I MEET THE INDUSTRIAL CAPTAINS


Elwood, Indiana, was a small village that had been called Duck
Creek Post-Office until the tin mill and other industries began
making it into a city. In my capacity as president of the local
union and head of the wage mill committee, I was put in personal
contact with the heads of these great industrial enterprises.
This was my first introduction to men of large affairs.

I approached them with the inborn thought that they must be
some sort of human monsters. The communist books that Comrade
Bannerman had given me taught me to believe that capitalists had
no human feelings like ordinary mortals. I therefore expected to
find the mill-boss as cunning as the fox and ape combined. I
supposed that his word would be worthless as a pledge and would
be given only for the purpose of tricking me. His manners I
expected to be rude; he would shout at me and threaten me, hoping
to take away my courage and send me back to my fellows beaten.

What I found, of course, was a self-possessed man, the model of
courtesy and exactness. He differed from us men in one respect.
His mind was complex instead of simplex. That is, he could think
on two sides of a question at the same time. He had so trained
his mind by much use of it that it was as nimble as the hands of
a juggler who can keep several objects tossing in the air at the
same time. We men were clumsy thinkers, and one thing at a time
was all we could handle without fumbling it.

The great manufacturer never showed any emotion. He was never