Starratt so much as these golf sticks.  For, in this particular instance, they became the symbol of a self-sufficient prosperity whose first moves toward economy were directed at those who serve...  If all this were so, why didn’t Ford begin by cutting down his own allowance, by trimming his own expenses to the bone?  Golf, as Mr. Ford played it, was an expensive luxury.  No doubt the exercise was beneficial, but puttering about a garden would have done equally.  Starratt might have let all this pass.  He was by heart and nature and training a conservative and he had sympathy for the genial vanities of life.  It was Ford’s final summary, the unconscious patronage, the quiet, assured insolence of his words, which gave Starratt his irrevocable cue.

“We rather look to men like you, Starratt,” Mr. Ford was saying, his voice suave to the point of insincerity, “to tide us over a crisis.  Just now, when the laboring element is running amuck, it’s good to feel that the country has a large percentage of people who can be reasonable and understand another viewpoint except their own...  After everything is said and done, in business a man’s first loyalty is to the firm he works for.”

“Why?” Starratt threw out sharply.

Ford’s pallid eyes widened briefly.  “I think the answer is obvious, Starratt.  Don’t you?  The hand that feeds a man is...”

“Feeds? That may work both ways.”

“I don’t quite understand.”

Starratt’s glance traveled toward the golf sticks.  “Well, it seems to me it’s a case of one man cutting down on necessities to provide another with luxuries.”  He hated himself once he had said it.  It outraged his own sense of breeding.

Mr. Ford shoved the pencil and pad to one side.  “A parlor radical, eh?...  Well, this from you is surprising!...  If there was one man in my employ whom I counted on, it was you.  You’ve been with me over fifteen years ... began as office boy, as I remember.  And in all that time you’ve never even asked for a privilege...  I’m sorry to see such a fine record broken!”

Yesterday Starratt would have agreed with him, but now he felt moved to indignation and shame at Ford’s summary of his negative virtues.  He had been born with a voice and he had never lifted it to ask for his rights, much less a favor.  No wonder Hilmer could sneer and Helen Starratt cut him with the fine knife of her scorn!  The words began to tumble to his lips.  They came in swirling flood.  He lost count of what he was saying, but the angry white face of his employer foreshadowed the inevitable end of this interview.  He gave his rancor its full scope ... protests, defiance, insults, even, heaping up in a formidable pile.

“You ask me to be patient,” he flared, “because you think I’m a reasonable, rational, considerate beast that can be broken to any harness!” He recognized Hilmer’s words, but he swept on.  “If you were in a real flesh-and-blood business you’d have felt the force of things ... you’d have had men with guts to deal with ... you’d have had a brick or two heaved into your plate-glass window.  A friend of mine said last night that potting clerks was as sickening as a rabbit drive.  He was right, it is sickening!”