"It's dotin' ye are, Anna," Jamie replied. She read the account.
"How cud a machine make a boot, Anna?" he asked in bewilderment.
"I don't know, dear."
Barney McQuillan was the village authority on such things. When he told Jamie, he looked aghast and said, "How quare!"
Then makers became menders—shoemakers became cobblers. There was something of magic and romance in the news that a machine could turn out as much work as twenty-five men, but when my brothers moved away to other parts of the world to find work, the romance was rubbed off.
"Maybe we can get a machine?" Jamie said.
"Aye, but shure ye'd have to get a factory to put it in!"
"Is that so?"
"Aye, an' we find it hard enough t' pay fur what we're in now!"
Barney McQuillan was the master-shoe-maker in our town who was best able to readjust himself to changed conditions. He became a master-cobbler and doled out what he took in to men like Jamie. He kept a dozen men at work, making a little off each, just as the owner of the machine did in the factory. In each case the need of skill vanished and the power of capital advanced. Jamie dumbly took what was left—cobbling for Barney. To Anna the whole thing meant merely the death of a few more hopes. For over twenty years she had fought a good fight, a fight in which she played a losing part, though she was never wholly defeated.