Theft | Page 6

who
have made this country and upon whom this country and its prosperity
rest.
(Connie, scenting trouble, walks across stage away from them.)
{Margaret}
The captains of industry--the banking magnates and the mergers?
{Starkweather}
Call it so. Call it what you will. Without us the country falls into the
hands of scoundrels like that man Knox and smashes to ruin.

{Margaret}
(Reprovingly.) Not a scoundrel, father.
{Starkweather}
He is a sentimental dreamer, a hair-brained enthusiast. It is the foolish
utterances of men like him that place the bomb and the knife in the
hand of the assassin.
{Margaret}
He is at least a good man, even if he does disagree with you on political
and industrial problems. And heaven knows that good men are rare
enough these days.
{Starkweather}
I impugn neither his morality nor his motives--only his rationality.
Really, Margaret, there is nothing inherently vicious about him. I grant
that. And it is precisely that which makes him such a power for evil.
{Margaret}
When I think of all the misery and pain which he is trying to remedy--I
can see in him only a power for good. He is not working for himself but
for the many. That is why he has no money. You have heaven alone
knows how many millions--you don't; you have worked for yourself.
{Starkweather}
I, too, work for the many. I give work to the many. I make life possible
for the many. I am only too keenly alive to the responsibilities of my
stewardship of wealth.
{Margaret}
But what of the child laborers working at the machines? Is that
necessary, O steward of wealth? How my heart has ached for them!

How I have longed to do something for them--to change conditions so
that it will no longer be necessary for the children to toil, to have the
playtime of childhood stolen away from them. Theft--that is what it is,
the playtime of the children coined into profits. That is why I like
Howard Knox. He calls theft theft. He is trying to do something for
those children. What are you trying to do for them?
{Starkweather}
Sentiment. Sentiment. The question is too vast and complicated, and
you cannot understand. No woman can understand. That is why you
run to sentiment. That is what is the matter with this Knox--sentiment.
You can't run a government of ninety millions of people on sentiment,
nor on abstract ideas of justice and right.
{Margaret}
But if you eliminate justice and right, what remains?
{Starkweather}
This is a practical world, and it must be managed by practical men--by
thinkers, not by near-thinkers whose heads are addled with the
half-digested ideas of the French Encyclopedists and Revolutionists of
a century and a half ago.
(Margaret shows signs of impatience--she is not particularly perturbed
by this passage-at-arms with her father, and is anxious to get off her
street things.)
Don't forget, my daughter, that your father knows the books as well as
any cow college graduate from Oregon. I, too, in my student days,
dabbled in theories of universal happiness and righteousness, saw my
vision and dreamed my dream. I did not know then the weakness, and
frailty, and grossness of the human clay. But I grew out of that and into
a man. Some men never grow out of that stage. That is what is the
trouble with Knox. He is still a dreamer, and a dangerous one.

(He pauses a moment, and then his thin lips shut grimly. But he has just
about shot his bolt.)
{Margaret}
What do you mean?
{Starkweather}
He has let himself in to give a speech to-morrow, wherein he will be
called upon to deliver the proofs of all the lurid charges he has made
against the Administration--against us, the stewards of wealth if you
please. He will be unable to deliver the proofs, and the nation will
laugh. And that will be the political end of Mr. Ali Baba and his dream.
{Margaret}
It is a beautiful dream. Were there more like him the dream would
come true. After all, it is the dreamers that build and that never die.
Perhaps you will find that he is not so easily to be destroyed. But I can't
stay and argue with you, father. I simply must go and get my things off.
(To Connie.) You'll have to receive, dear. I'll be right back.
(Julius Rutland enters. Margaret advances to meet him, shaking his
hand.) You must forgive me for deserting for a moment.
{Rutland}
(Greeting the others.) A family council, I see.
{Margaret}
(On way to exit at rear.) No; a discussion on dreams and dreamers. I
leave you to bear my part.
{Rutland}
(Bowing.) With pleasure. The dreamers are the true architects.

But--a--what is the dream and who is the dreamer?
{Margaret}
(Pausing in