too, that was very telling.

Now, after what he called a little skirmishing, he read that the
Barnable Mills had been running on three-quarter time all winter. Wages
had been a trifle lower than with them. Middleham Mills had been closed
for two months. He gave the figures of loss to the workmen. Crowley and
Dawson had gone into bankruptcy, owing their men in the aggregate more
than all Hope Mills had used of last year's profits. Then he read a
statement from an eminent manufacturer, that he had used fifty-four
thousand dollars of accrued capital rather than turn off his workmen to
starve. There had been strikes in several other places, in which the
workmen had lost much more than at Yerbury.

"So that our showing, bad as it is, is not the worst," said he. "In the
very dullest of times we cast in our lots together, and we must take the
good and bad. If you had been living this winter on the private capital
of any one man or corporation, you would never have given the matter a
thought. You know now, by experience, that capital does not always float
on a serene and indolent sea, and gather in treasures for which it has
cast out no net. You can appreciate the struggle we have gone through;
though, while you have been going along placidly, with the larger weight
of care lifted off your shoulders, a man with less energy and pluck than
our intrepid pilot, John Darcy, might have let us founder. We help him
now with the readiness and good-humor with which we relinquish the
profits which were dear to us, and the product of our industry; but he
has taken us through a very narrow channel, on a dark night, without
striking rock or snag. He and I thank you heartily for your fidelity to
our keystone,--co-operation."

"Three cheers for Darcy!" sang out some one in the crowd, "and three
cheers for Bob Winston!"

It was given heartily.

"And three cheers for the men of Hope Mills," responded Winston.

They shook hands, and dispersed with a little better feeling. Several of
the men seemed to breathe a clearer mental atmosphere immediately.

"You may be sure it's right, whichever way it is," said one man
sturdily. "I've known Jack Darcy, boy and man, and his father afore him.
He comes of good, clean stock, and, if he says a thing can't be
bettered, it can't; and, if it can, he's just the man to do it. Give him
a long tether, say I."

Then Winston procured a list of weekly wages ruling in this country, and
in many places abroad, t