GIBSON:  Everything?  My house, too?

MIFFLIN [beaming]:  Your house, too.

GIBSON [amiably]:  How about your gold eyeglasses?

MIFFLIN [laughing]:  Those will be given me by the state.  But seriously, aren’t you coming to pay us a visit at the factory?

GIBSON:  Since you ask me—­what’s the best time?  I suppose the whistle doesn’t blow as early as it used to.

MIFFLIN [laughing pityingly]:  Whistle!  Oh, my dear sir!  This only confirms me in my old idea that the technical owners didn’t have practical minds.  You don’t suppose we abolished you, and then didn’t abolish the whistle?  That whistle hurt self-respect.  Really I’m sorry it’s Sunday and I can’t take you over there this minute to see the great changes.  Talk about collectivism!  That factory is the most interesting place in the world to-day.  When the men were working eight long hours a day under a master it was all repression, reserve; their individualities were stifled.  Now they expand!

GIBSON:  You mean they talk a good deal?

MIFFLIN:  I never have been in a place where there was so much talk in my life.  They talk all the time; it shows they are thinking.

GIBSON:  Isn’t it noisy?

MIFFLIN [delighted]:  It is!  Every man has his own ideas and he expresses them.  It means a freshness and originality in the work that never got into it before.

GIBSON [worried]:  Originality?  You don’t mean to say they’ve changed any of the features of The Gibson Upright.

MIFFLIN:  Oh, no; it’s the same piano—­and yet different!  I almost feel I could tell the difference by looking at one.  There’s no change; yet now it has character.  And those men—­those men, Mr. Gibson—­it’s brought out their character so!  They’re thinking all the time.

GIBSON:  They’re working, too, of course?

MIFFLIN:  Working!  You never saw men work under the old capitalistic regime, Mr. Gibson!  Don’t think that this work is the driven, dogged thing it was when they had to.  This is work with dignity, with enthusiasm, with spontaneity!

GIBSON [rising, very thoughtful]:  Well, I ought to hope that it is, of course!

     [He walks to and fro a moment, then comes and rests his hands
     on the back of a chair, looking at MIFFLIN.]

Mr. Mifflin, I went into this with open eyes.  I was angry at the time, but I had thought of it often.  And when I went out I went out!  Now I’ve kept away and I don’t intend to do any prying—­as a matter of fact, I’m only back here for two or three days—­but I have some natural curiosity, especially about certain particulars.

MIFFLIN:  Everything is as open as the sunlight—­no capitalistic secret machinations.  Ask anything you like!

GIBSON:  Well, then, do you happen to know what are the profits for these four months?