The Forbidden Trail | Page 6

electric car, the first one in
Eagle's Wing. Yes, perhaps this was as memorable a summer as
Roger's seventh. Yet it lacked the magic and the beauty that made
imperishable the joy of the swimming pool summer.
And then came his fourteenth summer.
Roger was a strapping big lad at fourteen. He was as tall as his father,
who was five feet ten, and was still growing rapidly. He was thin but
hard-muscled, with good shoulders that were not as awkward as they

looked. After a year of pleading, his father agreed to let him spend his
vacation in the plow factory; and Roger in overalls, his dinner pail in
hand, was his father's pride and his mother's despair. She did like to see
her only child well dressed.
Ernest's father wanted Ernie 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