You and I can
both join in damning these demagogues and radicals and visionaries and
Bolshevists. We must be practical even when we're progressive, Blanchard."
"Now you're talking sense!"
"I hope so!" But his next statement, made while the millman glared and
muttered oaths, fell far short of sanity in Blanchard's estimation. "I'm
fully convinced that one of the inalienable rights of the people is
ownership of water-power. We franchise-proprietors ought to content
ourselves with being custodians, managers, lessees of that power that
comes from the lakes that God alone owns."
"Are you putting that notion in your confounded report?"
"I am."
"Are you sticking in something about confiscating the coal and the oil and
the iron and--"
"Oh no!" broke in Morrison, calm in the face of fury. "Those particular
packages all seem to be nicely tied up and laid on the shelf out of the
people's reach. And whether they are or not is not my concern now. I'm
only a little fellow up here in a small puddle, Brother Blanchard. I'm not
undertaking the reorganization of the world. I'll say frankly that I don't
know just what kind of legislation in regard to the already developed
water-power in this state can be passed and be made constitutional.
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