"Since we are in for it," said Mr. Slocum the next morning, "put
the case to them squarely."
Mr. Slocum's vertebræ had stiffened over night.
"Leave that to me, sir," Richard replied. "I have been shaping out
in my mind a little speech which I flatter myself will cover the
points. They have brought this thing upon themselves, and we are
about to have the clearest of understandings. I never saw the men
quieter."
"I don't altogether admire that. It looks as if they hadn't any
doubt as to the issue."
"The clearest-headed have no doubt; they know as well as you and I
do the flimsiness of those resolutions. But the thick heads are in a
fog. Every man naturally likes his pay increased; if a simple fellow
is told five or six hundred times that his wages ought to be raised,
the idea is so agreeable and insidious that by and by he begins to
believe himself grossly underpaid, though he may be getting twice
what he is worth. He doesn't reason about it; that's the last thing
he'll do for you. In this mood he lets himself be flown away by the
breath of some loud-mouthed demagogue, who has no interest in the
matter beyond hearing his own talk and passing round the hat after
the meeting is over. That is what has happened to our folks below.
But they _are_ behaving handsomely."
"Yes, and I don't like it."
Since seven o'clock the most unimpeachable decorum had reigned in
the workshops. It was now nine, and this brief dialogue had occurred
between Mr. Slocum and Richard on the veranda, just as the latter was
on the point of descending into the yard to have his talk with the
men.
The workshops--or rather the shed in which the workshops were, for
it was one low structure eighteen or twenty feet wide and open on the
west side--ran the length of the yard, and with the short extension
at the southerly end formed the letter L. There were no partitions,
an imaginary line separating the different gangs of workers. A person
standing at the head of the building could make himself heard more or
less distinctly in the remotest part.
The grating lisp of the wet saws eating their way into the marble
boulder, and the irregular quick taps of the seventy or eighty
mallets were not suspended as Richard took his stand beside a tall
funereal urn at the head of the principal workshop. After a second's
faltering he rapped smartly on the lip of the urn with the key of
his studio-door.
Instantly every arm appeared paralyzed, and the men stood
motionless, with the tools in their hands.
Richard began in a clear but not loud voice, though it seemed to
ring on the sudden silence:--
"Mr. Slocum has asked me to say a few words to you, this morning,
about those resolutions, and one or two other matters that have
occurred to him in this connection. I am no speech-maker; I never
learned that trade"--
"Never learned any trade," muttered Durgin, inaudibly.
--"but I think I can manage some plain, honest talk, for
straight-forward men."
Richard's exordium was listened to with painful attention.
"In the first place," he continued, "I want to remind you,
especially the newer men, that Slocum's Yard has always given steady
work and prompt pay to Stillwater hands. No hand has ever been turned
off without sufficient cause, or kept on through mere favoritism.
Favors have been shown, but they have been shown to all alike. If
anything has gone crooked, it has been straightened out as soon as
Mr. Slocum knew of it. That has been the course of the yard in the
past, and the Proprietor doesn't want you to run away with the idea
that that course is going to be changed. One change, for the time
being, is going to be made at our own suggestion. From now, until the
1st of September, this yard will close gates on Saturdays at five
P.M. instead of six P.M."
Several voices cried, "Good for Slocum!" "Where's Slocum?" "Why
don't Slocum speak for himself?" cried one voice.
"It is Mr. Slocum's habit," answered Richard, "to give his
directions to me, I give them to the foremen, and the foremen to the
shops. Mr. Slocum follows that custom on this occasion. With regard
to the new scale of wages which the Association has submitted to him,
the Proprietor refuses to accept it, or any modification of it."
A low murmur ran through the workshops.
"What's a modificashun, sir?" asked Jemmy Willson, stepping
forward, and scratching his left ear diffidently.
"A modification," replied Richard, considerably embarrassed to
give an instant definition, "is a--a"--
"A splitting of the difference, by--!" shouted somebody in the
third shop.
"Thank you," said Richard, glancing in the direction of his
impromptu Webster's Unabridged. "Mr. Slocum does not propose to split
the difference. The wages in every department are to be just what
they are,--neither more nor less. If anybody wishes to make a
remark," he added, observing a restlessness in several of the men, "I
beg he will hold on until I get through. I shall not detain you much
longer, as the parson says before he has reached the middle of his
sermon.
"What I say now, I was charged to make particularly clear to you.
It is this: In future Mr. Slocum intends to run Slocum's Yard
himself. Neither you, nor I, nor the Association will be allowed to
run it for him. [Sensation.] Until now the Association has tied him
down to two apprentices a year. From this hour, out, Mr. Slocum will
take on, not two, or twenty, but two hundred apprentices if the
business warrants it."
The words were not clearly off Richard's lips when the foreman of
the shop in which he was speaking picked up a couple of small drills,
and knocked them together with a sharp click. In an instant the men
laid aside their aprons, bundled up their tools, and marched out of
the shed two by two, in dead silence. That same click was repeated
almost simultaneously in the second shop, and the same evolution took
place. Then click, click, click! went the drills, sounding fainter
and fainter in the distant departments; and in less than three
minutes there was not a soul left in Slocum's Yard except the Orator
of the Day.
Richard had anticipated some demonstration, either noisy or
violent, perhaps both; but this solemn, orderly desertion dashed him.
He stepped into the middle of the yard, and glancing up beheld
Margaret and Mr. Slocum standing on the veranda. Even at that
distance he could perceive the pallor on one face, and the
consternation written all over the other.
Hanging his head with sadness, Richard crossed the yard, which
gave out mournful echoes to his footfalls, and swung to the large
gate, nearly catching old Giles by the heel as he did so. Looking
through the slats, he saw Lumley and Peterson hobbling arm in arm
down the street,--after more than twenty-five years of kindly
treatment.
"Move number one," said Richard, lifting the heavy cross-piece
into its place and fastening it with a wooden pin. "Now I must go and
prop up Mr. Slocum."