“As I understand it, you people want a check-weighman. Now, they tell me the pay for a check-weighman should be three dollars a day, but we've got only seven miners among us, and that's not enough. I will offer to take the job for twenty-five cents a day from each man, which will make a dollar-seventy-five, less than what I'm getting now as a buddy. If we get thirty men to come in, then I'll take ten cents a day from each, and make the full three dollars. Does that seem fair?”
“Sure!” said Mike; and the others added their assent by word or nod.
“All right. Now, there's nobody that works in this mine but knows the men don't get their weight. It would cost the company several hundred dollars a day to give us our weight, and nobody should be so foolish as to imagine they'll do it without a struggle. We've got to make up our minds to stand together.”
“Sure, stand together!” cried Mike.
“No get check-weighman!” exclaimed Jerry, pessimistically.
“Not unless we try, Jerry,” said Hal.
And Mike thumped his knee. “Sure try! And get him too!”
“Right!” cried “Big Jack.” But his little wife was not satisfied with the response of the others. She gave Hal his first lesson in the drilling of these polyglot masses.
“Talk to them. Make them understand you!” And she pointed them out one by one with her finger: “You! You! Wresmak, here, and you, Klowoski, and you, Zam—you other Polish fellow. Want check-weighman. Want to get all weight. Get all our money. Understand?”
“Yes, yes!”