The bottom had fallen out of everything. The brief post-war orgy of production had run its artificial course. The industrial war babies had died of inanition. Exchange that fluttered like a wounded bird killed international trade. Europe was steeped in poverty. The waste of war could not be repaired until the wrangles of peace subsided. Instead of subsiding, the quarrels over peace became more acute. While the politicians thrust and parried industry languished. In the domain of timber only first grades and pulp wood commanded a sale; and both on a falling market. The camps were shut down, the mills were silent. Neither camps nor mills would operate unless a profit seemed sure, a good safe margin. Few of them had the incentive to go on, such as drove Rod Norquay. He had to go on so long as he could clear a dollar, even fifty cents a thousand. He was butchering his holdings, but every dollar that went into the Norquay Trust brought him nearer a clean slate. But even Rod's narrow margin was vanishing. Second-grade stuff accumulated on his hands. He could only renew his pulp contracts at a loss. And he was fighting to make good a loss. Unless he could hang on for the turn in the market tide that must come-- His dilemma was very real. He could do two things. He could shut down. Six months' non-production and he could say good-by to every hope of a passable end to this adventure. Hawk's Nest and the ultimate sale of his standing timber might square the Norquay obligation. It would leave him picked to a skeleton. Or he could revise his established policy, cut wages to the bone, drive labor with a whip, fight them when they protested, go through the ugly stages of strikes, sabotage, hatreds, clashes, diminished output; in a word precipitate the industrial warfare which had made the coast a Bedlam for the single-track minds on both sides. And that also would ruin him. September brought him to the stone wall. He came back from a business trip to town, depressed, uneasy. He knew that a good many people would consider his scruples unfounded. But he hated to cut wages. He had made such enormous profits on the labor of these men. He knew it. He knew that they knew it. It was not the way an employer should feel. It was not in line with the common conception of property rights. Nevertheless that was how he felt. However he came by it, his instinct was patriarchal. His men had become an aggregation of human beings for whose welfare he was to a certain degree responsible. He didn't know whether or not they shared such a feeling. He was too sensible to expect that sort of response. But certainly loyalty of a definite sort had manifested itself during an unsettled period in complete absence of friction. They had never made an unreasonable demand.