I am going to pay the price if necessary, but I am going to live."
In Chicago Margaret set about the business of living as though nothing
were needed but strength and energy. In a characteristic American way
she tried to hustle life. When the men in her own set looked confused
and shocked by the opinions she expressed she got out of her set and
made the common mistake of supposing that those who do not work and
who talk rather glibly of art and of freedom are by that token free
men and artists.
Still she loved and respected her father. The strength in him made an
appeal to the native strong-thing in her. To a young socialist writer
who lived in the settlement house where she presently went to live and
who sought her out to sit by her desk berating men of wealth and
position she showed the quality of her ideals by pointing to David
Ormsby. "My father, the leader of an industrial trust, is a better man
than all of the noisy reformers that ever lived," she declared. "He
makes ploughs anyway--makes them well--millions of them. He does not
spend his time talking and running his ringers through his hair. He
works and his work has lightened the labours of millions while the
talkers sit thinking noisy thoughts and getting round-shouldered."
In truth Margaret Ormsby was puzzled.
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