"What's the idea? Do you want us to give those hell-hounds love and
kisses, or what?" said Orville Jones.

"Do you defend a lot of hoodlums that are trying to take the bread and
butter away from our families?" raged Professor Pumphrey.

Vergil Gunch intimidatingly said nothing. He put on sternness like a
mask; his jaw was hard, his bristly short hair seemed cruel, his silence
was a ferocious thunder. While the others assured Babbitt that they must
have misunderstood him, Gunch looked as though he had understood only
too well. Like a robed judge he listened to Babbitt's stammering:

"No, sure; course they're a bunch of toughs. But I just mean--Strikes me
it's bad policy to talk about clubbing 'em. Cabe Nixon doesn't. He's
got the fine Italian hand. And that's why he's colonel. Clarence Drum is
jealous of him."

"Well," said Professor Pumphrey, "you hurt Clarence's feelings, George.
He's been out there all morning getting hot and dusty, and no wonder he
wants to beat the tar out of those sons of guns!"

Gunch said nothing, and watched; and Babbitt knew that he was being
watched.

III

As he was leaving the club Babbitt heard Chum Frink protesting to Gunch,
"--don't know what's got into him. Last Sunday Doc Drew preached a
corking sermon about decency in business and Babbitt kicked about that,
too. Near 's I can figure out--"

Babbitt was vaguely frightened.

IV

He saw a crowd listening to a man who was talking from the rostrum of a
kitchen-chair. He stopped his car. From newspaper pictures he knew that
the speaker must be the notorious freelance preacher, Beecher Ingram,
of whom Seneca Doane had spoken. Ingram was a gaunt man with flamboyant
hair, weather-beaten cheeks, and worried eyes. He was pleading:

"--if those telephone girls can hold out, living on one meal a day,
doing their own washing, starving and smiling, you big hulking men ought
to be able--"

Babbitt saw that from the sidewalk Vergil Gunch was watching him. In
vague disquiet he started the car and mechanically drove on, while
Gunch's hostile eyes seemed to follow him all the way.

V

"There's a lot of these fellows," Babbitt was complaining to his wife,
"that think if workmen go on strike they're a regular bunch of fiends.
Now, of course, it's a fight between sound business and the destructive
element, and we got to lick the stuffin's out of 'em when they challenge
us, but doggoned if I see why we can't fight like gentlemen and not