Words such as Brotherhood, Labor, Rights, Humanity, Hours,
once regarded as the special property of the street corner
ranter, were creeping into our everyday vocabulary. And
strangely enough, Nathan Haynes, the gentle, the bewildered,
the uninspired, heard them, and listened. Nathan Haynes had
begun to accustom himself to the roar of the flood that had
formerly deafened him. He was no longer stunned by the
inrush of his millions. The report sheet handed him daily
had never ceased to be a wildly unexpected thing, and he
still shrank from it, sometimes. It was so fantastic, so
out of all reason. But he even dared, now and then, to put
out a tentative hand to guide the flood. He began to
realize, vaguely, that Italian Gardens, and marble pools,
educational endowments and pet charities were but poor,
ineffectual barriers of mud and sticks, soon swept away by
the torrent. As he sat there in his great, luxurious
office, with the dim, rich old portraits gleaming down on
him from the walls, he began, gropingly, to evolve a new
plan; a plan by which the golden flood was to be curbed,
divided, and made to form a sub-stream, to be utilized for
the good of the many; for the good of the Ten Thousand, who
were almost Fifteen Thousand now, with another fifteen
thousand in mills and factories at distant points, whose
entire output was swallowed up by the Haynes-Cooper plant.
Michael Fenger, Super-Manager, listened to the plan, smiled
tolerantly, and went on perfecting an already miraculous
System. Sarah Sapinsky, at seven a week, was just so much
untrained labor material, easily replaced by material
exactly like it. No, Michael Fenger, with his head in the
sand, heard no talk of new gods. He only knew that the