I saw Mr. Wickson and Mr. Pertonwaithe, the two men who held most of the stock in the Sierra Mills.  But I could not shake them as I had shaken the mechanics in their employ.  I discovered that they had an ethic superior to that of the rest of society.  It was what I may call the aristocratic ethic or the master ethic.* They talked in large ways of policy, and they identified policy and right.  And to me they talked in fatherly ways, patronizing my youth and inexperience.  They were the most hopeless of all I had encountered in my quest.  They believed absolutely that their conduct was right.  There was no question about it, no discussion.  They were convinced that they were the saviours of society, and that it was they who made happiness for the many.  And they drew pathetic pictures of what would be the sufferings of the working class were it not for the employment that they, and they alone, by their wisdom, provided for it.

* Before Avis Everhard was born, John Stuart Mill, in his essay, on liberty, wrote:  “Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality emanates from its class interests and its class feelings of superiority.”

Fresh from these two masters, I met Ernest and related my experience.  He looked at me with a pleased expression, and said: 

“Really, this is fine.  You are beginning to dig truth for yourself.  It is your own empirical generalization, and it is correct.  No man in the industrial machine is a free-will agent, except the large capitalist, and he isn’t, if you’ll pardon the Irishism.* You see, the masters are quite sure that they are right in what they are doing.  That is the crowning absurdity of the whole situation.  They are so tied by their human nature that they can’t do a thing unless they think it is right.  They must have a sanction for their acts.

     * Verbal contradictions, called Bulls, were long an amiable
     weakness of the ancient Irish.

“When they want to do a thing, in business of course, they must wait till there arises in their brains, somehow, a religious, or ethical, or scientific, or philosophic, concept that the thing is right.  And then they go ahead and do it, unwitting that one of the weaknesses of the human mind is that the wish is parent to the thought.  No matter what they want to do, the sanction always comes.  They are superficial casuists.  They are Jesuitical.  They even see their way to doing wrong that right may come of it.  One of the pleasant and axiomatic fictions they have created is that they are superior to the rest of mankind in wisdom and efficiency.  Therefrom comes their sanction to manage the bread and butter of the rest of mankind.  They have even resurrected the theory of the divine right of kings—­commercial kings in their case.*