"Good for you, Jack. And how does business progress?"
"I am dubious," and Jack shook his head in a mock-serious way. "There is too much rose-color. Every thing works to a charm. Whether people really have learned something by the hard times, remains to be seen; but it looks so now. And we couldn't have a better working firm. Owen Cameron is the same kind of a man that Miss Morgan is for a woman, not stingy here and wasteful there, but a thorough-going economist. Every week he makes a little saving somewhere. It is what we needed to learn, badly enough. He manages to make the men understand that every penny saved is for the benefit of all, that a yard of cloth or a pound of wool spoiled is to the loss of all. And that is the only way to settle this business, this everlasting wrangle between labor and capital."
Amos Hurd and Peter Yardley used to talk over the other scheme of a co-operative store. It would not do to have too many irons in the fire in such times as these, when no one had any great deal of money. But it did seem as if poor people were paying at the dearest rate for every thing, partly because they asked for trust, and the only man willing to trust them to any extent kept a very full line of second or third rate articles, but the prices did not always correspond.
"Now, there's coal," said Yardley one evening. "At the trade-sale it went up ten cents a ton on the average. Our dealers here, who had their yards full, put up their prices from twenty to thirty cents. I know, on the other hand, if coal takes a sudden tumble, they may lose; but, after watching this thing for years, I find the prices go up five times with full yards, where they fall once. Now, I was thinking, when coal was bought for the mill, some extra car-loads might be ordered for the men."
"Yes," and Hurd opened his eyes widely. "Let us talk to Darcy about it."
Jack listened to their proposal with a sudden interest.
"It will be some trouble to you," he answered. "It is not as thoroughly screened, and there is the delivering. The men cannot carry it home in market-baskets."
"I don't know about the screening," said Yardley rather grimly. "When you clean up your bin, and find several bushels of sand and refuse out of five or six tons, you think half of it, at least, ought to have been good burning-coal. And in wholesale buying you get long tons."
"I can do it as well as not," replied Jack. "In fact,"—laughingly,—"it will rather redound to my credit to order largely, and we have a somewhat extensive coal-shed. But you must look up one or two men who will cart it, and a man to screen; and, when you have counted up your labor, decide upon what price you can offer your coal. Perhaps it would be as well to canvass, and learn how many tons you can dispose of."
The workmen had their own board of managers, of which Yardley had been elected president. They generally met every week, and now Yardley laid this matter before them. There would be an average saving, he thought, of two dollars on every ton, but the coal must be paid for in thirty days. If the men chose to leave one or two dollars every Monday night (for Darcy had wisely made Monday instead of Saturday pay-day) they might give in an order for one or two or even three tons.