estroy as much as we use, fish,
timber--everything. Everybody for himself and the devil take the
hindmost."

"Well, I don't know what _we_ can do about it," Stubby drawled.

"Keep from being the hindmost," MacRae answered. "But I sometimes feel
sorry for those who are."

"Man," Stubby observed, "is a predatory animal. You can't make anything
else of him. Nobody develops philanthropy and the public spirit until he
gets rich and respectable. Social service is nothing but a theory yet.
God only helps those who help themselves."

"How does he arrange it for those who _can't_ help themselves?" MacRae
inquired.

Stubby shrugged his shoulders.

"Search me," he said.

"Do you even believe in this anthropomorphic God of the preachers?"
MacRae asked curiously.

"Well, there must be something, don't you think?" Stubby hedged.

"There may be," MacRae pursued the thought. "I read a book by Wells not
long ago in which he speaks of God as the Great Experimenter. If there
is an all-powerful Deity, it strikes me that in his attitude toward
humanity he is a good deal like a referee at a football game who would
say to the teams, 'Here is the ball and the field and the two goals. Go
to it,' and then goes off to the side lines to smoke his pipe while the
players foul and gouge and trip and generally run amuck in a frenzied
effort to win the game."

"You're a pessimist," Stubby declared.

"What is a pessimist?" MacRae demanded.

But Stubby changed the subject. He was not concerned with abstractions.
And he was vitally concerned with the material factors of his everyday
life, believing that he was able to dominate those material factors and
bend them to his will if only he were clever enough and energetic
enough.

Stubby wanted to get in on the blueback salmon run again. He had put a
big pack through Crow Harbor and got a big price for the pack. In a
period of mounting prices canned salmon was still ascending. Food in any
imperishable, easily transported form was sure of a market in Europe.
There was a promise of even bigger returns for Pacific salmon packers in
the approaching season. But Stubby was not sure enough yet of where he
stood to make any definite arrangement with MacRae. He wanted to talk
things over, to feel his way.

There were changes in the air. For months the industrial pot had been
spasmodically boiling over in strikes, lockouts, boycotts, charges of
profiteering, loud and persistent complaints from consum