any company is to pay dividends, and the
manager that can't do that has to go."

Then Mrs. Murray proceeded to deal with the company's contentions,
going at once with swift intuition to the heart of the matter. "You
were speaking of honor a moment ago, Colonel. There is such a thing in
business?"

"Certainly, that's why I put that young man where he is."

"That means that the company expect him to deal fairly by them."

"That's about it."

"And being a man of honor, I suppose he will also deal fairly by the men
and by himself."

"I guess so," said the colonel.

"I don't pretend to understand the questions fully, but from Ranald's
letters I have gathered that he did not consider that justice was being
done either to the men or to the company. For instance, in the matter
of stores--I may be wrong in this, you will correct me, Colonel--I
understand it was the custom to charge the men in the camps for the
articles they needed prices three or four times what was fair."

"Well," said the colonel, "I guess things WERE a little high, but that's
the way every company does."

"And then I understand that the men were so poorly housed and fed and so
poorly paid that only those of the inferior class could be secured."

"Well, I guess they weren't very high-class," said the colonel, "that's
right enough."

"But, Colonel, if you secure a better class of men, and you treat them
in a fair and honorable way with some regard to their comfort you ought
to get better results in work, shouldn't you?"

"Well, that's so," said the colonel; "there never was such an amount
of timber got out with the same number of men since the company started
work, but yet the thing don't pay, and that's the trouble. The concern
must pay or go under."

"Yes, that's quite true, Colonel," said Mrs. Murray; "but why doesn't
your concern pay?"

"Well, you see, there's no market; trade is dull and we can't sell to
advantage."

"But surely that is not your manager's fault," said Mrs. Murray, "and
surely it would be an unjust thing to hold him responsible for that."

"But the company don't look at things in that light," said the colonel.
"You see they figure it this way, stores ain't bringing in the returns
they used to, the camps cost a little more, wages are a little higher,
there ain't nothing coming in, and they say, Well, that chap out there
means well with his reading-rooms for the mill hands, his library in the
camp, and that sort of thing