“All right,” said Joe; “but that’s how it lies. I don’t think I’m getting a square deal, and if I have to lift the notes I’ll take the account with them.”
On top of this there came another trouble, and a serious one. Joe, one morning, had just rung for his stenographer when Wright burst in upon him in considerable agitation, brushing past that long-suffering young lady in the doorway.
“What do you think of this?” he cried, waving a sheet of paper. “That infernal railway—” He swore venomously, and Joe’s stenographer, with a glance at her employer, discreetly withdrew, for she was a young woman of experience.
“What’s the row?” Joe asked. “And you might shade your language a little. Not that I mind, but I don’t want Miss Brown to quit her job.”
“A readjustment of freight rates!” cried Wright. “A readjustment! And look what they’ve done to lumber!”
Joe grabbed the paper, glanced at it, and supplemented his manager’s remarks with great heartiness. In a general and long-promised overhauling of freight rates that on lumber was boosted sky-high. But he did not at once grasp the full significance of it. He saw that the result would be to increase the price of lumber proportionately and restrict building to some extent in certain localities; but in the end the consumer would pay, as usual.
“Rotten!” he commented. “The old rate was high enough. Looks like a case for the Transportation Commission. They ought to scale this down.”
“They’ll get around to it in a couple of years,” snorted Wright with bitter contempt. “Meanwhile where do we get off at? I tell you it just cuts the heart out of our business.”
“I don’t see—” Joe began.
“You don’t?” Wright fairly shouted. “No, and I don’t see it all myself—yet. But look what it does to our contract with the Clancys!”