“And then?” I asked.

“Well,—­I’m here,” he said.

“Wouldn’t you be accomplishing more,” I inquired, “if you hadn’t antagonized the Hutchinses?”

“It depends upon what you mean by accomplishment,” he answered, so mildly that I felt more rued than ever.

“Well, from what you say, I suppose you’re going in for reform, that these workmen up at Elkington are not satisfied with their conditions and imagine you can help to better them.  Now, provided the conditions are not as good as they might be, how are you going to improve them if you find yourself isolated here, as you say?”

“In other words, I should cooperate with Colonel Varney and other disinterested philanthropists,” he supplied, and I realized that I was losing my temper.

“Well, what can you do?” I inquired defiantly.

“I can find out what’s going on,” he said.  “I have already learned something, by the way.”

“And then?” I asked, wondering whether the implication were personal.

“Then I can help—­disseminate the knowledge.  I may be wrong, but I have an idea that when the people of this country learn how their legislatures are conducted they will want to change things.”

“That’s right!” echoed the waiter, who had come up with my griddle-cakes.  “And you’re the man to tell ’em, Mr. Krebs.”

“It will need several thousand of us to do that, I’m afraid,” said Krebs, returning his smile.

My distaste for the situation became more acute, but I felt that I was thrown on the defensive.  I could not retreat, now.

“I think you are wrong,” I declared, when the waiter had departed to attend to another customer.  “The people the great majority of them, at least are indifferent, they don’t want to be bothered with politics.  There will always be labour agitation, of course,—­the more wages those fellows get, the more they want.  We pay the highest wages in the world to-day, and the standard of living is higher in this country than anywhere else.  They’d ruin our prosperity, if we’d let ’em.”

“How about the thousands of families who don’t earn enough to live decently even in times of prosperity?” inquired Krebs.

“It’s hard, I’ll admit, but the inefficient and the shiftless are bound to suffer, no matter what form of government you adopt.”

“You talk about standards of living,—­I could show you some examples of standards to make your heart sick,” he said.  “What you don’t realize, perhaps, is that low standards help to increase the inefficient of whom you complain.”

He smiled rather sadly.  “The prosperity you are advocating,” he added, after a moment, “is a mere fiction, it is gorging the few at the expense of the many.  And what is being done in this country is to store up an explosive gas that some day will blow your superstructure to atoms if you don’t wake up in time.”

“Isn’t that a rather one-sided view, too?” I suggested.