t you call business, Harness. Why don't you
make the men come in?

HARNESS. [Sardonically.] The men are far more in the right than you
are. The question with us is whether we shan't begin to support them
again.

[He ignores them all, except ANTHONY, to whom he turns in
speaking.]

ANTHONY. Support them if you like; we'll put in free labour and have
done with it.

HARNESS. That won't do, Mr. Anthony. You can't get free labour, and
you know it.

ANTHONY. We shall see that.

HARNESS. I'm quite frank with you. We were forced to withhold our
support from your men because some of their demands are in excess of
current rates. I expect to make them withdraw those demands to-day:
if they do, take it straight from me, gentlemen, we shall back them
again at once. Now, I want to see something fixed upon before I go
back to-night. Can't we have done with this old-fashioned tug-of-war
business? What good's it doing you? Why don't you recognise once
for all that these people are men like yourselves, and want what's
good for them just as you want what's good for you [Bitterly.] Your
motor-cars, and champagne, and eight-course dinners.

ANTHONY. If the men will come in, we'll do something for them.

HARNESS. [Ironically.] Is that your opinion too, sir--and yours--
and yours? [The Directors do not answer.] Well, all I can say is:
It's a kind of high and mighty aristocratic tone I thought we'd grown
out of--seems I was mistaken.

ANTHONY. It's the tone the men use. Remains to be seen which can
hold out longest--they without us, or we without them.

HARNESS. As business men, I wonder you're not ashamed of this waste
of force, gentlemen. You know what it'll all end in.

ANTHONY. What?

HARNESS. Compromise--it always does.

SCANTLEBURY. Can't you persuade the men that their interests are the
same as ours?

HARNESS. [Turning, ironically.] I could persuade them of that, sir,
if they were.

WILDER. Come, Harness, you're a clever man, you don't believe all
the Socialistic claptrap that's talked nowadays. There 's no real
difference between their interests and ours.

HARNESS. There's just one very simple question I'd like to put to
you. Will you pay your men one penny more than they force you to pay
them?

[WILDER is silent.]

WANKLIN. [Chiming in.] I humbly thought that not to pay more than
was necessary was the A B C of commerce.

HARNESS. [With irony.] Yes, that se