The Forbidden Trail | Page 8

more intelligibly, Roger thought, than any of the others. There was a bench outside the picket fence that surrounded Ole's house, and Ole's house was not a stone's throw from the forge shed. Here nearly every afternoon Ole, with some of the strike leaders, would gather, and when not throwing quoits in front of the shed, they would talk of the strike.
Roger, his heavy black hair tossed back from his face, his blue eyes thoughtful, his boyish lips compressed in the effort to understand, seldom missed a session. The strike had lasted nearly a month when he said to Ole.
"My father says that if the strike isn't over in two weeks, he's ruined."
"That's a dirty lie!" exclaimed a German named Emil.
Before Roger's ready fist could land, Ole had pulled the boy back to the bench.
"What's the good of that!" said Ole. "Emil, this kid's no liar. Don't be so free with your gab."
There was silence for a few moments. The group of men on the bench stared obstinately at the boy Roger and Roger stared at the group of factory buildings. Unpretentious buildings they were, of wood or brick, one-story and rambling. John Moore had bought in marsh land and as he slowly reclaimed it by filling with ashes from his furnaces, he as slowly added to the floor space of his factory. Roger could remember the erection of every addition, excepting the first, which was made when he was only a baby. He knew what the factory meant to John Moore and with sudden bitterness he cried,
"I don't see what good it will do you to ruin my father!"
"'Twon't do us no good," returned Ole. "He ain't going to be ruined. Look here already, Rog. I got a girl, your age. She goes in your class. What kind of girl is she?"
"She's a smart girl. Smart as lightning," answered Roger.
Ole nodded. "Sure she is. Now Emil, he's got two boys and three girls. Canute, over there, you've got three little girls, ain't you? Yes--and Oscar, you got one boy, and John Moore, he's got one boy. Now, listen once, Rog. I tell you about myself and that tells you about all of us here.
"I am born in Norway, the youngest of nine, and when I am ten years my folks come to America. They come to give their children a chance to live comfortable and not have to work like dogs all the time, just to keep alive. All right. They come here to this town. My father gets a job and my big brothers get a job and we all do fine. They put me into school and my father says I can go clean through the University. Then he dies and my brothers all marry and when I have just one year in the High School I have to quit and go to work.
"All right! I get a job in a machine shop where a fellow named John Moore has a machine next to mine. He's a good smart fellow. We're good friends, many years. But he has a good education."
"He has not!" interrupted Roger, flatly. "He's never been in school since he was twelve and he's supported himself ever since he was twelve."
"He's educated all the same," insisted Ole.
"He taught himself everything he knows," Roger cried.
"All right! All right! Anyhow, he makes a new kind of a machine and takes his savings and starts to make plowshares, ten a day, over in that little brick house, there. And he works like the very devil. Why? Why, so that little Roger Moore that's come along can have it easier than he had. Same as I'm working for my little Olga and same as Canute and Emil and Oscar is working."
"That's only part of it, with father, anyhow," Roger exclaimed. "Of course, he's ambitious for me, but, you see, he has these ideas inside of him that have to come out. He'd have done it if I'd never been born."
"He does it so's his children gets ahead. Every married man's that way. Otherwise, why work?" This was Emil's contribution.
"All right," Ole pushed on. "Anyhow first thing I know I'm working for John Moore and he's getting ahead while I'm staying in the same old place, same old pay. And now listen. Already, when he gets ahead he changes. He gets bossy and ugly. Seems like a man can't be a boss without changing, without getting so he curses the fellow he bosses. And Emil and Oscar and Canute and I and all of us say, 'Here's Moore getting ahead. His boy goes through the university on what Moore makes us earn him. He has a hired girl for his wife. Now our children can't go to the university on what Moore pays us. And our wives can't keep