“But will it be quite as simple,” I asked, reluctant in behalf of my projected romance, to have the matter so soon disposed of--“will it be quite so simple if their leaders ever persuade the working-men to leave the militia, as they threaten to do, from time to time?” “No, not quite so simple,” the banker admitted. “Still, the fight would be comparatively simple. In the first place, I doubt--though I won’t be certain about it--whether there are a great many working-men in the militia now. I rather fancy it is made up, for the most part, of clerks and small tradesmen and book-keepers, and such employés of business as have time and money for it. I may be mistaken.” No one seemed able to say whether he was mistaken or not; and, after waiting a moment, he proceeded: “I feel pretty sure that it is so in the city companies and regiments, at any rate, and that if every working-man left them it would not seriously impair their effectiveness. But when the working-men have left the militia, what have they done? They have eliminated the only thing that disqualifies it for prompt and unsparing use against strikers. As long as they are in it we might have our misgivings, but if they were once out of it we should have none. And what would they gain? They would not be allowed to arm and organize as an inimical force. _That_ was settled once for all in Chicago, in the case of the International Groups. A few squads of policemen would break them up. Why,” the banker exclaimed, with his good-humored laugh, “how preposterous they are when you come to look at it! They are in the majority, the immense majority, if you count the farmers, and they prefer to behave as if they were the hopeless minority. They say they want an eight-hour law, and every now and then they strike and try to fight it. Why don’t they _vote_ it? They could _make_ it the law in six months by such overwhelming numbers that no one would dare to evade or defy it. They can make any law they want, but they prefer to break such laws as we have. That ‘alienates public sympathy,’ the newspapers say; but the spectacle of their stupidity and helpless wilfulness is so lamentable that I could almost pity them. If they chose, it would take only a few years to transform our government into the likeness of anything they wanted. But they would rather not have what they want, apparently, if they can only keep themselves from getting it, and they have to work hard to do that!” “I suppose,” I said, “that they are misled by the un-American principles and methods of the Socialists among them.”