plications and hoop-te-doodles and government reports and wage-scales
and God knows what all that these fellows are balling up the labor
situation with, when it's all perfectly simple. They like what I pay
'em, or they get out. That's all there is to it!"

"What do you think of profit-sharing?" Carol ventured.

Mr. Elder thundered his answer, while the others nodded, solemnly and
in tune, like a shop-window of flexible toys, comic mandarins and judges
and ducks and clowns, set quivering by a breeze from the open door:

"All this profit-sharing and welfare work and insurance and old-age
pension is simply poppycock. Enfeebles a workman's independence--and
wastes a lot of honest profit. The half-baked thinker that isn't dry
behind the ears yet, and these suffragettes and God knows what all
buttinskis there are that are trying to tell a business man how to run
his business, and some of these college professors are just about as
bad, the whole kit and bilin' of 'em are nothing in God's world but
socialism in disguise! And it's my bounden duty as a producer to resist
every attack on the integrity of American industry to the last ditch.
Yes--SIR!"

Mr. Elder wiped his brow.

Dave Dyer added, "Sure! You bet! What they ought to do is simply to
hang every one of these agitators, and that would settle the whole thing
right off. Don't you think so, doc?"

"You bet," agreed Kennicott.

The conversation was at last relieved of the plague of Carol's
intrusions and they settled down to the question of whether the justice
of the peace had sent that hobo drunk to jail for ten days or twelve.
It was a matter not readily determined. Then Dave Dyer communicated his
carefree adventures on the gipsy trail:

"Yep. I get good time out of the flivver. 'Bout a week ago I motored
down to New Wurttemberg. That's forty-three----No, let's see: It's
seventeen miles to Belldale, and 'bout six and three-quarters, call it
seven, to Torgenquist, and it's a good nineteen miles from there to New
Wurttemberg--seventeen and seven and nineteen, that makes, uh, let me
see: seventeen and seven 's twenty-four, plus nineteen, well say plus
twenty, that makes forty-four, well anyway, say about forty-three
or -four miles from here to New Wurttemberg. We got started about
seven-fifteen, prob'ly seven-twenty, because I had to stop and fill the
radiator, and we ran along, just keeping up a good steady gait----"

Mr. Dyer did finally, for reasons and purposes