"She cost us sixty thousand dollars all told. Before she was ready to sail we sold her for a hundred and twenty thousand. The buyers made big money out of her. The schooner is carrying food now and giving employment to sailors. "Who got robbed on that transaction? Where did 'dead labor suck the life out of living labor,' as Karl Marx says? You could do the same. You could if you would. There's plenty of old hulls lying around on the sands of the world." Iddings had nothing in him to respond to the poetry of this. "That's all very fine," he growled, "but where would I get my start? I got no eight thousand or anybody to lend me ten dollars." "The banks will lend to men who will make money make money. It's not the guarantee they want so much as inspiration. Pierpont Morgan said he lent on character, not on collateral." "Morgan, humph!" "The trouble isn't with Morgan, but with you. What do you do with your nights? Study? study? beat your brains for ideas? No, you go home, tired, play with the children, talk with the wife, smoke, go to bed. It's a beautiful life, but it's not a money-making life. You can't make money by working eight hours a day for another man's money. You've got to get out and find it or dig it up. "That business with the old hull put me on my feet, put dreams in my head. I looked about for other chances, took some of them and wished I hadn't. But I kept on trying. The war in Europe came. The world was crazy for ships. They couldn't build 'em fast enough to keep ahead of the submarines. On the Great Lakes there was a big steamer not doing much work. I heard of her. I went up and saw her. The job was to get her to the ocean. I managed it on borrowed money, bought her, and brought her up the Saint Lawrence to the sea--and down to New York. I made a fortune on that deal. Then did I retire and smoke my pipe of peace? No. I looked for another chance. "When our country went into the war she needed ships of her own. She had to have shipyards first to build 'em in. My lifelong ambition was to make ships from the keel-plate up. I looked for the best place to put a shipyard, picked on this spot because other people hadn't found it. My partners and I got the land cheap because it was swamp. We worked out our plans, sitting up all night over blue-prints and studying how to save every possible penny and every possible waste motion. "And now look at the swamp. It's one of the prettiest yards in the world. The Germans sank my _Clara_. Did I stop or go to making speeches about German vampires? No. I went on building. "The Germans tried to get my next boat. I fought for her as I'll fight the Germans, the I. W. W., the Bolshevists, or any other sneaking coyotes that try to destroy my property.