"Can't help it. I never did have no use for a fool. Ef he can't tell us a better way, let 'im shet up."
Barbara pressed Tom's arm, and he subsided.
The court at once entered into the question of wages for domestic service.
It had been agreed, at the suggestion of the Wolfs, that they should spend their time in quietly investigating the qualifications of each member of the Brotherhood for the work to be assigned, and make their reports in secret to the majority of the court, which should sit continuously until all had been decided.
Neither Norman, Barbara, nor the old miner suspected for a moment the deeper motive which Wolf concealed behind this withdrawal from the decision of these cases. They found out in a very startling way later.
The chief cook demanded a hundred dollars a month.
Old Tom snorted with contempt. Norman smiled and spoke kindly:
"Remember, Louis, you only received $75 a month in San Francisco. Here the Brotherhood provides every man with his food, his clothes, and his house. Wages are merely the inducement used to satisfy each individual that labour may still be done by free contract, not by force."
"Well, it'll take a hundred a month to satisfy me," was the stolid reply. "I didn't come here to cook. I could do that in the old hell we lived in. I came here to do better and bigger things. I can do them, too——"
"But we've fixed the salary of the general manager at only seventy-five dollars a month, and you demand a hundred?"