w plan; a plan by which the
golden flood was to be curbed, divided, and made to form a sub-stream,
to be utilized for the good of the many; for the good of the Ten
Thousand, who were almost Fifteen Thousand now, with another fifteen
thousand in mills and factories at distant points, whose entire
output was swallowed up by the Haynes-Cooper plant. Michael Fenger,
Super-Manager, listened to the plan, smiled tolerantly, and went on
perfecting an already miraculous System. Sarah Sapinsky, at seven a
week, was just so much untrained labor material, easily replaced by
material exactly like it. No, Michael Fenger, with his head in the sand,
heard no talk of new gods. He only knew that the monster plant under
his management was yielding the greatest possible profit under the least
possible outlay.

In Fanny Brandeis he had found a stimulating, energizing fellow worker.
That had been from the beginning. In the first month or two of her
work, when her keen brain was darting here and there, into forgotten
and neglected corners, ferreting out dusty scraps of business waste and
holding them up to the light, disdainfully, Fenger had watched her
with a mingling of amusement and a sort of fond pride, as one would a
precocious child. As the months went on the pride and amusement welded
into something more than admiration, such as one expert feels for a
fellow-craftsman. Long before the end of the first year he knew that
here was a woman such as he had dreamed of all his life and never hoped
to find. He often found himself sitting at his office desk, or in his
library at home, staring straight ahead for a longer time than he dared
admit, his papers or book forgotten in his hand. His thoughts applied
to her adjectives which proved her a paradox: Generous, sympathetic,
warm-hearted, impulsive, imaginative; cold, indomitable, brilliant,
daring, intuitive. He would rouse himself almost angrily and force
himself to concentrate again upon the page before him. I don't know how
he thought it all would end--he whose life-habit it was to follow out
every process to its ultimate step, whether mental or mechanical. As for
Fanny, there was nothing of the intriguant about her. She was used to
admiration. She was accustomed to deference from men. Brandeis' Bazaar
had insured that. All her life men had taken orders from her, all the
way from Aloysius and the blithe traveling men of whom she bought goods,
to the salesmen and importers in the Chicago whol