This man Knox is a dangerous character--one that I am not pleased to see any of my family take up with. He is not a gentleman. {Margaret} He is a self-made man, if that is what you mean, and he certainly hasn't any money. {Connie} (_Interrupting._) He says that money is theft--at least when it is in the hands of a wealthy person. {Starkweather} He is uncouth--ignorant. {Margaret} I happen to know that he is a graduate of the University of Oregon. {Starkweather} (_Sneeringly._) A cow college. But that is not what I mean. He is a demagogue, stirring up the wild-beast passions of the people. {Margaret} Surely you would not call his advocacy of that child labor bill and of the conservation of the forest and coal lands stirring up the wild-beast passions of the people? {Starkweather} (_Wearily._) You don't understand. When I say he is dangerous it is because he threatens all the stabilities, because he threatens us who have made this country and upon whom this country and its prosperity rest. (_Connie, scenting trouble, walks across stage away from them._) {Margaret} The captains of industry--the banking magnates and the mergers? {Starkweather} Call it so. Call it what you will. Without us the country falls into the hands of scoundrels like that man Knox and smashes to ruin. {Margaret} (_Reprovingly._) Not a scoundrel, father. {Starkweather} He is a sentimental dreamer, a hair-brained enthusiast. It is the foolish utterances of men like him that place the bomb and the knife in the hand of the assassin. {Margaret} He is at least a good man, even if he does disagree with you on political and industrial problems. And heaven knows that good men are rare enough these days. {Starkweather} I impugn neither his morality nor his motives--only his rationality. Really, Margaret, there is nothing inherently vicious about him. I grant that. And it is precisely that which makes him such a power for evil. {Margaret} When I think of all the misery and pain which he is trying to remedy--I can see in him only a power for good. He is not working for himself but for the many. That is why he has no money. You have heaven alone knows how many millions--you don't; you have worked for yourself. {Starkweather} I, too, work for the many. I give work to the many. I make life possible for the many. I am only too keenly alive to the responsibilities of my stewardship of wealth. {Margaret} But what of the child laborers working at the machines? Is that necessary, O steward of wealth? How my heart has ached for them! How I have longed to do something for them--to change conditions so that it will no longer be necessary for the children to toil, to have the playtime of childhood stolen away from them. Theft--that is what it is, the playtime of the children coined into profits. That is why I like Howard Knox. He calls theft theft. He is trying to do something for those children. What are you trying to do for them? {Starkweather}