“No, the Engineering School hasn’t got the standing the College has,” fretted Babbitt. “I’d like to know how it hasn’t! The Engineers can play on any of the teams!” There was much explanation of the “dollars-and-cents value of being known as a college man when you go into the law,” and a truly oratorical account of the lawyer’s life. Before he was through with it, Babbitt had Ted a United States Senator. Among the great lawyers whom he mentioned was Seneca Doane. “But, gee whiz,” Ted marveled, “I thought you always said this Doane was a reg’lar nut!” “That’s no way to speak of a great man! Doane’s always been a good friend of mine--fact I helped him in college-- I started him out and you might say inspired him. Just because he’s sympathetic with the aims of Labor, a lot of chumps that lack liberality and broad-mindedness think he’s a crank, but let me tell you there’s mighty few of ’em that rake in the fees he does, and he’s a friend of some of the strongest, most conservative men in the world--like Lord Wycombe, this, uh, this big English nobleman that’s so well known. And you now, which would you rather do: be in with a lot of greasy mechanics and laboring-men, or chum up to a real fellow like Lord Wycombe, and get invited to his house for parties?” “Well--gosh,” sighed Ted. The next week-end he came in joyously with, “Say, Dad, why couldn’t I take mining engineering instead of the academic course? You talk about standing--maybe there isn’t much in mechanical engineering, but the Miners, gee, they got seven out of eleven in the new elections to Nu Tau Tau!” CHAPTER XXVII I The strike which turned Zenith into two belligerent camps, white and red, began late in September with a walk-out of telephone girls and linemen, in protest against a reduction of wages. The newly formed union of dairy-products workers went out, partly in sympathy and partly in demand for a forty-four hour week. They were followed by the truck-drivers’ union. Industry was tied up, and the whole city was nervous with talk of a trolley strike, a printers’ strike, a general strike. Furious citizens, trying to get telephone calls through strike-breaking girls, danced helplessly. Every truck that made its way from the factories to the freight-stations was guarded by a policeman, trying to look stoical beside the scab driver. A line of fifty trucks from the Zenith Steel and Machinery Company was attacked by strikers--rushing out from the sidewalk, pulling drivers from the seats, smashing carburetors and commutators, while telephone girls cheered from the walk, and small boys heaved bricks.