Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/111

100 the works: 'No Union Men Allowed on these Premises.' Next thing a strike was threatened—even the fellows that had n't joined the Affiliated resented the move as tyranny; the superintendent wouldn't budge. I had to come on."

"Have you settled the trouble?" Floyd asked.

"Oh, I'm smoothing it down. The union men came to me; well, I thought they had a real grievance; I told 'em as much; I said it was n't my intention to discriminate against the union,—all I stipulated for was free play for everybody. Then I explained that while I was privately willing to go as far as that I could n't consent to withdraw my support from the superintendent publicly—would n't force him to make a public acknowledgment of defeat, you understand, and take down the offensive signs. But I'd talk the matter over with him and explain my views, and meanwhile it would be understood that if any signs were—accidentally destroyed, they would n't be replaced. So I'm getting the men into a better spirit, the superintendent is kicking, but I'm smoothing him down, too—and it's wonderful how many accidents are happening to those signs."

"The men are joining the union out at New Rome," said Floyd.

"Yes, we've all got to come to it, I suppose. But up there at New Rome, where there's such a strong family feeling on the part of the workmen for the mills, and where they're in a measure isolated, the union can never get quite such a grip as it's bound to have here."

"I don't know," Floyd said. "When it becomes fashionable to join a thing, a man does n't like to stay out. That's the way it's working with a good many of our people, who don't see any other real advantage in joining.

"That's all right; it's almost as much of a safeguard to have a big discontented element in the union as a big non-union element. And where you have several mills,