had to practise great cruelties against those who refused to join them or
who rebelled against them."

"They simply destroy them here," said the professor.

"Well," said the lawyer, from his judicial mind, "the great syndicates
have no scruples in destroying a capitalist who won't come into them or
who tries to go out. They don't club him or stone him, but they under-sell
him and freeze him out; they don't break his head, but they bankrupt him.
The principle is the same."

"Don't interrupt Mr. Homos," the banker entreated. "I am very curious to
know just how they got rid of labor unions in Altruria."

"We had syndicates, too, and finally we had the _reductio ad absurdum_--we
had a federation of labor unions find a federation of syndicates, that
divided the nation into two camps. The situation was not only impossible,
but it was insupportably ridiculous."

I ventured to say: "It hasn't become quite so much of a joke with us yet."

"Isn't it in a fair way to become so?" asked the doctor; and he turned to
the lawyer: "What should you say was the logic of events among us for the
last ten or twenty years?"

"There's nothing so capricious as the logic of events. It's like a woman's
reasoning--you can't tell what it's aimed at, or where it's going to fetch
up; all that you can do is to keep out of the way if possible. We may come
to some such condition of things as they have in Altruria, where the faith
of the whole nation is pledged to secure every citizen in the pursuit of