NORA:  It’s all of us!  Haven’t we all done this thing together?

FRANKEL:  Well, who’s got to pay it?

NORA:  We’ve all got to!

SHOMBERG, SALVATORE, FRANKEL, AND MRS. SIMPSON:  You expect to git blood out of a stone?  What do you take us for?  You’re crazy!  You helped get us into this! [SHOMBERG and SALVATORE begin shouting at each other.]

SHOMBERG:  You pay me back that twenty-five dollars you got from me
Friday!

SALVATORE:  How I’m goin’ to pay you twenty-five dollars when I’m seventeen thousand dollars in debt?

SHOMBERG:  I’ll have that money!

     [He takes a paper weight from desk.]

SALVATORE:  You throw that at me, I’ll give you a little sticker where you won’t like it!

[Puts his hand in the breast of his coat.  Murder appears imminent.  Sudden and general dispersal from the neighbourhood of the combatants, which brings NORA to GIBSON, unconsciously seeking his protection.]

SHOMBERG:  Aw, I didn’t mean anything serious like that. [Puts down the paper weight.] But I’ll get the money.

SALVATORE:  You’ll need it—­to pay your share what we owe!

MRS. SIMPSON:  I’d like to see ’em get one cent out of me!

CARTER:  It ain’t just us here of course; they’s a hundred and seventy men outside the debt belongs to as well as us.  The whole factory’s got to pay it.

SIMPSON:  Great gosh!  Do you think we can go out there, when they’re expectin’ a month’s pay, and tell ’em they’re gettin’ only a seventeen-thousand-dollar debt?

FRANKEL:  And me, me, me!  Look at me!  Do you think I can go out and tell them thirty-five bloodhounds I ain’t got no money to even pay their wages?

RILEY [vehemently]:  What’s more, you owe thirty-five shares of that debt, Frankel!

ALL [with vindictive satisfaction]:  That’s it!  Sure he does!  He owes thirty-five shares of the debt!  That’s right!

FRANKEL:  What?

RILEY:  You owe thirty-five shares of the seventeen-thousand debt.

FRANKEL:  My heavens!  Ain’t the meetin’ just settled it I didn’t have no right to them shares and it was all to be divided even?

CARTER:  What we got to do, we got to go out there and tell ’em they owe this money.

FRANKEL:  I can’t tell mine!

SALVATORE:  I know one game little fellow that ain’t goin’ to pay nobody nothin’.  Excuse me, gents; they’ll have to find me!

     [He goes out hastily by the door that leads to the street.]

CARTER:  Well, somebody’s got to go out there and tell ’em.

SIMPSON:  Well, I won’t!

MRS. SIMPSON:  It’s the chairman’s place.

CARTER:  We all got to go!

FRANKEL:  Not me!

SIMPSON:  Yes, you will! [Takes him by the shoulders.]