s Hopkins's--research work. I don't know
what he's got to live on.

GEORGE. Uncle Henry must have been a philanthropist.

ASHER. It's all very well to be a philanthropist when you make more than
you give away. Otherwise you're a sentimentalist.

GEORGE. Or a Christian.

ASHER. We can't take Christianity too literally.

GEORGE (smiling). That's its great advantage, as a religion.

ASHER. George, I don't like to say anything just as you're going to
fight for your country, my boy, but your attitude of religious skepticism
has troubled me, as well as your habit of intimacy with the shop hands.
I confess to you that I've been a little afraid at times that you'd take
after Jonathan's father. He never went to church, he forgot that he owed
something to his position as a Pindar. He used to have that house of his
overrun with all sorts of people, and the yard full of dirty children
eating his fruit and picking his flowers. There's such a thing as being
too democratic. I hope I'm as good an American as anybody, I believe
that any man with brains, who has thrift, ought to rise--but wait until
they do rise. You're going to command men, and when you come back here
into the business again you'll be in a position of authority. Remember
what I say, if you give these working people an inch, they'll take all
you have.

GEORGE (laying his hand on ASHER's shoulder). Something is worrying you,
dad. We've always been pretty good pals, haven't we?

ASHER. Yes, ever since you were a little shaver. Well, George, I didn't
want to bother you with it--today. It seems there's trouble in the
shops,--in our shops, of all places,--it's been going on for some time,
grumbling, dissatisfaction, and they're getting higher wages than ever
before--ruinous wages. They want me to recognize the union.

GEORGE. Well, that beats me. I thought we were above the labour-trouble
line, away up here in New England.

ASHER (grimly). Oh, I can handle them.

GEORGE. I'll bet you can. You're a regular old war horse when you get
started. It's your capital, it's your business, you've put it all at the
disposal of the government. What right have they to kick up a row now,
with this war on? I must say I haven't any sympathy with that.

ASHER (proudly). I guess you're a real Pindar after all, George.

(Enter an elderly maid, lower right.)

MAID. Timothy Farrell, the foreman's here,

(Enter, lower right, TIMOTHY, a big Irishman of about sixty, in
work