"Good enough--you got something in the old bean, after all," Andy smiled. "You will have light in your darkness when some of your crowd are fumbling around bewildered, wondering what has happened to them. Yes, you're dead right, Norquay. You put it very well. The group with the greatest cohesion, the greatest driving force--it isn't a question of moral judgments--it's a question of power. But the real power lies in the men who do the world's work and the brains that are hired by capital to direct the work. Only they lack cohesion. If they ever learn the value of coöperation, of community of interest--look out! Your crowd learned that lesson long ago. It's a scream when you look at it cold-blooded. We cut down trees and saw them into lumber and build houses--and you own the houses. We build motor cars--but the men who build 'em seldom have one to ride in. You know," he laughed amusedly, "when I look at our industrial system in its entirety, it seems to me like a huge, unwieldy machine that we've built up hit-and-miss, and the damned thing is operating us instead of us operating it. Even the men who are supposed to control it aren't sure they have the thing in hand. Some day this machine will become so complicated it won't work at all. You can hear friction squeaks in a good many of the joints now. It's liable to break down." "Then what?" Rod prompted. "Then we'll have to devise a new industrial mechanism that will be the servant of society and not society's master." "How will you do it?" Rod asked. "I don't know," Hall answered. "So far as America is concerned, the present machine seems good for many generations--with a little patching and lubrication. But sometime it will have to be done. It will not be done by the group in the saddle. They're only interested in maintaining the _status quo_. If it is done at all it will be forced along by visionaries, damn fools like me, who dream of a perfect, harmonious society of mankind--and get called names because we talk about our dreams. Ain't it queer," his tone became tinged with contempt, "that the man who has beautiful visions and translates 'em in terms of sculpture or music or painting or literature is hailed as an artist, while the fellow who has an equally beautiful vision of a human society strong and healthy, purged of poverty and dirt and injustice, is frowned upon as a dangerous agitator? It's a giddy world when you stand off and look. Eh?" Rod nodded. He was more interested in Andy Hall than in Andy's theories. Yet there was a bone in the meat of Andy's statement that Rod's mind chewed on long after Andy had gone into the bunk house to shave and take his Sunday bath in a washtub by the creek.