This glimpse of the future Sulaco (presented in detail at the end of the book) tells us that the material interests will triumph, but that political controversy will continue. Note the complexity of the time layers here: we are already in a flashback -- based on a 'present tense' of the banquet aboard the Juno, to which we will shortly return -- and this is a flash-forward that overleaps that present. The effect is to confuse us as to exactly what is the 'present': an effective technique for communicating the essential sameness of history.

It is significant that labor troubles are mentioned in the chapter's first paragraph, as the chapter will end with a metaphoric account of their birth.