the last
word I have to say on the subject, unless you think that some friend of
ours in the financial world may have a better suggestion to offer."

"I should never have thought, father, that you could be so hard-hearted
and unfeeling, that you could be capable of ruining the lives of
thousands with one stroke of your pen. Your attitude towards the
relations between employer and employee is absolutely incomprehensible
to me; the socialistic conscience----"

"Listen, my boy," said the old gentleman, going over to his son and
laying his hand gently on his shoulder: "I've always allowed you an
absolutely free hand in your schemes, and you know we've always tried to
meet our employees more than half way in all their wishes, but now it's
a question of who's to suffer--we or they? In times of peace there may
be some excuse for these nice socialistic ideas: they give a man a
certain standing and bring him into the public eye. There's a good man,
they say; he understands the demands of the times. But there's a limit
to everything. One man rides one hobby, and some one else another. One
keeps a racing-stable, another sports a steam-yacht, and still another
swears by polo or cricket, but these things must not be carried to
excess. The minute the owner of the racing-stable turns jockey, he
ceases to be a business man, and the same is true of the man who keeps a
racing-yacht and spends all of his time at the start, and, after all is
said and done, it's our business we want to live on. You've selected the
workingman as your favorite sport, and that also has its limits. If we
squander our hard-earned millions on socialistic improvements now, we'll
have to begin over again in about two years' time. I doubt whether I
should have sufficient genius left to discover a new piano-hammer, and I
entertain still more serious doubts as to your ability to invent a
panacea that will render the whole world happy and make you richer
instead of poorer. _Ergo_, we'll shut up shop. In Hoboken we'll sing
Yankee Doodle and as we pass the Statue of Liberty The Star Spangled
Banner, in token of farewell, and then off we go! If things turn out
better than we anticipate, we can come back, but this is my last word
for the present: At noon the following notice will be posted at all the
entrances and in all the rooms of our factory: 'Three thousand workmen
are herewith dismissed; wages will be paid for a fortnight longer, when
the factory will be closed inde