"Well, wasn't there Gabriel and a host of them? Why, Jack, they were all masculine!"
There was no need for earthly justice to meddle with Jem Stixon. His arm inflamed: he had led a hard life late years, and his system was in bad order. He would not listen to amputation until it was too late, and in less than a month he was dead. It was better for his poor hard-working wife and family.
One other death grew out of the summer riots, though this was at a distance. Dennis Connelly had been working with a railroad-gang, and the strikers there had a desperate struggle with the civil authority. They were worsted in the end, and Connelly was one of the victims, or perhaps more truly speaking, a victim to bad whiskey, for when sober he was very peaceable. Kit sent for his body, and had him decently buried.
CHAPTER XXVII.
The strikers at the hat-factory did not carry the day. The employers were very indignant, and tabooed the union men altogether. At Garafield's the men were called in council, the points discussed, and a small advance in wages allowed. The co-operatives went their way quietly. Perhaps the most convincing argument was a very jubilant letter from Winston, part of which Darcy put up in the hall. He had just succeeded in making an important contract for two years, on very fair terms. That would see them through safely unless the whole world came to grief again!
Jack wrote Miss McLeod a graphic account of the "labor troubles," and she replied with equally characteristic verve. "She could hardly decide," she declared, "whether to be glad, or sorry, that her young friend had grown so independent of her; but in any emergency she wished to be remembered."
There was now a certain respect paid to Hope Mills, among the community at Yerbury. Perhaps there are no people so exacting and difficult to satisfy as those friends and neighbors whose advice you have not taken, and prospered without it. They indulge in a righteous self-complacency if you are unfortunate, and pity you grandly; but to own themselves mistaken is the one bitter flavor in the cup. There seemed to be but one point now upon which they were doubtful,—the honesty of the managers at the last moment. Every workman knew or might know exactly how affairs stood, but they did not have the capital. Just at the end of the five years somebody might abscond with the money-bag under his arm. It seemed so every way certain that human nature could not withstand the temptation.
Yet there was growing up among the hands a curious neighborly sympathy, as if they were in some degree relatives; and they were made so, in fact, by some marriages of sons and daughters. They were more intelligent; they kept their houses cleaner, their little gardens prettier, not allowing them to go to weeds before the summer was half over. Those who could go to the industrial school learned a deal about sewing, and became seamstresses instead of mill-girls. Some made their own family dresses, some were very tasty milliners. It gave them a reliance upon what they could do themselves. The two daughters of one workman kept a little poultry-yard "scientifically," and dressed themselves from its proceeds. Industry became more general. Instead of dawdling away whole evenings in gossip, they had some light employment, and worked as they talked.