Page:Tales in Political Economy by Millicent Garrett Fawcett.djvu/17

 Adam: "these 400 people work hard all their lives to produce a light very inferior to that which you could all get for nothing if only you would have windows."

"The government is entrusted to the owners of the palm plantations," said the chief. "Put yourself in our place, and tell me if you would throw 400 people out of employment for the sake of a sentimental preference for the light of the sun over the light of the oil lamps. Call our people together. Describe your scheme of knocking holes in their walls and abandoning the plantations, and they would tear you to pieces, gentle as they are. It is easy for you to come here and advise us to ruin our industry; if we were so foolish as to take your advice we should have to bear the punishment of our folly, while you, when you saw the misery and desolation you had caused, would be able to hoist sail and leave us."

Captain Adam saw that the old man was too angry to listen to him any more, so he went away, first having obtained leave to come back in two or three days with a scheme which he