Taken on a tour of the factory, Hopkins and the audience are subtly conveyed into another world. The moccasins are tasseled, beaded, draped and as ugly as New York space shoes. Every worker in the factory appears deeply absorbed in matters remote from work, and where the owner is everyone s favorite uncle. The owner is a master ditherer who is secretly selling his assets not in order to achieve profits, but to provide jobs. Hopkins tour of the place reveals it as a Featherbedding Paradise.
People seem to be spending their time sending memos to each other, and conferring.
This again is a play on modern corporate life, where entire lives are spent in committee meetings, writing reports and reading reports. The script writers apparently have. Undeterred, Hopkins drafts a dreamy lad as his assistant, burrows into the books and makes efficiency sounds. His partner, meanwhile, having incited riots, allows himself to be talked into reducing the 1,000 dismissals into 500. This glimpse of reality is paralleled when Hopkins discovers the Moccasin Factory is really insolvent, and confronts the owner.