This was put up on the bulletin-board, and discussed with much pride at the club. Every man had an interest in it, and an ambition to excel in his particular branch. It paid in the long-run to be honest; and, though there might be a higher principle than remuneration, that was not a bad test, after all.
So the third summer opened brilliantly. Yardley, Gilman, and four others drew up an agreement for a co-operative store. They hired one man who had been a very successful buyer for a large grocery-firm, which had failed, and took with it his small invested capital. He was to keep the books, take orders, and do the buying, subject to the advisement of the managers. A certain low per cent of profits was agreed upon, just enough, they calculated, to pay expenses; and the goods were to be offered as low as possible for cash. The superior quality and reduced price, they decided, would be more agreeable to most of the men than a small balance at the end of the year. An account was to be kept with every member, and the agreement to remain in force one year from date.
And yet there are shoals and quicksands for prosperity, as well as yawning abysses for adversity. There were people in Yerbury—not bad souls either—who were not content to allow the world to revolve on any axis but their own. They could see their neighbors' planets go to destruction with equanimity—following some law of nature or ethics that regulated supply and demand of any force, in their estimation; but when some bright particular star flashed out of the orbit they had set for it, of course it was beyond the pale of safety. There has always been a great deal of just such obstinacy in the world, just such narrow prescribing, and yet—"it does move."
One of the favorite objections of these wiseacres was, that Hope Mills was founded on a wrong basis. Who knew just exactly what amount of goods Winston sold? Well, there was the amount manufactured,—the amount on hand every six months. True,—with a disbelieving shake of the head,—but he was up in the ways of the world; and what would hinder him, Ananias-like, from keeping back part of the price? When this was shown to be an utter impossibility, they still were quite sure Winston harbored in his secret soul some plan for cheating the workmen at the last. Here would be all this accumulation of capital, and by some successful coup-d'état Winston and Darcy would swoop down upon it, and take the lion's share. They were very much afraid that the workmen were going to be wronged in some underhand way. A defaulting cashier, unprincipled managers, thieves and forgers, committed their crimes in an out-and-out way; but there was going to be a profound mystery about this—the most simple and above-board management, when every man knew, every six months, the best and the worst of the details.
Employment was becoming more general all through the country. Everybody drew a long breath, and decided that the grinding times of depression had passed. We would soon be back to the brilliant era of past prosperity.
And then there arose a new light in the labor horizon, a prophet who had discovered the magic key to the workingmen's paradise, and it had only to be turned by themselves, to gain entrance. Wherever he went, he was hailed with acclamation.
It was the old, old war upon capital, the old seductive science of equalizing things, values, money. Every poor man in the country had a better right to a cottage and garden and a few hours of leisure, than these few magnates to grasp every thing in their own hands, to roll in luxury, to feast in magnificence, to clothe their daughters in silks, velvets, and diamonds—it was to be noted that Mr. McPherson wore an immense diamond, but it was to be presumed that his wife or daughter did not. Everywhere one could see the rich growing richer, the poor poorer, the workman trodden down, brought to the level of slavery with his long hours and scanty wages. Where was it to end but in a nation of paupers, of thieves, of criminals of every grade? for, when you made a brute of a man, there came a time when he turned a brute's hand against you. This had been the underlying cause of all the world's great struggles: it had uncrowned kings, it had razed thrones, it had swept states. There were bits of distorted historical facts, fallacious but brilliant reasoning, and much bombast.
They heard of him in this city and that, and there was a great deal said about the cordiality with which he greeted "the horny-handed son of toil." No town was so small that he disdained it, no city so great that he feared it. There had been "demonstrations," but he seemed proud of his defiance of danger.
Men who could not altogether approve of him admitted that he was "smart," that he uttered a good many truths, half-truths they were, dressed up in specious falsehoods, all the more dangerous, since the world does pay homage to virtue and truth. They were troublesome questions: the great difficulty was the haste made in settling them. A balance will finally adjust itself, though there may be many vibrations at first.
It was a fact much to be regretted, that with returning prosperity the gin-mills and beer-shops of Yerbury had, as a general thing, increased in their business. A notable instance to the contrary, however, was Keppler's saloon. It had depended a good deal on the men from Hope Mills and the iron-works. The latter had been closed so long; and, although the coffee-house did not seem much of a rival at first, it had gone on steadily, and given the men time to think. It was not simply the one glass of beer they took to wash down their midday lunch, but the treating when a crowd gathered, the many drinks during a heated discussion of an evening. Not half a dozen of the mill-hands went there now, so occupied had their minds become with other matters. Keppler's lease was not out, and his rent was high for the times; he had lost money and customers, and felt sore over it; he had a grudge against Jack Darcy as the exponent of a system that interfered with his profits.