y that this shall not be a union shop; I say that I
shall employ whom I will for any purpose I see fit. It is your say, so
say it; yours is the power; use it. ... Patience, just a little
longer. I have shown much of it during the past year."

The men swayed restlessly, and then became still again when they saw
that he was going to read something.

"I have here the last letter my father ever wrote me. As I received it
after his death, I might say that it is a voice from the grave. I will
read that part which affects the shops.

"'And so, my son, I leave you this last request. Day after day, year
after year, I have toiled honestly, with the will and the foresight
God gave me. I die prosperous and contented, having acquired my riches
without ill to any and without obligation. I have never wronged any
man, though often the power to do so has been in my hands. But reason
always cools hot blood, and I have always kept a strong curb on all my
angry impulses. Some day the men will strike again, what about I know
not; but this I do know: it will be without justice. I have bent to
them nine out of ten times. Nine of their demands were not wholly
unreasonable, but the tenth was. And this demand was that I should
have no non-union men in the shops. This strike lasted four months.
You will recall it. I do not know how long it might have gone on, had
not the poor devil, who was the cause of it, died. I and the men came
together again. We patched up our differences, covertly, so to speak.
The men appeared at the gates one morning, and I let them in without
referring by a single word to what had taken place. The principle of
unionism is a noble thing, but ignoble men, like rust in girders, gnaw
rapidly into principles and quickly and treacherously nullify their
good.

"'The destroyer is everywhere. The apple has its worm, the rose its
canker, the steel its rust. It is the ignorant and envious man who
misuses power that, rightly directed, moves toward the emancipation of
the human race. There are cruel and grasping and dishonest employers,
who grind the heart and soul out of men. The banding together of the
laboring men was done in self-defense; it was a case of survive or
perish. The man who inaugurated unionism was a great philanthropist.
The unions began well; that is because their leaders were honest, and
because there was no wolf in the fold to recognize the extent of
power. It was an ignorant man who first discovered it, and f