A JUNGLE LABOR-UNION 153 
loosened grain after grain, and as they came 
free they were moistened, agglutinated, and 
pressed back against her fore-legs. When at 
last a good-sized ball was formed, she picked it 
up, turned around and, after some fussy indeci- 
sion, deposited it on the sand behind her. Then 
she returned to the very shallow, round depres- 
sion, and began to gather a second ball. 
I thought of the first handful of sand thrown 
out for the base of Cheops, of the first brick 
placed in position for the Great Wall, of a fresh- 
cut trunk, rough-hewn and squared for a log- 
cabin on Manhattan; of the first shovelful of 
earth flung out of the line of the Panama Canal. 
Yet none seemed worthy of comparison with even 
what little I knew of the significance of this ant’s 
labor, for this was earnest of what would make 
trivial the engineering skill of Egyptians, of 
Chinese patience, of municipal pride and conti- 
nental schism. 
Imagine sawing off a barn-door at the top of 
@ giant sequoia, growing at the bottom of the 
Grand Cafion, and then, with five or six children 
clinging to it, descending the tree, and carrying 
it up the cafion walls against a subway rush of 
tude people, who elbowed and pushed blindly 
