"That is about what I suspected," he commented impatiently. "You couldn't keep your peculiar views muzzled even when you were writing a bit of a pot-boiler on sugar-planting. Which brings us back to the old contention: you drop your fool socialistic fad and write a book that a reputable publisher can bring out without committing commercial suicide, and you'll stand some show. Light up and fumigate that idea awhile." Griswold took the proffered cigar half-absently, as he had taken the last piece of bread. "It doesn't need fumigating; if I could consider it seriously it ought rather to be burnt with fire. You march in the ranks of the well-fed, Bainbridge, and it is your _metier_ to be conservative. I don't, and it's mine to be radical." "What would you have?" demanded the man on the conservative side of the table. "The world is as it is, and you can't remodel it." "There is where you make the mistake common to those who cry Peace, when there is no peace," was the quick retort. "I, and my kind, can remodel it, and some day, when the burden has grown too heavy to be borne, we will. The aristocracy of rank, birth, feudal tyranny went down in fire and blood in France a century ago: the aristocracy of money will go down here, when the time is ripe." "That is good anarchy, but mighty bad ethics. I didn't know you had reached that stage of the disease, Kenneth." "Call it what you please; names don't change facts. Listen"--Griswold leaned upon the table; his eyes grew hard and the blue in them became metallic--"For more than a month I have tramped the streets of this cursed city begging--yes, that is the word--begging for work of any kind that would suffice to keep body and soul together; and for more than half of that time I have lived on one meal a day. That is what we have come to; we of the submerged majority. And that isn't all. The wage-worker himself, when he is fortunate enough to find a chance to earn his crust, is but a serf; a chattel among the other possessions of some fellow man who has acquired him in the plutocratic redistribution of the earth and the fulness thereof." Bainbridge applauded in dumb show. "Turn it loose and ease the soul-sickness, old man," he said indulgently. "I know things haven't been coming your way, lately. What is your remedy?" Griswold was fairly started now, and ridicule was as fuel to the flame. "The money-gatherers have set us the example. They have made us understand that might is right; that he who has may hold--if he can. The answer is simple: there is enough and to spare for all, and it belongs to all; to him who sows the seed and waters it, as well as to him who reaps the harvest. That is a violent remedy, you will say. So be it: it is the only one that will cure the epidemic of greed. There is an alternative, but it is only theoretical." "And that?"