Page:Traveler from Altruria, Howells, 1894.djvu/180

174 the hand that fed them! Yes, we are all Americans, but I guess we haven't all got the same country, Mrs. Makely. What sort of a country has a black-listed man got?"

"A black-listed man?" she repeated. "I don't know what you mean."

"Well, a kind of man I've seen in the mill towns, that the bosses have all got on their books as a man that isn't to be given work on any account; that's to be punished with hunger and cold, and turned into the street, for having offended them; and that's to be made to suffer through his helpless family, for having offended them."

"Excuse me, Mr. Camp," I interposed, "but isn't a black-listed man usually a man who has made himself prominent in some labor trouble?"

"Yes," the young fellow answered, without seeming sensible of the point I had made.

"Ah!" I returned. "Then you can hardly blame the employers for taking it out of him in any way they can. That's human nature."

"Good heavens!" the Altrurian cried out. "Is it possible that in America it is human nature to take away the bread of a man's family, because he has