I  
The International Power Company remained a puzzle in suspended animation before the business world. Its campaign, whatever it was, went on behind closed doors and closed mouths. The men who were backing John Rawn were doing so with daring and courage, yet with business discretion and business eagerness for results. There was no leak anywhere, but the capitalists who were showing their faith in the basic idea of the company began to grow impatient because of the slow advancement of the most important of their plans; those bearing on wireless transmission from the central generating station on the Mississippi River.
 
Rawn's duties at the central offices, as president of the company, although steadily increasing, were still to very large extent perfunctory matters of routine; but the president's office evinced very early a singular efficiency in executive affairs. Rawn's directors looked on him with mingled approval and cautiousness, coming almost to the belief that, if the progress of the central distributing plant, or "Wireless No. 1," as it was known in the company's literature, did not seem all it should be, at least the president of the company was not to blame therefor. They turned to the department of mechanical installation; which brought Charles Halsey under investigation.
 
 
 
 
II
 
Halsey and his wife, John Rawn's daughter, had taken up their residence in the small Chicago suburb in which the central plant had been located. Their cottage was a small one, and it was furnished much like other cottages thereabout, occupied by salaried men, mechanics, persons of no great means. It retained something of the complexion of the old quarters in Kelly Row. The furniture was of imitation mahogany, the pictures had been, for the most part, bought by mail, the decorations were a jumble of inharmonious inadvertencies. The two young folk, their means as small as their tastes were undeveloped, gave themselves small concern over architects' plans and "collectors' pieces." They were busy as are most young couples in the delights of their first experiment in housekeeping; and Halsey himself now was deep in the strong and somber delight of developing a beloved idea.
 
Naturally, Halsey was often taken to the central offices in the city for conferences with the president of the company. He frequently met there Virginia Delaware, even at times gave dictation to her—a thing he never failed to remember, but never remembered to mention in his own home. As do many men even in this divorceful age, he set aside comparisons, forced himself into loyalty. Moreover, he yet was very young in married life, and always had lived in an atmosphere where man, married or single, coveted not that which was his neighbor's. It was but unconsciously, as though moved only by force of gravitation, that he drifted to Miss Delaware with his correspondence. He said to himself that it was because she was so efficient. Yes, that was it, of course, he assured himself, frowning when, once upon a time, he detected a flush on his face in answer to a sudden question of his soul. Thereafter he went not infrequently to the general offices.
 
 
 
 
III
 
On one such occasion he found himself in the position known among salaried workers as being "called upon the carpet" before "the old man." Rawn held a letter in his hand to which he referred as he chided Halsey for the delays in his department of the work.
 
"Do you suppose I can stand for this sort of thing coming from New York?" he began. "What's the matter out there with you?"
 
"Just what we might expect," Halsey replied coolly. "I've tried to cut down the expenses, but the men won't take the cut in wages."
 
"Why won't they?"
 
Halsey smiled. "They have a hundred answers for that. One is, that they can't live on the wages, and another is, that they want the union scale."
 
"They'll never unionize our factory, Mr. Halsey! If they did, we might as well throw away all our money and tell them our secret at the start—we'd be working for them, not they for us."
 
"That's all right, sir. I think, myself, an open shop is safer for us. But the unions make all sorts of disturbances. I can't keep on a steady crew; and unless I do, I have to start in and educate a new set of men every week, or every day; and I have to be careful what I let any of them know. I can't help it, Mr. Rawn."
 
"Well, we'll have to help it, that's all," Rawn retorted grimly. "If the unions want fight they can have fight, until we get to the place where we can take all the fight out of them. These laboring men want to stop the whole progress of this country—they're a drag on the industry of this country, a continuous tax on all consumers. I'll show them! Once we get those motors installed, I'll make them crawl."
 
 
 
 
IV
 
"And yet, do you know, Charles," he went on a little later, his voice almost trembling, "the injustice of this conduct is what cuts me. I've had it in my mind to do something for the laboring men of this country. Of course, I've seen all along that the general introduction of our motors into all sorts of industrial uses would throw hundreds and thousands of laboring men out of employment—put them on the scrap heap permanently. What are they going to do then? Some one's got to feed them just the same, as you once said to me, long ago. You talk about problems!—Why, we haven't got to the great ones in this country yet. The cost of living certainly will climb when that day comes. And the scale of wages will go down, when we abolish the man who has only muscle to sell. How are they going to eat?
 
"Now, I've foreseen something of this, and planned for it. These people can't plan for themselves, and it's always got to be some stronger mind that does the thinking. You know, I was born in Texas. I've always resolved to do something for that state; and, as I've just told you, I've always had it in mind to do something for the laboring man—that is to say, the man who sees himself just as he really is, and who doesn't rate himself worth just the same as the fellow next door to him, so much and no more.
 
"I've had my eye for some time on a tract of land down in Texas, forty thousand acres. It shall never be said of John Rawn that he forgot either his state or his fellow-man in the time of his success. When we get our motors going here—it will be, of course, a few years before the full effect of it all is felt—why then I'm going to colonize hundreds of these discarded workmen on this land in Texas. They can put in their labor there, where it will be useful, and can produce a living for themselves and a surplus for others. In short, it has been my plan to put them where they could continue to be useful to society. I wouldn't want to see them starve!" Mr. Rawn's lip quivered at this thought. He felt himself to be a very tender-hearted man.
 
 
 
 
V
 
"Yes," said Halsey grimly, "the Czar of Russia had some such notion regarding the serfs. Yet he freed them eventually."
 
"Nonsense! They'll be not in the least serfs, but will simply be men transferred by a higher intelligence to a plane of life which otherwise they could not reach—a plane where they can be of use not only to themselves but to others."
 
"You're always talking, my son," went on Rawn, harshly, "about helping your fellow-man, loving him like a brother—human equality, and all that sort of rot. What have any of you ever really done for each other, I'd like to know, except to meet up there in garrets, with lanterns hanging around, and discuss plans for taking away from stronger men the property they have accumulated? Now, I'm not going to take it out in talk—I'm going to do something for these people. I'm going to make Texas the place for my colony, because I don't want to deprive my native state of the credit of producing a man who had two big ideas—cheap power, and common sense in labor. There's two big ideas."
 
"I wouldn't dare tell the men anything of that," was Halsey's comment. "It's hard enough as it is."
 
"No, certainly not. We'll just go on and take our chances with these men; and they take their chances with us. You have my instructions to discharge any man who kicks on the wage cut, if he doesn't fire himself. The town's full of men with families, who aren't earning enough to eat. You can get all the help you want. Tell them we're open shop, and if they don't like it they can do their worst. Let them bring on their dynamite, if they want to try that—they can have all the fight they want; and I'll stay with it until I see them crawl."
 
"There's something I don't understand about it, Mr. Rawn. The men are very sullen. The foremen tell me that they never had so much trouble. Of course, they don't understand it themselves, but it's just as though our secret was getting out, and as if the men were afraid of cutting their own throats when they build these machines. Not that they understand what it's all about—it's air tight yet, that's sure."
 
"You begin to see some of the practical results of your infernal socialistic ideas, don't you, then? You'll come to my notion of life after a while."
 
"Mr. Rawn, what's the end of that? What's the logical conclusion?"
 
"Well, I'll tell you! One end and logical conclusion is going to be that I'll get some one to handle that factory if you can't; and he'll handle it the way I tell him!"
 
"You want my resignation now?"
 
"I'd very likely take it if it weren't for Grace. Besides, we've started on this thing together; and moreover again, I want you, when I go to New York, to see the directors and explain to them that their impatience is all wrong."
 
"Is there much dissatisfaction down there?"
 
"Yes. We've both got to run down East to-morrow night. Go on out now, and reserve four compartments on the limited."
 
"Four?"
 
"Yes—we'll want a place to eat and work on the road. I've got to take a stenographer al............