ngs out the criminal and the
desperate classes; outrage results, and the sympathy they might have
received goes against them. Their very worst enemies are these men who
are posing as strike-leaders."

"Well, what do you think of the prospect? Does it look like an
outbreak?" asked Mr. Sloan.

"To me, yes, for every day makes the suffering worse at Pullman, and the
company refuses to hear of arbitration. From a purely business point of
view I cannot deny their right to do so, but the very attitude assumed
by the corporation makes many of the labor-leaders' accusations true.
The company has not contracts enough for new cars to keep all hands
employed on full time and full wages, perhaps. Many of its employees are
single men, comparatively new at the business; they can afford to be
frankly told to go elsewhere in search of work; but to hold everybody
while scaling the wages of all hands, month after month, down, down
until a family man cannot pay his rent and feed his children, then the
cord breaks. Just or unjust, the impression prevails among the railway
men everywhere I have been that the Pullman Company has made vast sums,
that it is about the only company not actually losing money now, and
that it is protecting itself through a bad year by heavily taxing its
people. There have been sympathetic strikes before; what if one should
be ordered now?"

"That's the enormity of the whole business," broke in Mr. Allison. "What
I wish could be done with our hands would be to have them regularly
enlisted for the work,--so many years unless sooner discharged,--just
like the soldiers, by Jove! Then when a man quit work it would be
desertion, and when he combined with others to strike it would be
mutiny. Ah, we'd have a railway service in this country then that would
beat the world."

Forrest smiled. "Rather too much like a standing army controlled by
corporation that would be; and a standing army is a luxury the
Constitution forbids even to sovereign States. Besides, would men enlist
in such a service?"

"Well, how do _you_ get them, then? The Lord knows you treat them worse
than we do."

"The Lord might believe that if he knew nothing but what the papers
say," answered Forrest, half laughing. "But in point of fact we don't
begin to work our men as you do, and we give them far more for their
work. Another thing: our workman knows just what he is going to get from
month to month, and he signs his contract to accept such bount