"I don't say that, Darcy. I can't very well get away from Yerbury: if I could, the Lord knows I'd go. But there—it is just as bad everywhere else. Don't be too sanguine though: you young chaps build air-castles easily."
Bradley wrung his hand warmly at parting. "I want to look into this thing a little more closely," he said. "I believe you have struck the keynote. Whatever raises the workman raises the whole world. If you get him to be self-supporting, there is one less pauper or tramp for the State to take in charge, and tax all other workingmen for his support."
"I rather like the scheme of the co-operative store," Hurd began presently. "There's a sight of money somehow between the producer and the consumer. Farmers are grumbling all the time. I wrote to my brother-in-law last spring about trading for a small farm, and going into poultry-business perhaps; and he sent back a list of prices he had obtained for his produce. Butter twenty-five cents, and we paid forty this winter. Milk two and a half cents a quart, while ours is from eight to ten."
"Transportation to be counted in," suggested Maverick.
"The thing discouraged me, so I thought I'd hold on a bit, since I did not know the first rule for farming. As Darcy says, we have spent all these years perfecting ourselves in our business, and it hardly looks reasonable that we should succeed at once in something altogether different. If you don't mind, Darcy, I'd like to look over that Rochdale experiment a little at my leisure."
Jack handed him the book, and the small party dispersed. In a week they met again, with two more, one a stubborn old Englishman who had been in the business. They had done very well for a while, then the market flattened. They could not hold their stock, so the big fish swallowed them up. That was always the end where you had no credit and no reserve capital. Truth to tell, Jack began to realize how hard it would be to convert some of the very men he would like to have.
Meanwhile Hamilton Minor came up with some capitalists, and Hope Mills was put up at auction. They looked around the town, examined the building and machinery, which was the best of its kind; but nobody could tell whether we had reached bottom prices or not, and, though the place was to be offered at an immense sacrifice, they were wary. Empty mills and rusting machinery were not profitable investments. Mr. Minor's eloquence went for nothing. These long-headed dons would rather hold on to their money, though they expressed a good deal of sympathy for the Lawrence estate.
"I do believe it will go for the face of the mortgage," said Jack to Maverick that evening. "Twenty thousand dollars, and a year's interest and taxes. Twenty-two thousand would cover the whole thing; and three years ago Mr. Lawrence wouldn't have looked at fifty thousand. Maverick, I can get together ten thousand of my own, and if there was one other person"—
"We will hunt him up," returned Maverick hopefully. "There is the reputation of the cloth already made, which is one great step in your favor. Yes, it must be done."
Yerbury was looking a little brighter and better at midsummer. Scarlet-fever had pretty well disappeared; but malaria had come in its stead, convenient name for want of nourishment, stagnation, and despondency. The haggard-looking wives and mothers went out to a day's washing or scrubbing; but the children, better off, roamed over the fields in search of berries or a stray ownerless fruit-tree, laughing and happy in their rags and bare feet.