de.

"Hamlen's name is Philip, isn't it?" he asked.

She nodded, wondering at the question.

"Was that why you gave our boy the same name--and was it Hamlen you
referred to just now?"

"Yes, Harry."

He drew her gently to him and kissed her. "Poor chap!" he said. "If I
had known that I would have made a greater effort to be friendly with
him."

* * * * *

XXVI

* * * * *

During these depressed months Thatcher was not the only man of affairs
who saw the successes of his career threatened with disaster as a result
of the unnecessary burdens imposed by inexperienced and impractical
officials at Washington. Business groaned aloud as destructive control
and regulation delayed and paralyzed commerce. Labor, hand in hand with
its new ally Theory, stalked abroad through the land, demanding shorter
hours and increased wages, receiving recognition as a privileged class
from those in authority, exempt from respecting others' rights, which is
necessary to create and preserve responsibility: substance when it
struck at Capital, shadow when Capital in self-defense struck back. The
corporations which formed the pulse of the country's life were so
harassed that they paused in their constructive energies, wondering what
new menace would rise up before them, and yet were expected to give
better service while bound hand and foot by unwise legislative
restrictions, and burdened by unnecessary legislative demands for
increased expenditure. Samson, shorn of his strength by the shears of a
legalized Delilah, was expected to hold up with his enervated arms the
pillars of the temple which "psychological" complacency was pulling
down.

The first serious rumors reached Thatcher in Bermuda, and when he
returned to his office his far-sighted perception told him that the
business world was face to face with a real crisis. Many of his
enterprises were in a condition where to pause in aggressive action
meant going backwards, entailing loss upon all concerned; yet to proceed
in the face of conditions as they were was to invite disaster and even
to imperil the stability of his firm.

Cosden had felt the result of the depression in decreased business, but
he did not realize as soon as Thatcher the far-reaching results
inevitable from the new governmental policy. His horizon was local
compared to that of the New York operator, and he regarded the
conditions as a phase o