For that day then, and for many others, I tried to discover just how it was that I had drifted into so rough and exacting an attitude. Did I not know now, as well as before, that the corporation for which we were all working was enormously rich? Had I not more evidence than before that the men were overworked and underpaid, my own demands proving it? Could I not see in the orders given me that there was no consideration for them, but only the thing to be accomplished at the least possible expense? I acknowledged freely that this was absolutely true, and yet I now pleaded with myself that I saw no way to remedy it and that if I did not fulfill the company’s orders some one else would. The work had to be done. There was no way of permitting these men to shirk and take their time, without noticeably delaying the work. If the corporation was to be run, its present efficiency maintained and the public served, it would of course have to be done at a profit which would induce men of initiative and skill at the top to serve; otherwise no man would undertake the matter, and there would be no labor at all for any of these men at the bottom. For Nature apparently went on the theory of great reward for those who could or would originate and conduct in a large way, little for those who could not; and these at the bottom did not and apparently could not originate. Their reasoning powers were not as yet sufficiently developed for that. They were, by reason of their mental equipment, hewers of wood and drawers of water. After a time I felt that I could no longer go on without making a definite choice: I must serve them or their masters wholeheartedly. The retort of the laborer had proved too great a shock, and it was long before I recovered my exterior equanimity, and never again my internal peace, here. Plainly I was not one called by nature to this task. Reason as I would, the two elements of capital and labor, exacting strength and helpless weakness, would not adjust themselves within my consciousness save in some such rough way as I here saw operating, and so because of my natural sympathy for these underlings I was forced in spite of myself to choose sides. Either I must relinquish my former attitude of sympathy for the men and opposition to the indifference of the company, or I must side with them. There could be no middle ground, and until I should choose my conscience would give me no peace.