“About five years.”

“And how long will you continue to do it?”

“God knows!”

Hilmer rested both hands on the white cloth.  They were shapely hands in spite of their size, with healthy pink nails, except on a thumb and forefinger, which had been badly mangled.  “For five years you have worked seven hours every day on this routine ... and in order to enlarge your capacity and skill and knowledge you have worked many hours overtime on this same routine, I suppose without any extra pay...  It seems to me that a man who only gets a chance to exercise with dumb-bells might keep in condition, but he’d hardly grow more skillful...  Of course, that still leaves two theories intact—­working for your own advancement ... and the interest of your firm.  I suppose the advancement has come, I suppose you’ve been paid for your overtime ... in increased salary.”

Helen made a scornful movement.  “If you call an increase of ten dollars a month in two years an advancement,” she ventured, bitterly.

Starratt flushed.

“That leaves only one excuse for overtime.  And that excuse is usually a lie.  Why should you have the interest of your firm at heart when it does nothing for you beyond what it is forced to do?”

Fred Starratt bared his teeth in sudden snapping anger.  “Well, and what do you do, Mr. Hilmer, for your clerks?”

“Nothing ... absolutely nothing ... unless they demand it.  And even then it’s only the exceptional man who can force me into a corner.  The average clerk in any country is like a gelded horse.  He’s been robbed of his power by education ... of a sort.  He’s a reasonable, rational, considerate beast that can be broken to any harness.”

“What do you want us to do?  Go on a strike and heave bricks into your plate-glass window?...  What would you do in our place?”

“I wouldn’t be there, to begin with.  I’ve heaved bricks in my day.”  He leaned forward, exhibiting his smashed thumb and forefinger.  “I killed the man who did that to me.  I was born in a Norwegian fishing village and after a while I followed the sea.  That’s a good school for action.  And what education you get is thrashed into you.  The little that sticks doesn’t do much more than toughen you.  And if you don’t want any more it does well enough.  Later on, if you have a thirst for knowledge, you drink the brand you pick yourself and it doesn’t go to your head.  Now with you ... you didn’t have any choice.  You drank up what they handed out and, at the age when you could have made a selection, your taste was formed ... by others...  I don’t mind people kicking at the man who works with his hands if they know what they’re talking about.  But most of them don’t.  They get the thing second hand.  They’re chock full of loyalty to superiors and systems and governments, just from habit...  I’ve worked with my hands, and I’ve fought for a half loaf of bread with