se touch with the cannery. As
she went on, Dickie Lang divulged the source of her information.

"Jack and I have talked you over a lot," she said soberly. "We are both
anxious to see you get going."

While she talked on concerning the re-opening of the cannery, Gregory
wondered to what extent her opinion of McCoy's ability was based by
personal prejudice. Of course it was nothing to him what Dickie Lang
thought of McCoy or of himself either, for that matter. He decided to
look McCoy up at once.

"Then you have to get your labor," she went on. "And that isn't as easy,
I have found, as it seems. You see Mascola has the bulge on the labor
situation around here. He has the riff-raff of the world on his
pay-roll. They speak in a dozen different languages. Everything
almost--but English. They are practically all aliens and there is
nothing they won't do to keep a decent man out. Blair had hard work to
get a crew, I know, and harder work to keep it. He was always hiring and
firing. Things would go all right for a while. Then there would come a
row with Mascola's outfit and a lot of the boys would get disgusted and
leave."

Gregory interrupted:

"I understand from my father's attorney, that one of the biggest things
he had to contend with was the matter of getting fish."

"I'm coming to that in a minute. Let's finish up the labor question
while we're on it. You've got to get a certain number of skilled men who
can handle the machines. With a few others who have worked in a fish
cannery you can go ahead, for the biggest percentage of your labor is
unskilled anyway and has to be broken in. Men like that are the hardest
to get," she concluded, "they are mostly tramps. Here to-day and gone
to-morrow. You can't depend on them. If you can get a bunch to stick,
you're mighty lucky."

She paused and moved her chair nearer. Then she broached the important
subject.

"About the fish, you can do one of three things. Or rather two things,"
she corrected, "for I hardly think you'll tie up with Mascola. You can
fix up your own boats, try to man them and get your own fish. You have
twenty-five boats. That's not enough even if they were all in good
shape, which they're not."

"What do you mean by trying to man my boats?"

The girl smiled.

"Just what I say," she answered. "Fishermen are scarce. My father was in
business here for twenty years and most of the time he was running
short-handed. You can get plenty of men to ride on yo