the account he once gave of the way he broke up a labor union. "I have
seen a good many of them at leisure then."

"Yes," the doctor chimed in, "and in my younger days, when I necessarily
had a good deal of charity practice, I used to find them at leisure when
they were 'laid off.' It always struck me as such a pretty euphemism. It
seemed to minify the harm of the thing so. It seemed to take all the
hunger and cold and sickness out of the fact. To be simply 'laid off' was
so different from losing your work and having to face beggary or
starvation."

"Those people," said the professor, "never put anything by. They are
wasteful and improvident, almost to a man; and they learn nothing by
experience, though they know as well as we do that it is simply a question
of demand and supply, and that the day of overproduction is sure to come,
when their work must stop unless the men that give them work are willing
to lose money."

"And I've seen them lose it, sometimes, rather than shut down," the
manufacturer remarked; "lose it hand over hand, to keep the men at work;
and then as soon as the tide turned the men would strike for higher wages.
You have no idea of the ingratitude of those people." He said this toward
the minister, as if he did not wish to be thought hard; and, in fact, he
was a very kindly man.

"Yes," replied the minister, "that is one of the most sinister features of
the situation. They seem really to regard their employers as their
enemies. I don't know how it will end."

"I know how it would end if I had my way," said the professor. "There