"Why shouldn't it, with the splendid organization and new machinery its
large capital makes possible?"

"There is no discussion," Ernest answered. "It certainly should, and,
furthermore, it does."

Mr. Calvin here launched out into a political speech in exposition of
his views. He was warmly followed by a number of the others, and the cry
of all was to destroy the trusts.

"Poor simple folk," Ernest said to me in an undertone. "They see clearly
as far as they see, but they see only to the ends of their noses."

A little later he got the floor again, and in his characteristic way
controlled it for the rest of the evening.

"I have listened carefully to all of you," he began, "and I see plainly
that you play the business game in the orthodox fashion. Life sums
itself up to you in profits. You have a firm and abiding belief that
you were created for the sole purpose of making profits. Only there is a
hitch. In the midst of your own profit-making along comes the trust
and takes your profits away from you. This is a dilemma that interferes
somehow with the aim of creation, and the only way out, as it seems to
you, is to destroy that which takes from you your profits.

"I have listened carefully, and there is only one name that will
epitomize you. I shall call you that name. You are machine-breakers. Do
you know what a machine-breaker is? Let me tell you. In the eighteenth
century, in England, men and women wove cloth on hand-looms in their own