Bowers went thoughtfully home and; next morning, flung himself into his work with renewed courage. He had need of it—they all had need of it. There were now thousands who waited for their pay, and daily these ranks were swelled by others who drifted in from the woods. Hundreds of merchants began to refuse credit, though Filmer valiantly used all his resources. St. Marys was, in truth, stupefied, and when the first shock began to smooth itself out, the reality of the thing became grimly apparent, and then arose the first rumor of trouble in Ironville, that straggling settlement of shacks where dwelt the bone and muscle of the works.
To the Swede and Polander there was no suggestion of achievement in the vast buildings in which they labored. It was only the place where they earned their living. They worked amongst giant mechanisms beside which they were puny, but theirs was a life of force and strength which took from them the fear of anything that was merely human. Thus surprise changed to resentment, and resentment began to resolve itself into a slow and consuming anger. The works were dead, but in the main office the accounting staff was bending desperately over statements imperatively demanded by Philadelphia. The black browed Hungarians saw the lights at night, and felt that they were being played with by those more powerful than themselves. If a furnace man was discharged, why keep on these scribblers?
Outside St. Marys the news ran apace. Toronto papers dwelt on it, and the Board of Trade read it with regret mingled with thankfulness that Clark had embarked on no financial campaigns in their own city. Thorpe went carefully over the Philadelphia acceptances in his vault, and wondered what they were worth. To St. Marys set out a stream of representatives of various creditor companies, that filled the local hotels and journeyed out to the works and came back unsatisfied. Philadelphia dispatches were devoured, and the word "reorganization" was one to charm with. One by one, the Company's steamers slid up to the long docks, made fast and drew their fires, till it seemed that the works, like a great octopus, was withdrawing every arm and filament it ever had radiated, and was coiling them endlessly at its cold and clammy side. Yet, for all of this, it did not seem possible that the whole structure was tumbling, the structure on which so many years of labor—so much genius and enthusiasm—so many millions—had been lavished, until one afternoon a drunken Swede threw a stone into a butcher's window in Ironville and, putting forth a horny hand, seized a side of bacon and set forth, reeling, down the street. Two hours later the startled chief accountant, from a window in his office, saw a swarm of a thousand men surge through the big gates of the works and, trampling the guard, flow irregularly forward.
The mob spilt on, a river of big strong men, unaware of its own strength. They were not bent on willful destruction, but the whole mass was animated by an inchoate desire to find out something for itself. At the door of the rail mill stood the superintendent and his firemen, with drawn revolvers. The rioters liked these men because they worked with and understood them. They were not associated with the present trouble. So on to the administration building, where the office staff looked out, petrified with fear. Here, the mob decided, was another breed, so there commenced a hammering on the big oaken door and stones showered through the windows.
At this, Hobbs, stricken with mortal terror, and oblivious of the girls who gathered around him, lost his head. There was no escape downstairs, but opposite his desk was a grated iron window that led on to an adjoining roof. Noting it desperately, he heaved up his soft body and made a plunge for safety. But such was his bulk that, though head, arms and shoulders went through, he stuck there, anchored in an iron grip.
"Help!" he called chokingly, "Help!"
The mob looked up and stared, when from the rear ranks came a bull-like roar of laughter. Then another burst out and another, till from the ground spouted a fountain of jeers, hoots and ridicule that reached the fat man as he hung suspended, with purple face and gesticulating arms.
Clark, in his office, waiting coolly for what might come, caught the change in the note of riot and, stepping into the next room, saw the legs of his comptroller brandished in the air. The rest of him was invisible, and still in the square outside rocked the booming shouts of Slavic and Scandinavian mirth. A moment later Hobbs was dragged back, with torn clothing, swollen neck and scratched body. Clark glanced at him contemptuously and went out. Then the doors opened, and he was on the front steps.
The mob saw him and held its breath. Few of them had ever been so near him before. He stood with a quiet smile on his face and a light in his keen eyes, and, in the momentary hush, began to speak. There was no fear in voice or attitude. The wind, blowing from the rapids, brought the echo of their clamor to the upper windows so that the accounting staff heard not a word, but the mob heard, and presently the big Pole laughed, just as he had laughed at Hobbs' distorted face suspended above him. It was contagious, and Clark, playing upon the mood of the moment, drove home his point.
The money was coming, and he himself would stay there till it came. In the meantime, the money would be slower to arrive if there was trouble, and that was all he had to say.