“Fine,” says he. “About Monday we kin b-begin to hustle for b-business. I kin come p-perty clost to tellin’ what it costs to make everythin’ on our list.”
“Was Silas’s prices too low?”
“Low!” says he. “He lost more money on every article he sold than what he was p-paid for it. If he sold a thing for a dollar, like as not he l-lost a dollar and ten cents. I’ve been gettin’ what information I could f-from other mills about their prices. Why, Silas has been undersellin’ everybody scandalous. This hain’t a very big mill, but I’ll say right out in m-meetin’ that if Silas had sold all he made this l-last year at the p-prices I’m goin’ to ask, he could ’a’ paid himself a salary of maybe a hunderd dollars a m-month, and showed a profit besides of two and m-maybe three thousand d-dollars.”
“But he didn’t,” says I.
“He come clost to losin’ that m-much.”
“It’ll take a year to pay his debts—what he owes your father and the rest.”
“We don’t have to worry about F-father. He’ll wait. I’m goin’ to have that d-d-dowel-machinery set up next week, and I calc’late we kin git orders for a l-lot. The way I f-figger, that machinery alone ought to make a profit of eight-ten dollars a day.”
“Mark,” says I, “I been kind of thinkin’ about this Power Company and their dam. It’ll be a good thing for the town and the state.”
“To be sure,” says Mark.
“Somehow it don’t seem just right for a dinky little mill like this to be preventin’ a big public improvement like that, that’s goin’ to cost ’most a million dollars.”