The Forbidden Trail | Page 6

to come into the store that summer. But after his years under Roger's tutelage, Ernie was all for mechanics, so he too acquired overalls and a dinner pail and went into the plow factory. Elschen was broken hearted because there was no way in which she also could become a wage earner.
The university lay at the south end of the little town. The plow factory, now employing two hundred men, lay at the north end. Jim Hale, the chief engineer, blew the whistle every morning at seven o'clock and again at five o'clock. There was an hour off for dinner pails at twelve. A nine hour day, a few years ago, was not considered a long day, that is, not by employers of labor. That the employees were beginning to feel differently, Roger was to learn that summer in a manner that was to shape his whole life.
The workmen were of a type little known now in our big industrial centers. Without exception they were North Europeans: Germans, Norwegians, Swedes and Danes. About fifty per cent. of them were foreign born. The rest of them were American born. A good many of the German born had not taken out first citizenship papers, but the Norwegians and Swedes had done so, so had the Danes. Enough of them had a certain amount of pride in their work to make the factory an interesting and profitable place for a boy to serve his first apprenticeship in. Practically all married men in the factory wanted to settle permanently in Eagle's Wing and send their children through the town's splendid schools. A majority of them planned to send their sons through the State University.
John Moore had a good eye for men. He had built up an apparently solid and permanent organization. Yet for all his keen eye, the more successful he became, and the larger his business, the more incapable he grew of winning his men's liking. He had worked unbelievably hard from his boyhood up. He had given himself to his work without stint. He had no sympathy with any of his employees who would do less. His wage, as a mechanic, had never exceeded two seventy-five a day. He bitterly resented any man's wanting more.
Moore was the entire brains of his factory. He was his own manager, his own superintendent, his own purchasing and sales agent--a man of splendid mind, hidebound by the egotism and prejudices of the self-made man. At fifty, he was going at his highest speed, every nerve taut, ready to break at the least disturbance of the load.
Roger admired his father with a blind idolatry that was quite foreign to his ordinary mental attitude. He was naturally critical of men and things. To be a forge boy in his father's factory was to Roger to be touching the skirts of real greatness.
"Father," he said one night at supper, "I had a row with Ole Oleson to-day."
"Which Ole Oleson?" asked his father. "There are nine of them in the factory."
"The second forge foreman. His girl Olga is in my grade at school."
His father nodded. "What was the row about? As I warned you, Rog, if I catch you with the lid off that temper of yours, I'll treat you exactly as I would any other employee."
"But you didn't catch me, this time!" Roger grinned. He had fine white teeth and his eyes were still the wonderful sky blue of his childhood. "Ole said you were as hard as one of the plowshares and that some day the men would soften you like they take temper out of steel and that then you'd never be any good again."
John Moore snorted. "And you let the fool get a rise out of you, of course!"
"I knocked him down."
"And what did he do?"
"He knocked me down."
"Then what?" asked Moore.
"We shook hands and went to work again." Roger grinned at his mother's horrified face.
"I'd have fired you both if I'd seen it," said his father. "You were late again this morning, Son. Remember you're docked for that."
"Anyhow," Roger went on without noting apparently his father's warning, "he got confidential, while we were eating dinner, and told me that if you didn't give them an increase they were going on a strike that would make you sit up and take notice. He says you won't give the increase so the strike's due about the middle of July."
"Oh, the fools!" exclaimed John Moore. "I can't have a strike now with that big Russian order to fill. That order makes or mars me."
"Then you'll give 'em the raise! That's good!" Roger gave a sigh of relief.
"Raise nothing! Why, I can't raise them! Roger, you're old enough to begin to understand these things. The only way I'm able to compete with the trust is by working on such