In few other organizations that Rod knew did such a feeling prevail. Where it had play there was a minimum of dispute, a maximum of production. But it was rare. His affairs took him into Vancouver a great deal. He had kept up membership in a club to which his father and grandfather had belonged. And in the club quarters which served him as a hotel he came into casual contact with sundry pillars of British Columbia industry. The amount of invective poured on the head of things in general was a revelation. These worthy gentlemen over their wine and cigars affected to believe the State, the home, the nation, reeled to ruin before union wage scales. The rancor in their voices when they spoke of working-class demands amazed Rod sometimes. But as he listened, he perceived that this rancor was impartially distributed over many things, upon the government, upon taxation, upon affairs in Europe, upon the gaunt specter of the Lenine-Trotsky régime; there seemed no end to their grievances. And he perceived further that this uneasy spirit lay in the fact that the sweeping tide of war prosperity had slacked suddenly where they had childishly believed it would surge on to greater heights,--and that this slackening was unprofitable. If the stagnation kept up long enough, they must shrink to a lesser stature; some to ruin. They were uneasy. Some, committed to great undertakings, were palpably afraid. If they could keep wages down and prices up! They did not say so openly. They did not correlate the two objectives. They merely brightened at any prospect of better selling prices for their various products, greater demand, and frowned in distress over labor costs. They said labor would have to come off its high horse, and they said it with a good deal of unnecessary vehemence. Quite unanimously, almost instinctively, they were bitter against any man who did not agree with them. They said, "Men won't work." That was a lie. Rod Norquay had proved it. His men had worked; and he had in his crew a score of agitators black-listed in other camps. No. Men who had seen war-time wages easily over-lapped by war-time living costs would not work for a driving employer under conditions arbitrarily dictated; not unless the whip of necessity lashed them to the task. And when they had to, inevitably they laid down on the job. That was the root of the trouble. "You could open your camps and start your mills tomorrow," Rod broke into a conversation at his elbow one day, "if you'd base your tactics on the fact that men are men and not beasts of burden. I'm doing it and making money. I've done it right along. There's no magic about it. I simply accept present-day conditions, instead of mourning for the good old days when a logger was something less than a dog in a kennel. The trouble with you people is that you're hogs by nature. You're not satisfied to have your snouts in the trough. You want both feet in."