“Another strike?"* the Bishop queried with alarm.

* These quarrels were very common in those irrational and anarchic times.  Sometimes the laborers refused to work.  Sometimes the capitalists refused to let the laborers work.  In the violence and turbulence of such disagreements much property was destroyed and many lives lost.  All this is inconceivable to us—­as inconceivable as another custom of that time, namely, the habit the men of the lower classes had of breaking the furniture when they quarrelled with their wives.

“Yes, they’re quarrelling over the division of the earnings of the street railways.”

Bishop Morehouse became excited.

“It is wrong!” he cried.  “It is so short-sighted on the part of the workingmen.  How can they hope to keep our sympathy—­”

“When we are compelled to walk,” Ernest said slyly.

But Bishop Morehouse ignored him and went on: 

“Their outlook is too narrow.  Men should be men, not brutes.  There will be violence and murder now, and sorrowing widows and orphans.  Capital and labor should be friends.  They should work hand in hand and to their mutual benefit.”

“Ah, now you are up in the air again,” Ernest remarked dryly.  “Come back to earth.  Remember, we agreed that the average man is selfish.”

“But he ought not to be!” the Bishop cried.

“And there I agree with you,” was Ernest’s rejoinder.  “He ought not to be selfish, but he will continue to be selfish as long as he lives in a social system that is based on pig-ethics.”

The Bishop was aghast, and my father chuckled.

“Yes, pig-ethics,” Ernest went on remorselessly.  “That is the meaning of the capitalist system.  And that is what your church is standing for, what you are preaching for every time you get up in the pulpit.  Pig-ethics!  There is no other name for it.”

Bishop Morehouse turned appealingly to my father, but he laughed and nodded his head.

“I’m afraid Mr. Everhard is right,” he said.  “Laissez-Faire, the let-alone policy of each for himself and devil take the hindmost.  As Mr. Everhard said the other night, the function you churchmen perform is to maintain the established order of society, and society is established on that foundation.”

“But that is not the teaching of Christ!” cried the Bishop.

“The Church is not teaching Christ these days,” Ernest put in quickly.  “That is why the workingmen will have nothing to do with the Church.  The Church condones the frightful brutality and savagery with which the capitalist class treats the working class.”

“The Church does not condone it,” the Bishop objected.

“The Church does not protest against it,” Ernest replied.  “And in so far as the Church does not protest, it condones, for remember the Church is supported by the capitalist class.”

“I had not looked at it in that light,” the Bishop said naively.  “You must be wrong.  I know that there is much that is sad and wicked in this world.  I know that the Church has lost the—­what you call the proletariat."*