es, which was as much a part of their weekday lives as the beating
of their own hearts, had suddenly ceased.

Abe and Morris took the stairs leading to the upper floor three at a
jump, and arrived breathlessly in the workroom just as fifty-odd
employees were putting on their coats preparatory to leaving.

"What's the matter?" Abe gasped.

"Strike," Goldman, the foreman, replied.

"A strike!" Morris cried. "What for a strike?"

Goldman shrugged his shoulders.

"Comes a walking delegate by the opposite side of the street and makes
with his hands motions," he explained. "So they goes out on strike."

Few of the striking operators could speak English, but those that did
nodded their corroboration.

"For what you strike?" Morris asked them.

"Moost strike," one of them replied. "Ven varking delegate say moost
strike, ve moost strike."

Sadly Abe and Morris watched their employees leave the building, and
then they repaired to the show-room.

"There goes two thousand dollars, Mawruss," Abe said. "For so sure as
you live, Mawruss, if we don't make that delivery to the Fashion Store
inside of a week we get a cancelation by the next day's mail; ain't it?"

Morris nodded gloomily, and they both remained silent for a few
minutes.

"Mawruss," Abe said at last, "where is that loft what Slotkin gives us?"

"What do you want to know for?"

"I'm going right up to have a look at it," Abe replied. "I'm sick and
tired of this here strike business."

Morris heaved a great sigh.

"I believe you, Abe," he said. "The way I feel it now we will sell for
junk every machine what we got."

Forthwith Abe boarded a car for uptown, and when he returned two hours
later he found Goldman discussing ways and means with Morris in the
show-room.

"Well, Abe," Morris cried, "what for a loft you seen it?"

Abe hung up his hat deliberately.

"I tell you the truth, Mawruss," he said, turning around, "the loft
ain't bad. It's a good-looking loft, Mawruss, only it's certain sure we
couldn't have no machines in that loft."

"_Ai vai!_" Goldman exclaimed, rocking to and fro in his chair and
striking his head with his clenched fist.

"_Nu_ Goldman?" Morris asked. "What's the trouble with you?"

"Troubles enough he got it, Mawruss," Abe said, as he watched Goldman's
evolutions of woe. "If we do away with our machines he loses his job;
ain't it?"

Sympathy seemed only to intensify Goldman's distress.

"Better than that he should make