“For mutual protection. For the general welfare of workingmen.”
“Oh, workingmen be hanged! aren’t we all workingmen? Wait till you are President of a railroad, Jack. When your nerves are shaken and your head roars when you go to bed, and you lie awake half the night trying to work out a scheme by which you can save a few millions to the soulless corporation that is clubbing the wolf away from your door, and, incidentally, save your reputation and your job, then you will know what it is to be a workingman.”
Jack smiled pathetically, and glanced about at the rich hangings and expensive furnishings.
“I know what you are thinking now. You are saying, Tommy seems to be having a pretty good time. Well, did you ever see a drunk man who didn’t seem to be having fun? I’m just married.”
President McGuire had intended to offer his old playmate a position on the Air Line, but when he had heard him discourse for a couple of hours on the relations of “Capital and Labor,” he changed his mind. “A man who is always hugging a grievance will forget to flag,” was what passed through the President’s mind, and he concluded to leave his old friend on his native heath, where he was least liable to get into trouble.
“Jack, my boy,” said McGuire, with his hand on the door of his stateroom, “you’re on the wrong leg of the ‘Y,’ and you’ll be throwing sixes all your life unless you switch. If I work hard and get to the front, and you work hard and get to the front—if each man takes care of his own job, always lending a helping hand to a fellow-worker when he can, there won’t be many misfits or failures, Jack.—Good night.”
CHAPTER XXIV
OVER THE BIG BRIDGE
Denis McGuire’s successor in the little shanty down by the bridge had shown a white light to the driver of the Midnight Express, and was up, and out with the dawn, to show a milk-white flag to the men on the White Mail in the morning.
Down at East St. Louis, Roadmaster McGuire and Mrs. McGuire, who, in addition to being “the President’s mother,” continued to make herself generally useful about the house, were crossing the big bridge in order to be at the Union depot when the White Mail came in with the “Maid of Erin.”