en so happy as I was when
your father was just a plain mechanic, earning his two and a half or so
a day and with no responsibility except to do his work well. Ever since
he's been his own boss, he's been changing. I don't feel as if he were
the same man I married. And what does he get out of it? Worry, worry,
fuss, fuss. I tell you, Roger, my dear, I've come to the conclusion that
the more complicated life gets, the less happiness there is in it."

Roger bent and kissed his mother. "Maybe I'll feel like that when I'm
older," he said, "but I don't now. And I guess Father likes the worry.
It's like playing a game. I'm going to get into it, you bet, just as
soon as I get through school."

His mother made no reply.

On the morning of July fifteenth, a delegation of three workmen waited
on John Moore in his office. They made exactly the demands that Roger
had reported and they received the same reply that Roger had received,
with just about the same amount of detail as to the running of the
business. The strike was scheduled to begin on the first day of August.

Roger and Ernest, plugging away at the forge, heard the men's side
constantly. At night Roger heard his father's. At first, naturally
enough, both boys' sympathies were all with Roger's father. Then,
because he was now a working man himself, Roger began to notice that
his father had brutal ways with the men. Three or four times a day Moore
always went through the factory. A careless mechanic would receive a
cursing that, it suddenly occurred to Roger, no real man ought to
endure. The least infringement of the factory rules was punished to the
limit by a system of fines. Moore drove the men as relentlessly as he
drove himself. This aspect of his father Roger naturally never discussed
with his chum, but he spoke of it to his father on the morning of the
first of August as they made their way to the factory.

"They think you feel to them just like you do to a machine and it makes
them sore, all the time," said the boy.

"Heavens! what do they want? Must I kiss them good morning?" exclaimed
Moore.

Roger laughed. "No, but I know what they mean. I've seen you when you
talked as though you owned them--and not that either. It's sort of like
if you could recollect their names, you'd hate 'em."

"Shucks, Rog! You're getting beyond your depth!" said his father.

The seven o'clock whistle did not blow that hot August morning. All the
neighborhood of the factory was fu