d and lied. It made promises and
didn't keep them. It didn't fight fair, the way the old unions did.
And the men flocked to it--not because they liked to fight that way,
but because that was the first time they had had a chance to deal with
their employers on even terms.

So, very quickly, the I. W. W. had organized most of the men who
worked in the forests. There had been a strike, the summer before I
was there, and, after the men went back to work, they still soldiered
on their jobs and did as little as they could--that was the way the I.
W. W. taught them to do.

"Don't stay out on strike and lose your pay," the I. W. W. leaders
said. "That's foolish. Go back--but do as little as you can and still
not be dismissed. Poll a log whenever you can without being caught.
Make all the trouble and expense you can for the bosses."

And here was the world, all humanity, needing the spruce, and these
men acting so! The American army was ordered to step in. And a wise
American officer, seeing what was wrong, soon mended matters. He was
stronger than employers and men put together. He put all that was
wrong richt. He saw to it that the men got good hours, good pay, good
working conditions. He organized a new union among them that had
nothing to do with the I. W. W. but that was strong enough to make the
employers deal fairly with it.

And sae it was that the I. W. W. began to lose its members. For it
turned out that the men wanted to be fair and honorable, if the
employers would but meet them half way, and so, in no time at all,
work was going on better than ever, and the I. W. W. leaders could
make no headway at all among the workers. It is only men who are
discontented because they are unfairly treated who listen to such folk
as those agitators. And is there no a lesson for all of us in that?

CHAPTER XXV

I've heard much talk, and I've done much talking myself, of charity.
It's a beautiful word, yon. You mind St. Paul--when be spoke of Faith,
Hope, Charity, and said that the greatest of these was Charity? Aye--
as he meant the word! Not as we've too often come to think of it.

What's charity, after a'? It's no the act of handing a saxpence to a
beggar in the street. It's a state of mind. We should all be
charitable--surely all men are agreed on that! We should think weel of
others, and believe, sae lang as they wull let us, that they mean to
do what's right and kind. We should not be bitter and suspicious and
cyn