"Money talks best," ventured John Rawn oracularly, nodding his head. The others solemnly assented to this very original proposition. "The business of this country," went on the large man, "has got nothing to do with Teddy's ten commandments." "I have no doubt," said John Rawn, "that Mr. Roosevelt has, as you say, been the most disturbing cause in the unsettling of labor conditions all over the country. I've been following his speeches. He's always putting out that same old foolish doctrine about the equality of mankind--a doctrine exploded long ago. It's nothing short of criminal to talk that way to the lower classes to-day--it only makes them more unhappy. What's the use in misleading the laboring man and making him think he's going to get something he can't get? I tell you, I believe that at heart Roosevelt is a Socialist. Anyhow, he's a stumbling-block to the progress of this republic. Why, in our own factory--" "You're right," interrupted the first speaker. "Absolutely right. That sort of talk means ruin to the country. I'd like to know what all the men that make up these labor unions would do if we were to shut down all the mills and factories and offices--where'd they get any place to work if we didn't give it to them? Yet they bite the very hand that feeds them." "It sometimes looks as though we'd lost almost the whole season's work in the Senate," gloomily contributed another of the group. "We've got the tariff framed up to suit us, but how long will it last? Besides, what's the use of a tariff, if we're going to have strikes that practically are riots and revolutions, all over the country? Our laboring men are not willing to work. That's the trouble, I tell you--all this foolishness about the brotherhood of man. Oh, hell!" "You have precisely my attitude, my friend," said John Rawn, turning to him gravely. "Precisely. I have always said so." VI They all nodded now gravely as they sipped their second or third cocktails. Here and there a face grew more flushed, a tongue more fluent. The large man, colder headed, presently turned to Mr. Rawn. "By the way, Rawn," said he, "I hear it around the street all the time that you've got about the best thing there is going--this International Power. What's the meaning of all this talk, anyhow? It's leaking out that you're going to revolutionize the business world with all this power-producing scheme of yours. Some crazy newspaper child got lit up the other day and printed a fake story about your plan of running wires from the river over to Chicago! Anything in that?--but of course there isn't." "Not as you state it," said John Rawn. "We have a very desirable proposition, however, in our belief."