Robert Hardy's Seven Days: A Dream and Its Consequences

by Charles M. Sheldon

Robert Hardy reached his office just in time to see Burns, the foreman, go out of a side door and cross the yard. The manager followed him and entered the machine shop in time to see him stop at a machine at the farthest end of the shop and speak to the man at work there. The man was a Norwegian, Herman by name. He was running what is called a planer, a machine for trimming pieces of cold metal just from the foundry or the casting room. He was at work this morning on one of the eccentric bars of a locomotive, and it was of such a character that he could leave the machine for several minutes to do the planing. Burns talked with this man for a while, and then moved across the floor to another workman, a small-boned, nervous little fellow, who was in charge of a boring machine which drove a steel drill through heavy plates of iron fastened into the frame.

Mr. Hardy came up just as Burns turned away from this man, and touched him on the shoulder. The foreman started and turned about, surprised to see the manager.

"Well, Burns, how goes everything this morning?" asked Robert.

"The men here are grumbling because they don't have a holiday, same as the men in Scoville's department."

"But we can't shut down the whole business, can we?" asked Mr. Hardy, with a momentary touch of his old-time feeling. "The men are unreasonable."

"I'm afraid there'll be trouble, sir. I can feel it in the air," replied Burns.

Mr. Hardy made no reply in words, but looked about him. Within the blackened area of the great shop about two hundred men were at work. The whirl of machinery was constant. The grind of steel on iron was blended with the rattle of chains and the rolling of the metal carriages in their tracks. The Genius of Railroading seemed present in the grim strength and rapidity of several machines which moved almost as if instinct with intelligence, and played with the most unyielding substances as if they were soft and pliable clay. In the midst of all the smashing of matter against matter, through the smoke and din and dust and revolution of the place, Mr. Hardy was more than usually alive this morning to the human aspect of the case. His mind easily went back to the time when he himself stood at one of these planers and did just such work as that big Norwegian was doing, only the machines were vastly better and improved now. Mr. Hardy was not ashamed of having come along through the ranks of manual labour. In fact, he always spoke with pride of the work he used to do in that very shop, and he considered himself able to run all by himself any piece of machinery in the shops. But he could not help envying these men this morning. "Why," he said, "probably not one of them but has at least seven weeks to live, and most of them seven months or years, while I— Why should these men complain because they are not released from toil? Isn't toil sweet when there is a strong body and a loving wife and a happy home? O God!" he continued to think, "I would give all my wealth if I might change places with any one of these men, and know that I would probably have more than a week to live."

Mr. Hardy walked back to his office, leaving the foreman in a condition of wondering astonishment.

"Something wrong in his works, I guess," muttered Burns.

Mr. Hardy sat down to his desk and wrote an order, releasing all the men who desired to attend Scoville's funeral in the afternoon. He did not have it in his power to do more, and yet he felt that this was the least he could do under the circumstances. The more he thought of Scoville's death the more he felt the cruel injustice of it. The injuries were clearly accidental; but they might have been avoided with proper care for human life. Robert Hardy was just beginning to understand the value of humanity.