RILEY [standing up and pounding the table, roaring till they are forced to listen]:  You ain’t any of you got the rights of it!  The rights of it is—­Who does the most work gets the most money.  Look at me on that truck!

CARTER [pounding on the table with a ruler]:  You set down, Riley!  The rights of it ain’t who does the most work; but I’m willin’ to leave it to who does the hardest work.

SIMPSON:  No, sir!  It’s who does the best work.

CARTER:  There ain’t only three men in my department out there that ain’t soldiering on their job.  I do twice as much skilled work as any man at this table, and I do it better. [Shouts of “Yes, you do!” “Rats!” “Shut up!"] I’ll leave it to Mr. Gibson; he knows good work if he don’t know nothing else.

     [Shouts of “Leave it to nothing!” “How’d he get in this?”
     “You’re crazy!"]

CARTER [bawling]:  Get back to business!  We’re running a meeting here!

FRANKEL:  For goodness’ sake, we ain’t getting nowhere!

SALVATORE:  No, and you ain’t never goin’ to git nowhere long as you try to work big business and privilege on me!  We got to keep it like Mr. Mifflin says; it’s a sacred brotherhood, everything divided equal.  Let’s get to business and count that money.

FRANKEL:  Well, for goodness’ sake, let’s get some system into this meeting!

RILEY:  How you goin’ to get any system into it before you settle what’s going to be done about Frankel’s twenty-four shares?

CARTER:  Twenty-four?  He’s got twenty-six; he got two more yesterday!

MRS. SIMPSON:  He’s got thirty-five; he got nine more this morning!

FRANKEL [hotly]:  You bet I got thirty-five!

ALL:  What!  Thirty-five shares!

FRANKEL:  Well, ain’t I got thirty-five men workin’ out there?

SIMPSON:  How in thunder we goin’ to settle about him holdin’ all them shares?

SALVATORE:  Are we goin’ to let him take all that money?  Thirty-five—­

FRANKEL [leaping up, electrified]:  How d’you expect I’m goin’ to pay my men if I don’t get it?  Are you goin’ to let me take them thirty-five shares’ profits?  No, I guess you ain’t!  You ain’t got no say about it!  The money’s mine right now!  I get it!

SIMPSON:  I object!

RILEY [pounding the table]:  Look at the ornery little devil!  He took advantage of the poor workingmen’s trustfulness, got ’em in debt to him, then went and begun buying over their shares, so they had to leave the shop because he wouldn’t hire ’em to do their own work, but went and hired cheaper men.  Listen to the trouble they make among us!

SIMPSON:  It’s an undesirable element.

RILEY:  He had no right to buy them workmen out in the first place.

SIMPSON:  And on top of that we can’t git no work turned out because the fourteen skilled men he’s got in there have gone and started striking just like the unskilled and they tie up everything.