I am going to ask your
backing in something that seems to me not only just but important. I
hope that you will not declare above a six per cent. dividend at that
directors' meeting; at the most, seven per cent.," he said.

"What, what!" exclaimed the listener. "No, sir!"

The agent left his desk-chair and stood before the old director as if
he were pleading for himself. A look of protest and disappointment
changed the elder man's face and hardened it a little, and the agent
saw it.

"You know the general condition of the people here," he explained
humbly. "I have taken great pains to keep hold of the best that have
come here; we can depend upon them now and upon the quality of their
work. They made no resistance when we had to cut down wages two years
ago; on the contrary, they were surprisingly reasonable, and you know
that we shut down for several weeks at the time of the alterations. We
have never put their wages back as we might easily have done, and I
happen to know that a good many families have been able to save little
or nothing. Some of them have been working here for three generations.
They know as well as you and I and the books do when the mills are
making money. Now I wish that we could give them the ten per cent.
back again, but in view of the general depression perhaps we can't do
that except in the way I mean. I think that next year we're going to
have a very hard pull to get along, but if we can keep back three per
cent., or even two, of this dividend we can not only manage to get on
without a shut-down or touching our surplus, which is quite small
enough, but I can have some painting and repairing done in the
tenements. They've needed it for a long time--"

The old director sprang to his feet. "Aren't the stockholders going to
have any rights then?" he demanded. "Within fifteen years we have had
three years when we have passed our dividends, but the operatives
never can lose a single day's pay!"

"That was before my time," said the agent, quietly. "We have averaged
nearly six and a half per cent. a year taking the last twenty years
together, and if you go back farther the average is even larger. This
has always been a paying property; we've got our new machinery now,
and everything in the mills themselves is just where we want it. I
look for far better times after this next year, but the market is
glutted with goods of our kind, and nothing is going to be gained by
cut-downs and forcing lower-cos