eye than his father's might have found itself moistening, and walked
slowly back to his room. He did not sit at his desk, but walked to
the window, where he rested his brow against his hand and looked out
upon as much of the world as he could see. ... It seemed large to
him, filled with promise, filled with interests, filled with
activities for HIM--if he could only be about them. But they were
held tantalizingly out of reach.

He was safe in his groove; had not slipped there gradually and
smoothly, but had been thrust roughly, by sudden attack, into it.

His young, healthy soul cried out in protest against the affront that
had been put upon it. Not that the issue itself had mattered so much,
but that it had been so handled, ruthlessly. Bonbright was no friend
to labor. He had merely been a surprised observer of certain
phenomena that had aroused him to thought. He did not feel that labor
was right and that his father was wrong. It might be his father was
very right. ... But labor was such a huge mass, and when a huge mass
seethes it is impressive. Possibly this mass was wrong; possibly its
seething must be stilled for the better interests of mankind.
Bonbright did not know. He had wanted to know; had wanted the
condition explained to him. Instead, he had been crushed into his
groove humiliatingly.

Bonbright was young, to be readily impressed. If his father had
received his uncertainty with kindliness and had answered his
hunger's demand for enlightenment with arguments and reasoning, the
crisis probably would have passed harmlessly. His father had seen fit
not to use diplomacy, but to assert autocratically the power of
Bonbright Foote, Incorporated. Bonbright's individuality had thought