of this war is industrial democracy, without which political
democracy is a farce. That sentence is Dr. Jonathan's. But when I was
learning how to use the bayonet from a British sergeant in Picardy I met
an English manufacturer from Northumberland. He is temporarily an
officer. I know your opinion of theorists, but this man is working out
the experiment with human chemicals. After all, the Constitution of the
United States, now antiquated and revered, once existed only in the
brains of French theorists! In the beginning was the Word, but the deed
must follow. This Englishman, whose name is Wray, has given me the
little pamphlet he wrote from his experience, and I shall send it to you.

"Though I am writing this letter in what to me is a solemn and
undoubtedly exalted hour, I am sure that my mind was never clearer or
saner. Dad, I have set my heart on inaugurating an experiment in
industrial democracy in Foxon Falls! I'd like to be able to think--if
anything happened to me--that the Pindar shops were among the first in
America to recognize that we are living in a new era and a changed
world."

(ASHER walks over to the bench and lays down the open letter on it.)

If anything should happen to that boy, Jonathan, there wouldn't be
anything in life left for me! Industrial democracy! So you put that
into his head! Socialism, I suppose.

DR. JONATHAN. No, experimental science.

ASHER. Call it what you like. What surprises me is, when I look back
over the months you've been here, how well we've got along in spite of
your views.

DR. JONATHAN. Why not say in spite of yours, Asher?

ASHER (smiling involuntarily). Well, it's been a comfort to drop in here
and talk to you, in spite of what you believe. You've got the gift of
sympathy, Jonathan. But I don't approve of you're spending your time in
this sort of work--(he waves a hand toward the bench)--which may never
come to anything, and in doctoring people for nothing and patching up
their troubles. I daresay you enjoy it, but what worries me is how you
are going to live?

DR. JONATHAN. By practising your cardinal virtue, thrift.

ASHER. I've got a proposal to make to you part of a scheme I've been
turning over in my mind for the last six months--and when George's letter
came I decided to put it through. I went to New York and had Sterry, a
corporation lawyer, draw it up. I'm going to prove I'm not a mossback.
It will reorganize the Pindar Shops.

DR. JONATHAN. Well,