a match was under way
“It’s the sheepskins against the calfskins—Factory 1 against Factory 2,” explained a man at his elbow. “Factory 1 could do ’em if we had a decent pitcher. O’Brien, who is pitching, isn’t much even when he’s in the best of trim; to-dayhe happens to have a sprained finger, so he’s worse than usual.”
Instantly Peter was alert. Wasn’t he Factory 1? He forgot his fatigue—forgot everything except how it felt to pitch when one had a sprained finger.
“I can pitch a ball,” he ventured modestly.
“Can you then? O’Brien!” bawled the man. “Here’s a lad who says he can pitch. Give him a try, won’t you?”
Despite aching muscles and tired back Peter suddenly found himself on the diamond with the ball in his hands. It was the first familiar experience that had come to him that day. His blood warmed. He sent a twirler over the plate and was greeted by a roar from the Factory 1 men. The ball dropped with a smack into the hands of the catcher.
Peter tried another.
He pitched a third.
Vainly the man at the bat tried to hit them.
“Three strikes and out!” called the umpire.
The crowd cheered.
On went the game.
“Who’s pitching?” asked one man of another.
Nobody knew.
“Carmachel says his name is Strong,” some one at last informed the workmen.
“Hurrah for little Strong!” yelled a big Swede.
“Three cheers for the Little Giant!” piped a shrill voice.
On every hand the cry was taken up.
“Three cheers for the Little Giant!”
Then suddenly the one o’clock whistle sounded. Peter came back to the realities of life. He dropped his gloves. Already, as if the earth had opened, players and audience had vanished. In through the waiting doors of the tanneries filed the men. But Peter Coddington had won a place for himself, and with it a new name. Henceforth throughout the works he was known as “The Little Giant.”
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A NEW FRIEND
F
OR a week Peter worked patiently cutting ropes from freshly received shipments of skins, trimming the skins, and learning to sort them. Every night he went home exhausted after his day’s work. Sometimes it was hard to realize that he was the same boy who, but a short time before, had jauntily sauntered out to play tennis every evening with his classmates. He couldn’t have played tennis now had he tried, and he was not sorry when the rumor reached him that it was commonly reported at the high school that he had been sent away to a distant military academy. So that was the reason why the fellows had nothunted him up! Perhaps it was just as well. It saved many embarrassing questions, and he was much too worn out when night came to do anything but fall into his bed. Still he did not complain of his fatigue. He was too proud to do that. Moreover had he not brought the entire situation upon himself? He would swallow his medicine in silence.
But he knew from his mother’s troubled questions; from her unusual care that his luncheon be tempting and nourishing; from the solicitous gaze she fixed on him that the present ordeal worried her not a little. Once he overheard her say to his father: “The boy isn’t strong enough to stand it! He will be ill.”
“Don’t have any anxiety about Peter,” was the retort. “The young scoundrel finds energy enough, I hear, to play ball with the men every noon time. He is the star pitcher of Factory 1.” A chuckle came from the older man. “It is something of a joke, too,” he continued, “for I thought I had put him beyond all possible range of a bat and ball. Don’t fret any more about him. Lethim alone. He is showing more pluck than I dreamed he possessed.”
“But suppose he should overdo.”
“He won’t overdo.”
And the prediction was true. Tired as he was every night Peter awoke in the morning entirely refreshed. The lameness of back and muscles soon wore away. At the end of the week, when he received his first pay envelope, no boy in the wide world ever felt as rich as he. Six dollars! Six dollars of his very own! To be sure his father had often given him twice that amount; but receiving it as a present was a vastly different matter from earning it.
“I mean to save up for a motorcycle,” Peter declared. “Then I could ride to the tannery every day.”
“So you could,” agreed Mr. Coddington. “It is not a bad idea. Don’t forget, though, that you will be needing clothes now and then. You spoke last night of wanting some flannel shirts to wear to work.”
“Yes, but you——”
Mr. Coddington shook his head.
“I have bought your clothes up to this time,” he answered, “but now that you have a salary of your own it is time you relieved me of that expense.”
“Oh—of—of—course,” Peter stammered. “I guess, though, I can get the motorcycle and pay for my clothes, too, without any trouble. How much do clothes cost?”
“Let me see!” Mr. Coddington took out a small expense book and turned its pages rapidly. “Clothing for Peter. Here it is. Last year I spent for you $638.”
“For me! For my clothes?” gasped the boy. “Did I spend $638? Why, I had no idea of it! I could have gone without some of those overcoats and things as well as not if I had known they cost so much. That’s an awful lot for a boy to spend, isn’t it?”
“It’s a plenty.”
“Why, it’s more than I will earn in a whole year.”
“Yes, I am afraid it is—at least, for the present.”
Peter was thoughtful.
“I can see that it’s good-bye to the motorcycle,” he said at last, disappointment in every feature.
With an impulsive gesture Mr. Coddington thrust his hand into the breast pocket where his check-book lay; then resolutely took out the hand and put it behind him.
“There seems to be no way but for you to do without a motorcycle for a while, son,” he replied. “Do not be discouraged, though. You are now pretty well stocked with the necessary clothing and in consequence will not require many new things for some time. If you are not too proud to wear your old suits to work you can easily put aside some money each week.”
“I do not care how old and shabby my clothes are,” smiled Peter. “It does not make much difference what I wear to the tannery if I can just have some flannel shirts, overalls, and rubber boots. I’ve packed away my white tennis suits in moth-balls, you know, since I went into the mill.”
They both laughed.
As flannel shirts and overalls were inexpensiveand easily obtained, and as Peter already had rubber boots it was possible to begin the saving for the motorcycle without further delay.
In the meantime orders came that Strong was to leave his task of trimming skins and present himself at the beamhouse. Reluctantly he bade farewell to Carmachel and the other men—his first friends at the tannery—and on the following Monday morning he made his way into the long, low room where he had been told the skins were tanned. The room was a revelation, and a none too pleasant one at that! If he had thought the unloading and sorting department unsavory what should he say of this? The floor of the beamhouse was slippery with water, lime, and tanning solutions; unpleasant fumes of wet skins made heavy the air; revolving paddle-wheels suspended from the ceiling dripped upon the passer-by; and men, dragging saturated skins from vats in the floor, piled them in heaps where the water oozing from them trickled out into the general sloppiness and transformed the floor into a great shallow pool of moisture. Back and forth through this wetnessmoved workmen who, as they wheeled barrows of freshly tanned skins, left a wake of slime behind them. Peter looked about in consternation. The steaming odor of the room was nauseating and filled him with disgust. Could he stand it? And they called this a promotion! What wonder that Carmachel had chuckled when asked what the beamhouse was!
As Peter stood hesitating, a prey to these confused impressions, a lad about his own age touched him on the shoulder.
“Bryant, the foreman, wants to speak to you,” he said.
Peter roused himself and followed the boy.
In a corner of the room the foreman greeted him.
“How are you, Strong?” he began. “You see you are no stranger to me, for I have watched you play ball at noon time. I am glad we are to have you in our department.”
“Thank you, sir. Yes, Mr. Tyler said I was to report here for the present.”
“That’s good. We can put you to work, allright. Before you begin, however, I should like to have you look about and get an idea what we do in here. A man always enjoys his work better and does it more intelligently, I contend, if he has some notion of the process in which he is to have a share. Jackson is about your age and has been in this room a long time.” (He indicated the boy at Peter’s elbow.) “Suppose he takes you around and shows you what happens to the skins after they are sent in here to us.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Jackson seemed pleased at the task assigned him.
“I’m glad you are coming into the beamhouse to work, Strong,” he ventured timidly. “There are not many boys here my age. You won’t like it at first, I’m afraid, but you will soon get used to it.”
“I don’t believe I shall like it at all,” was Peter’s rueful reply. “It’s an awful place, isn’t it?”
“Oh, it’s not so bad as it seems. You won’t mind it—really you won’t. Of course the smellis disagreeable and it is wet and sloppy, too; but Bryant, the foreman, is a mighty white fellow and the men, although mostly foreigners, are pleasant enough. I myself was so thankful to get any work that I did not much care what it was.”
“Have you been here long?” questioned Peter.
“Ever since I was old enough to go to work—a year this August.”
“And you’ve been in this room all that time!”
“Yes. It takes quite a while to get a promotion here at the tannery. My pay has been raised to nine dollars, though. Maybe I wasn’t glad to get the money! You see, I support my mother.” Jackson threw back his head proudly.
“You? You support yourself and your mother?” repeated Peter incredulously.
“Sure I do! Why not?”
“But you—why, you are not much older than I am!”
“I’m sixteen. Mother and I get on very well on what I earn, even though it isn’t much. Don’t you have anybody to take care of?”
“No.”
Jackson regarded Peter with astonishment.
“I should think you would be rich as a lord if you have all your money to yourself!” he exclaimed. “What on earth do you find to do with it?”
Once—and the time was not far passed, either—Peter would have laughed at the naive question; now he answered gravely:
“Oh, I am saving some of it.”
“That’s right. I can’t save a cent at present, but some time I hope to get a better salary and then I shall be able to. Now let’s go over to the other end of the room and see where they are putting the skins to soak in those big vats of water to get out the salt and dirt. That’s the first thing they do after the skins are sent into the beamhouse. You remember how stiff and hard the dry skins were when you unloaded them. Well, they are put into the great revolving wooden drums that you see overhead and are worked about in borax and water until they become soft. They are washed, too. Then after all the skins have been washed and softened they are thrown intolime and are left there until the fibre swells and the hair is loosened. The men you see with rubber gloves on are the limers. If they did not wear gloves they would get their hands burned and raw, for the lime and the chemicals used in the tan often make the hands and arms very sore.”
“But I don’t see that the skins that are tossed into the lime pits come out with the hair off,” objected Peter.
“Bless your heart—the lime does not take the hair off. The men who unhair them have to do that. They lay the wet skins out on boards and with sharp knives pull and scrape off all the white hair.”
“Why don’t they take off the brown or black hair as well?”
“Because only the white hair is removed by hand. That is kept separate and after being dried is sold to dealers for a good price. The colored hair is taken off by machinery and is sold too, but it is not so valuable.”
“I suppose plasterers can use hair like that,” speculated Peter.
“Yes, and upholsterers,” added Jackson.
Peter smiled.
“Carmachel told me nothing in a tannery was wasted,” he said. “I was surprised to find that even the lumps of fat and bits of flesh adhering to the skins, together with the parings that came off when the calfskins were trimmed down to an even thickness, were disposed of for glue stock or fertilizer.”
“Every scrap of stuff is used, I can tell you!” assented Jackson. “Calfskin, you know, is never split; it is not heavy enough for that. Besides it is more nearly uniform in weight than a skin like a bull’s hide, for instance, which is very much heavier about the head. No, calfskin is fairly even and therefore, while wet, is just put between rollers where a thin, sharp blade shaves from the flesh side any part of it that is thicker than any other. It comes out of equal thickness all over. Do you understand?”
Peter nodded.
“And now have you this beamhouse process straight in your head so we can go on?”
Jackson held up his hand and began to check off the successive steps on his fingers:
“The skins are washed until the dirt and salt are out; they are worked in paddle-wheels, if necessary, until soft; they are limed; unhaired; and bated, or puered. By puering I mean that they are put through a liquid that takes out all the lime; if the lime is not carefully soaked out the skins will be burned and hard and cannot be tanned properly. After the puering the short-hairers remove any remaining hairs; the skins are thoroughly washed again, and at last are ready for tanning.”
“How are they tanned?”
“Why, by putting them into paddle-wheels filled with the tanning solution where they revolve as many as seven or eight hours. This solution is then changed for a weaker one, and they revolve again for a couple of hours more. Some skins are tanned in a mixture of chemicals which we buy all prepared; we call those chrome tanned. Others are soaked in a vegetable tan of hemlock, oak, chestnut, palmetto roots, gambier, or quebracho.”
“Or what?”
“Quebracho!” Jackson rolled out the long word with a gusto. “Quebracho is a tree something like the lignum-vitæ and grows in South America. The hardened gum comes in barrels and looks like rosin; sometimes, instead of being hard, it is shipped in a liquid state in big tank cars. There is about fifteen per cent. of tannin in quebracho and at the tanneries it can be diluted, of course, to any strength desired. We use it altogether here instead of using other vegetable tans.”
“But it says in my geography that every one uses oak or hemlock bark,” objected Peter, sceptically.
“Well, the Coddington Company doesn’t. Bryant says we tan so much leather here that there would be no way of disposing of the quantities of bark left after the tannin had been extracted from it. Besides bark is scarce and expensive; then, too, it takes a car-load of bark to get even a decent amount of tannin and the freighting adds to the cost. Quebracho can beshipped by water and is therefore more economical, and for the varieties of leather we tan here it answers the purpose as well. It is lots of work to get the tannin out of oak or hemlock bark. The bark has to be ground up and put in a leaching-kettle full of water; after it has boiled the liquid is drained off and the tannin extracted. Using quebracho is a much simpler method. Of course we use oak and hemlock bark, though, in the sole leather tanneries over at Elmwood.”
Peter regarded Jackson intently.
“How did you come to know so much about all this business?” he asked at last.
“Oh, I don’t know much,” was the modest answer. “I just wanted to learn what I could while I had the chance. You can’t help being curious when you work so long in one room. Bryant saw I was interested and he’s explained all the things I wanted to find out.”
“Then maybe you’ll pass on some more of your information,” laughed Peter, “and tell me why some of the skins are tanned in quebracho and some in chrome.”
“As I told you,” repeated Jackson good-naturedly, “quebracho is a vegetable tan and chrome a chemical tan. The effect of each of these processes on the skins is different; so the process used depends on what sort of leather is wanted. At many tanneries chrome is used almost entirely for tanning calfskins because the process is so much quicker; chrome takes but about nine hours while quebracho tanning takes two weeks or thereabouts.”
“I see. And after the tanning?”
“The skins are inspected while wet and sorted for stock; they are then stamped with a letter or number so they can be identified; they are fat-liquored, and are dyed.”
“What is fat-liquored?”
“Fat-liquored means working the skins about in a mixture of soap and oil until they absorb these softening ingredients and become pliable. All leather, whether chrome or vegetable tanned, has to go through this process. The liquid is put into paddle-wheels just as the tanning mixture is. The dyeing is done in paddle-wheels too, andsome kinds of leather have in addition a coat of dye rubbed into them by hand. It gives them a better surface.”
“What is your work, Jackson?” asked Peter.
“Oh, I’ve done about everything there is to do in a beamhouse. Just now I am inspecting and sorting the skins after they are tanned.”
“What is Mr. Bryant going to set me at?”
“I don’t know. You will have to ask him. But no matter what he gives you to do you must not be discouraged, Strong. You were lucky to get any job at all in the tannery. They have turned away lots of boys your age—they do it every day.”
Peter bit his lip to keep from smiling.
“I suppose I ought to consider myself lucky,” replied he.
“Well, aren’t you? To be young, and well, and to know that if you do your best you have a chance to work up to something better? I think it’s great! I intend to work up. Some day I may be a partner in Coddingtons’—who knows! Then I’ll dress my mother in silk every day in the weekand I’ll buy an automobile. I’d like to ride in one of those things just once. Did you ever?”
“Yes,” admitted Peter cautiously.
“Honest? Wasn’t it bully? Where did you go?”
But Peter was spared the difficult task of replying. Instead, Bryant summoned him, and he was given a wheel-barrow filled with wet skins which were to be carried from the soaking vats to the lime pits. All the rest of the morning back and forth he trudged wheeling load after load. It was stupid, dirty work, and he was glad when the noon whistle blew.
“Let’s eat our luncheon together, Strong,” said Jackson, “that is—unless you have somebody else you want to lunch with.”
Peter assented only too gladly. It was far pleasanter to have a boy his own age to speak to than to eat by himself. Besides he liked Jackson.
But even in the fresh breeze that swept the open field, even while playing ball, even at home after a hot bath and clean clothing, Peter could stillscent the odor of the beamhouse. It was days before he became accustomed to it and could feel, with Nat Jackson, that he was a lucky boy to have a “job.”
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PETER’S MAIDEN SPEECH
P
ETER had been three weeks in the beamhouse and had in that time proved himself so useful that his pay had been raised from six to six dollars and a half a week. Very proud he was of his financial good fortune. With few demands in the way of clothing he was now able to lay aside quite a little sum toward the motorcycle he so much desired. The days at the tannery passed more quickly. Nat Jackson became his chum and the two lads were almost inseparable; they lunched together, played on the ball team, and often spent their Saturday afternoons in taking long walks or going to Nat’shouse. Peter, however, took great good care that Nat should not visit him.
The omission of this hospitality was not entirely unnoticed by young Jackson, and the conclusion he drew was that Peter lived humbly—perhaps poorly—in lodgings to which he did not consider it suitable to invite a guest. Nat thought this foolish pride on Peter’s part and he meant to tell him so some time when they became better acquainted. It was a mistake, argued Nat, to be over-sensitive about one’s poverty. If Peter was saving his money surely that was excuse enough. He had a right to live as he pleased. Furthermore what possible difference could it make in their friendship? Nat himself lived simply but very nicely on the meager salary that he earned. He and his mother rented two tiny bedrooms, a sunny little living-room, and a microscopic kitchen in a part of the town which, to be sure, was cheap and ugly; but Mrs. Jackson, Peter soon found, was one of the rare women who could make a home—a real home—almost anywhere. She often laughingly remarked that if she were to dwell ina snow hovel at the North Pole she believed she should cut a window in the side of it and set a pot of flowers there, and Peter could well imagine her doing it.
She was a short, bright-eyed, motherly little person, with a quick appreciation of a joke, and a wonderful knack at cooking. Incidentally she had a quiet voice and chose soft colors in preference to crude ones. Peter gathered from her manner of speech and from the delicate modeling of her hands that at some time in her life she had occupied a very different position from the one she was now filling. But whatever that past might have been he gained no inkling of it either from her or from her son. Bravely, patiently, happily, she made a home for her boy—such a home that Peter Coddington visited it with the keenest pleasure and came away with a vague wonder what it was that those three wee rooms possessed which was lacking in his own richly furnished mansion.
Perhaps if it had not been for the encouragement of Nat and his mother Peter might not have had the grit to master his work at the beamhouse.A wholesome spur these two friends were to his flagging spirits. There was some subtle quality in Nat’s mother that made a fellow want to do his very best—to be as much of a man as he could. And yet she said little to urge either of the lads to their task. It was just that she was so proud and so pleased when they did win any good fortune through their own endeavors. And so Peter forged bravely on, prodded by an unformulated desire to do well not only for the sake of his own parents, but that he might not disappoint the faith that Nat and Nat’s mother had in him.
Even Mr. Coddington remarked one evening at dinner (and there was a twinkle in his eye when he said it) that he was highly gratified by the reports he heard of “young Strong.”
But as the summer advanced and the days grew hotter Mrs. Coddington watched her boy with anxious care and dropped more than one suggestion that it was time they all were off to the shore. None of her suggestions bore fruit, however, and by and by when she saw that Mr. Coddington had no intention of leaving Milburn she ceased toremonstrate further and Peter settled down to work and to keep as comfortable as he could during the hot weather. What a haven his home, with its green lawns and wide verandas, became, after those long, breathless hours in the tannery! Never before had he half appreciated his surroundings. Most of the houses where the men at the factory lived were huddled closely in that dingy part of the town where Nat Jackson’s rooms were, and Peter soon discovered that after supper many of the workmen and their families came and sat in the ball field opposite Factory 1 where there was more air, and where some of the men actually slept when the nights were very hot. It was a blessing—that great open space! Peter wondered what they would have done without it.
He had been raising the query mentally one July morning on his way to work after a close, restless night in his big room on the hill. The day was a sultry one; no air stirred, and it was with a sigh that Peter entered the beamhouse. No sooner was he inside, however, than he at once saw that something was wrong. Knots of menwere speaking together in undertones and seemed to be far more eager to talk than to take up their daily tasks. Only Bryant, who moved from one group to another, urging, coaxing, commanding, succeeded in compelling them to attend to what they had to do.
“You fellows can do all the talking you want to at noon,” he said. “There will be no builders around to-day, I guess.”
“They’ll do well to keep away!” muttered an angry Swede, threateningly.
“You go to unhairing skins, Olsen,” Bryant commanded, putting his hand firmly but kindly on the broad shoulder of the man. “You can scold your wrath all out this noon. Go on.”
Sullenly the man obeyed.
“What is the matter?” Peter managed to whisper to Nat Jackson.
“The men are furious; they are threatening to strike,” returned Nat in an undertone.
“To strike!” exclaimed Peter. His thoughts flew to his father. “What has happened?” he questioned insistently.
“Didn’t you see last night’s paper? Haven’t you heard? Mr. Coddington is going to put up another tannery. He’s going to build it on the ball field!”
“On the ball field! Our field!”
“So the paper says. Of course the land is his. But it does seem pretty tough!”
Peter moved on, dazed.
To take away the field—the one out-of-door spot for luncheon and exercise! To deprive hundreds of stifled creatures of fresh air and sunlight! It was monstrous! Why hadn’t his father mentioned the plan? Of course he did not realize what it would mean to the men or he never would have considered it. What would become of all those tired people who nightly left their bare little dwellings and sought a cool evening breeze in the field? Peter knew Nat and his mother always sat there until bedtime and many of the other workmen brought their wives and children. Once the boy had sat there himself. It was an orderly crowd that he had seen—children tumbling over each other on the grass; women seated on thebenches and exchanging a bit of gossip; tired men stretched full-length on the turf resting in the quiet of the place.
Why, it was a crime to take the field away!
All the morning while he worked Peter’s mind seethed with arguments against the building of the new factory. He longed to see his father and talk it out. Surely Mr. Coddington would listen if he realized the conditions. He was a kind man—not an inhuman brute. It seemed as if the noon whistle would never blow.
With Nat Jackson and a score of agitated workmen Peter went out into the shade opposite. Luncheon was forgotten, and ball, too. Instead a crowd gathered and on every hand there were mutterings and angry protests.
“Of course Coddington can take the land. It’s his. There is no law to prevent him from doing anything he wants to with it. What does he care for us?” remarked an old, gray-haired tanner.
“The working man is nothing to the rich man,” grumbled another. “All the millionaire wants is more money. Another factory means just that—more money! It’s money, money, money—always money with the rich. The more they have the more they want.”
Sick at heart, Peter listened.
“Why don’t you fellows do something about it?” blustered a red-faced Italian. “I’ll bet you if we called a strike it would bring Coddington to terms. He’d a good sight rather give up building that factory than have us all walk out—’specially now when there’s more work ahead than the firm can handle. I’ve been in five strikes in other places and we never failed yet to get what we started for.”
“Do you think you could drive a man like Mr. Coddington that way?” It was Carmachel who spoke. “You can walk out, all of you, if you choose. It would make no difference to him. If he has decided it is best to put up that tannery he’ll put it up. A strike would do you no good and as a result your families would be without food and a roof over their heads all winter. You’re a fine man, Ristori! Coddington pays you well. You take his money and are glad toget a job from him; then the first minute anything does not go to suit you you turn against him and cry: Strike! You don’t know what loyalty means. Hasn’t Coddington always been square with you? Hasn’t he paid you good wages? Hasn’t he added an extra bit to your envelope at Christmas? I’ll not strike!”
“What would you have us do?” was Ristori’s hot retort. “Would you have us sit by like dumb things and let him do anything to us he pleases?”
“Coddington is a reasonable man,” Carmachel replied. “Why don’t some of you talk decently with him about all this?”
“Aye! And lose our jobs for our pains!” sneered a swarthy Armenian.
A shout went up.
“A strike! A strike!” yelled a hundred voices.
“Would you strike and see your families starve?” cried Nat Jackson. “I have a mother to support. I care more for her than for the field and everything on it. I shall not strike.”
“You white-livered young idiot!” roared some one in the crowd.
“I tell you, men,” went on Carmachel, “there is nothing to be gained by striking. Get together some of your best speakers from each factory and let them ask an interview of Mr. Coddington—now—this afternoon—before anything more is done about the new factory.”
“He’ll not grant it!”
“Hasn’t he always been fair with you?”
“Yes!”
“Aye!”
“So he has!”
“He has that!”
Grudgingly the workmen admitted it, even the most rabid of them.
Drawn by an irresistible impulse Peter elbowed his way into the midst of the workmen.
“I am sure Mr. Coddington will listen to you,” he ejaculated earnestly. “Choose your men and let them go to him. Give him a chance to see your side of it. He will be reasonable—I know he will.”
“It’s the Little Giant,” said one man to another.
“Put it to vote,” urged Peter. “Come! Howmany are for going to Mr. Coddington? You fellows do not want a strike. Think what it would mean!”
“The lad’s right. Up with the hands!”
It was a crisis.
Peter trembled from head to foot.
A few hands were raised, then slowly a few more; more came. All over the field they shot into the air.
“And now choose your representatives,” called Peter quickly, dreading lest the tide of sentiment should turn.
“Carmachel! He doesn’t seem to fear losing his job,” piped a voice. “Put on Carmachel!”
“And Jackson; he said he would not strike anyway,” called somebody else.
“Bryant is a good fellow! Put Bryant on.”
“Put on some men from the other factories, too,” demanded a Pole aggressively.
A committee of twelve were chosen.
“Add the Little Giant as the thirteenth—just for luck!” laughed a knee-staker.
There was a cry of approval.
“The Little Giant! The Little Giant!” rose in a chorus.
“No! No, indeed! I couldn’t!” Peter protested violently.
“Of course you could!” contradicted Carmachel. “Come, come! You mustn’t be so modest, Strong. You are with us for keeping the field, aren’t you?”
“Yes. But there are reasons that you don’t understand why I couldn’t——”
“Pooh! What reasons?”
“I can’t tell you. But I couldn’t possibly go to Mr. Coddington with the men—I couldn’t, really, Carmachel,” reiterated Peter miserably.
“Nonsense! The only question is this—is your sympathy with us or isn’t it?”
“Of course it is!” There was no doubting the fervor of the avowal.
“Then that settles it. Although you have come here but recently, Strong, we all consider you a friend and count you as one of ourselves. You’ll stand by the bunch, won’t you?” Carmachel scrutinized Peter sharply.
“Yes, I will. But you don’t understand the circumstances or you would never urge me to——”
Carmachel interrupted him.
“I guess I understand the circumstances better than you think,” returned he, dryly. “Mr. Coddington got you your place, I’ve heard. Naturally you feel under obligations to him for his kindness. That’s all very well. But has he ever been near you since he put you into the tannery? No! He sits in his office and opens his mail and you are just a boy in the works. Isn’t that so? What’s to hinder you from going respectfully to him with the rest of us and calling to his attention something which seems to us an injustice? You said yourself it was the best plan. You pleaded with us to do it.”
“I know.”
“Then why won’t you go yourself? You’re not a coward, Strong, nor, unless I greatly mistake, are you the sort of chap who would point out to others a path he wouldn’t dare follow himself.”
“I’ll go!” cried Peter suddenly. “I’ll go, but I will not do any speaking.”
“Nobody wants you to speak,” growled an Italian who had been standing near and who had overheard the conversation. “Bryant, Carmachel, and the older men will do the speaking. It’s their place.”
So it was agreed.
Events shaped themselves rapidly. Within an hour Mr. Coddington, seated in his perfectly appointed office, received word that a deputation of his men respectfully requested an interview with him that afternoon.
He was thunderstruck.
What did the demand foreshadow? Was a strike brewing? The men had appeared perfectly satisfied with the working conditions at the tanneries. Wages were fairly high and the factories conformed to every requirement of the Health and Labor Laws.
He touched a bell.
“Ask Tyler to step here,” said he, frowning.
Mr. Tyler entered hastily.
“What’s all this, Tyler?” demanded his chief. “I hear the men want to see me.”
“I know nothing about it, sir. They’ve kept their own council. If they have a grievance they have not told me.”
“No labor agitators have been in town recently?”
“Not to my knowledge, Mr. Coddington.”
“That will do.”
Tyler went out.
Again Mr. Coddington rang.
“I will see the men at three o’clock,” he said to a messenger.
Left alone the president paced the floor. Business was good. The books showed a quantity of unfilled orders. It would be an awkward time for a strike.
“Undoubtedly I could get strike-breakers from Chicago,” he murmured aloud, “but it would take time. Besides, I do not want my men to walk out. Think of the years many of them have worked here! The town will be full of idle persons and suffering families. I have never had a strike in all the history of my business. I’ve always tried to do what was fair toward those whowere in my employ. That is what cuts—to be square with your men and then have them meet you with ingratitude. Why, I would have staked my oath that they would have stood by me. I’m disappointed—disappointed!”
With such unpleasant reflections as companions three o’clock came none too speedily for Mr. Coddington. The men were ushered promptly into the office and the door closed. Then an awkward silence ensued. Nobody knew exactly whose place it was to speak first.
But if the tanners had expected the president of the company to break the ice and open the interview they had missed their calculations, for he did no such thing. He met their gaze firmly, courteously, but silently.
Peter, who stood at the back of the room behind the older workmen, saw in his father’s face an unaccustomed sternness and felt instinctively that their mission was destined to failure.
It was Bryant who at last summoned courage to begin the conference.
“Mr. Coddington,” he said, “we men havecome to you because we wish to hear the truth concerning a rumor that has reached us. We come respectfully. You are our chief—the one who, in the past, has always been fair and square with us. It is because of your justice that we address you now. Is it true that you propose to take the vacant field opposite Factory 1 for the site of a new building?”
As Mr. Coddington drew a sigh of relief he inclined his head.
“You have been correctly informed,” he assented. “We need more room. The land is lying idle with a tax to be paid yearly upon it. It seems to me an economic plan to utilize the space for a new factory in which the patent leather department may be housed.”
“Did you realize, in deciding, that the field you intend to take is the recreation ground of the men in your mills?” asked Bryant.
“I know that some of the men play ball there,” replied Mr. Coddington, smiling.
“And yet you have decided to take it in spite of that fact?”
The president stiffened.
“The land,” said he, “is mine, and the taxes I annually pay on it render it rather a costly spot for a ball field. For years the lot has been nothing but an expense to me. If the case were yours and you could derive an income from property where previously all had been outgo wouldn’t you do it?”
“But do you need that income, Mr. Coddington?” cut in one of the men. “Isn’t the Coddington Company rich? Must rich men go on getting more and more, and never think of those who coin their money for them?”
It was an unwise speech, and its effect was electrical.
“I will try and believe that you men came here with the intention of being courteous,” observed Mr. Coddington with frigid politeness. “My affairs, however, are mine and not yours. I must deal with them in the way that I consider wisest. You hardly realize, I think, that you are over-stepping the bounds of propriety when you attempt to dictate to me what I shall do with my land, or how I shall manage my tanneries.”
The sternness of the answer blocked any possible reply.
Amid the silence of the room one could almost hear the heart-beats of the waiting throng.
Then some one in the crowd made his way to the front of the room and faced the president.
It was Peter Strong.
As Mr. Coddington’s gaze fell on his son he started.
The boy stood erect and looked his father squarely in the eye.
“May I speak, sir?”
Mr. Coddington bowed.
Peter began gently, respectfully, and his words were without defiance.