ou will. With January, that is but a month
away, it shall be as I will.'

"Well, I have tried. Many changes have been made, much time lost, much
money. I call them to my house in the evening. I talk with them and try
to teach them justice, and some are willing, but most not. New men spoil
my work, and I lose much profit and take the old ones again. But this,
too, is a small thing. My own mind goes on and I see that they should
share with me. I read of co-operation, and to me it is truer than
profit-sharing. I have seventy men and girls at work. I say they must
understand this business. I will try to teach them. Two evenings a week
I meet them all and talk and listen to them. One or two feel it plain.
For most they say, 'Old B---- wants to get a rise out of us somehow.' At
last I see that they are too foolish to understand co-operation, but it
may be they will let profit-sharing be a step. Over and over, many times
over and over, I tell it all, and in the end some agree, and for a year
it does well. But the next year was bad. Silk was high, and my ribbons
honest ribbons and profit small; and when they saw how small, they cried
that they were cheated and that I kept all for myself. I read them the
books. I said, 'Here, you may see with your eyes. This year I make not
enough to live if there were not other years in which I saved. I am
almost failed. The business might stop, but I will go on for our names'
sake.' 'All a dodge,' they said. No words were plain enough to make them
know. They even called me cheat and liar, there in the place where I had
tried to work for them.

"And so I share profits no more. I give large wage. I never cut down, do
the market what it will. But some things are plain. It is not alone
oppression and greed from above that do what you call grind the worker.
No, I am not alone. There are men like me with a wish for humanity and
wiser than I, and alike they are not heard when they speak; alike their
wish is naught and their effort vain. It is ignorance that rules. There
is no knowledge, no understanding. In my trade and in all trades I know
it is the same. A man will not believe a fact, and he will believe that
to cheat is all one over him can wish. Even my workers that care for me,
a few of them, they laugh no more to my face, but they say: 'Oh, he has
notions, that man! He will never get very rich, he has so many notions.'
They listen and they think a little. One man said yesterday: 'If this
had b