“Meanwhile, if we pursue the policy proposed,” and he glanced at Mr. Greenough, who was making gallant speeches to Mrs. Soule, “you might keep a watchful eye on the help. You could tell, you know, by the women, if they came to absolute distress. Of course, there is no knowing how long this thing may last.”
“Me! You look to me for such a thing,” and it was hard to tell whether her tone was amused or sarcastic only. “Why, Mr. Villard, I do not know one of the operatives in the mills—not even by sight. If I were to meet them on the main thoroughfare to-morrow I should not know them from other women of their class.”
John Villard raised his eyebrows and turned to put on his coat without another word. The situation was incomprehensible to him.
Salome saw this, and winced under it. She made no further attempt at conversation, but said good-night graciously to Mr. Greenough and the older superintendent, recognizing Villard’s parting nod at the door.
“There,” said her aunt, as they went back into the firelight, “I hope they won’t feel it necessary to come here and consult with us again so long as the strike is on. As though you knew or cared anything for it, my dear! But, of course, they had to come as a matter of form. Any way, I’m glad it is over. Play something.”
Salome complied, playing the first thing which came to her mind—the opening bars of the Sonata Pathetique.
“I wish,” she said to herself as she disrobed for the night, “that I were a capable woman of affairs—and that John Villard were my agent.”
V.
Not for a week could enough new help be hired to even make a show of opening the Shawsheen Mills. Labor Unions were a comparatively new thing in this country, and were not so thoroughly organized as now; and a few of the old operatives, rather than starve, were glad to go back into the mills on any condition. But the great majority refused with indignation to give up their claims, and proceeded to “make things hot,” as they expressed it, for the “scabs” and “mudsills.”
Work was attempted in the mills, although many looms stood silent and the spinning-mules were entirely deserted. Thread for warp was procured from a neighboring city at no small expense and the mills were run at a loss, to prove the agent’s assertion that “he would show them who was manager of the Shawsheen Mills.”