ires readily coincided with
those of the son.

John had not begun in the office. On the contrary, during school
vacations he worked as a puddler's apprentice, as a molder's
apprentice, in the rail-shop, in the sheet-and wire-shops. He worked
with his hands, too, and drew his envelope on Saturday nights like the
rest of them. There was never any talk about John's joining the union;
the men looked upon his efforts good-naturedly and as a joke. The
father, with wisdom always at his elbow, never let the fishing trips
go by. John had his play. At the age of twenty he knew as much about
the manufacture of steel as the next one. He loved the night shifts,
when the whole place seethed and glowed like an inferno. This manual
education had done something else, too. It had broadened his
shoulders, deepened his chest, and flattened his back. Many a time the
old man used to steal out and watch the young Hercules, stripped to
the waist, drag rails to the cooling-room. When John entered college
athletics he was not closely confined to the training-tables.

Under the guidance of such a father, then, there could not be as a
result anything less than a thorough man.

On the following Monday morning succeeding the encounter with Bolles,
John boarded a car and went out to the shops as usual. He found
nothing changed. The clerks in the office were busy with huge ledgers,
though it is true that many a hand was less firm than on ordinary
days. Rumors were flying about, from clerk to clerk, but none knew
what the boss intended to do. From the shops themselves came the
roaring and hammering that had gone on these thirty years or more.
Bennington opened his mail and read each letter carefully. There were
orders for rails, wire rope and sheets for boilers. The business of
the concern always passed through his hands first. Even when he was
out of town, duplicates of all orders were sent to him. He laid each
letter in the flat basket; but this morning there was no "O. K.--J.
B." scrawled across the tops. There would be time enough for that
later. He rose and went to the window and looked down into the court.
His heart beat heavily. There was something besides the possibility of
a strike on his mind. But he flung this thought aside and returned to
the strike. Was it right or was it wrong? Should he follow out his
father's request, letter for letter? To punish two or three who were
guilty, would it be right to punish several hundred who were not?