"Let the causes go for the present," said Griswold shortly. "We're talking about the men, now. The ungrateful beggars are merely proving that it isn't in human nature to meet justice and fairness and generous liberality half-way. If they want a fight, give it to them. Hit first and hit hard; that's the way to do. Shut up the plant and make it a lock-out."
"I was afraid you might say something like that in the first heat of it," said the young ironmaster. "It's a stout fighting word, and I guess, under the skin, you're a stout fighting man, Kenneth--which I'm not. Where are your convictions about the man-to-man obligations? We've got to take them into the account, haven't we?"
"Damn the convictions!" snapped Griswold viciously. "If I've been giving you the impression that I'm an impracticable theorist, forget it. These fellows want a fight: I say give them a fight--all they want of it and a little more for good measure."
Raymer did not reply at once. This latest Griswold was puzzling him, and with the puzzlement there went sorrowful regret; the regret that has been the recanter's portion in all the ages. When he spoke it was out of the heart of common sense and sanity.
"I know how you feel about it; I had a little attack of the same sort this afternoon when the grievance committee dropped down on me. But facts are pretty stubborn things, and they've got us foul. We have twenty thousand dollars' worth of work for the Pineboro road on the shop tracks, and the trouble-makers have picked their opportunity. If we can't turn out this work, we'll lose the Pineboro's business, which, as I have told you, is a pretty big slice of our business. Under such conditions I don't dare to pull down a fight which may not only shut us up for an indefinite time, but might even go far enough to smash us."
Griswold took his turn of silence, rocking gently in the tilting chair. When the delayed rejoinder came, the harshness had gone out of his voice, but there was a cynical hardness to take its place.
"It's your affair; not mine," he said. "If you've made up your mind not to fight, of course, that settles it. Now we can come down to the causes. You've been stabbed in the back. Do you know who's doing it?"