made him feel insecure "Damn
loafers! Wouldn't be common workmen if they had any pep," he complained.
He wondered if there was going to be a riot. He drove toward the
starting-point of the parade, a triangle of limp and faded grass known
as Moore Street Park, and halted his car.

The park and streets were buzzing with strikers, young men in blue denim
shirts, old men with caps. Through them, keeping them stirred like a
boiling pot, moved the militiamen. Babbitt could hear the soldiers'
monotonous orders: "Keep moving--move on, 'bo--keep your feet warm!"
Babbitt admired their stolid good temper. The crowd shouted, "Tin
soldiers," and "Dirty dogs--servants of the capitalists!" but the
militiamen grinned and answered only, "Sure, that's right. Keep moving,
Billy!"

Babbitt thrilled over the citizen-soldiers, hated the scoundrels who
were obstructing the pleasant ways of prosperity, admired Colonel
Nixon's striding contempt for the crowd; and as Captain Clarence Drum,
that rather puffing shoe-dealer, came raging by, Babbitt respectfully
clamored, "Great work, Captain! Don't let 'em march!" He watched the
strikers filing from the park. Many of them bore posters with "They
can't stop