Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/318

Rh and they rushed in and affiliated us. We had to join them or lose our jobs. You told us then that combination was great for us, in union there was strength, and all that. How did it work out? Bad. We ain't allowed to do as much as we can, we ain't allowed to earn as much as we can, we ain't allowed to get ahead as far or as fast as we can. We're leveled down to an average. I don't turn out as many rods in a day as I used to, because I ain't allowed; I don't have as much money in my pocket at the end of the week as I used to, partly because I ain't earning as much and partly because Tustin and that gang sitting round you there has to have their rake-off. We fellows that ain't leaders have no liberty; and the only leadership we have is the leadership of the hindmost. They set the pace and the rest of us go limping along in step. Now you want to put us into another kind of union. The way it looks to me, the same thing will happen. You say these mills here are the best and will set the pace. But when they're in a union with a lot of others, they can't run away from the rest. The little lazy ones have got to be humored, they'll have all kinds of a pull; the ones here must n't work too hard or the others will have to be shut down entirely, and that will never do. So the mills here will have to be kind of scaled down to the level of the little lazy mills in the combine—just the way the good clever men have to be scaled down to the level of the little lazy men in the union. And that will mean shutting off some of the men here from work and economizing on the plant, running three quarters instead of full, and half instead of three quarters—and there won't be as much prosperity then in New Rome as there is now—and there ain't as much now as there was six years ago."

"Your allusions to the situation here are beside the point and quite absurd," declared Colonel Halket testily. "And your ideas about the management of a great corporation are utterly erroneous and illogical. Let me say