Into this troubled arena Rod Norquay had stepped with his pressing need of continuous operation. He was wise and generous impulses went with his wisdom. He believed that the logger was a simple man who could be led where no man could drive him save under the sharp, spur of acute need. He had believed that the logger was a man and not a mechanism long before he took a year in the woods himself to see what made the common man laugh, weep, fight, play, drink to debauchery and rise sometimes to heroic proportion under stress. He had learned then that man is not so completely the perfect product of class and environment as he superficially seems. Mary Thorn had unconsciously shown him that first. This one and that,--Andy Hall, Oliver Thorn, old Jim Handy the logging boss, even Grove before the war and after, and the crucible of war itself,--had taught him that however the human unit is outwardly shaped by place and circumstance, each is flesh and desire and a creature of passion. So that it was impossible for him ever to regard his men as so many tools to be used or laid aside as he willed. He was free of the curious detachment of the captains of industry from the lesser ranks. He neither locked himself in the ivory tower of the contemplative spirit, nor fortified himself behind the golden wall of material security. He remained a man in a man's world, directing and shaping the cutting edge of his human tools without once forgetting their essential humanity,--so that they admired him for his deftness of touch. He had been fortunate in his choice of Andy Hall. Even old Oliver Thorn voluntarily came out of his retirement and directed one part of his operations. Rod did not always know by what occult process he judged men, but he made no mistakes in men. And men are always the prime levers. Machines, powerful, complex, will not operate themselves. They do not create themselves. If mechanism seems to overshadow men, it is only because of a distorted sense of proportion. Hands and brains come first; everything else in the world of men is a by-product. The energy of hand and brain is as necessary as directive force; without that energy, however rude, uncouth, unskilled, there would be nothing to direct; and its reward should be liberal and ungrudging, a right, not a concession. Until Utopia comes in the millennial dawn men must exist under a social and industrial system that is not the creation of a class or a period, but is the slow growth of centuries. Under it the strong, the acquisitive, the self-disciplined, the men of force and character somehow get to the top. But having got to the top, being secure in their power, if they were wise they neither despised nor trampled on those at the bottom.