Two Daring Young Patriots; or, Outwitting the Huns

by W. P. Shervill

Monsieur Durend had been the proprietor of very large iron and steel foundries and workshops in Liége. The business was an immense one, and, beside the manufacture of all kinds of machinery and railway material, worked for its own benefit several coal and iron mines, all of which were in the district or on the outskirts of the town. The business had been a very flourishing one, and had been largely under the personal direction of the proprietor, assisted by his manager, M. Otto Schenk, to whose ability and energy, M. Durend was always ready to acknowledge, it owed much of its success. The latter was now, of course, the mainstay of the business, and it was with every confidence in his ability that Madame Durend appointed him general manager with almost unlimited powers.

M. Schenk was indeed a man to impress people at the outset with a sense of strength and of power to command. He was over six feet in height, broad, but with rather sloping shoulders, and very stoutly built. His head, large itself, almost seemed to merge in a greater neck, and both were held stiffly erect as he glowered at the world through cold and rather protruding eyes, much as a drill-instructor glares at his pupils. He was florid-complexioned, with short, closely-cropped grey hair and a short, stubby, dirty-white moustache. Of his grasp of the affairs of the firm and his business ability generally, people were not so immediately impressed as they were with his power to command, but they invariably learned to appreciate this side of his character in time.

The matter of the direction of the affairs of the firm settled to everyone's satisfaction, the question as to what was to be done with Max came up for discussion.

"I think it will be best, Max, if you go into M. Schenk's office and assist him there," said Madame Durend at last. "You will there pick up the threads of the business, and when you are two or three years older we can consider what we are going to do."

"But, Mother," replied Max, "that was not the way Father learned his business. You have often proudly told me how he used to work as a simple mechanic, going from shop to shop and learning all he could of the practical side of the different processes. How he then bought a small business, extended it and extended it, until it grew to its present size. And the whole secret of his success was that he knew the work so thoroughly from top to bottom that he could depend upon his own knowledge, and needed not to be in the hands of men with more knowledge of detail but vastly less capacity than himself."

"Yes, Max, that is true; but the business is now built up, and is so big that it does not seem necessary for you to go through all that. We have an able manager, and from him you can learn all that you will ever need to know of the work of directing the affairs of the firm."

"I should then never know the work thoroughly. I should always be dependent upon those who had learned the practical side of the work, Mother. Let me spend a year or two in learning it from the bottom. I shall enjoy the work, and shall then feel far more confidence in myself."

Max spoke earnestly, and his mother could see that he was longing to throw himself heart and soul into the work. It was, indeed, the spirit in which he had flung himself into the task of lifting Benson's to the Head of the River over again. Though she had a mother's dislike to the idea of her son's donning blouse and apron and working cheek by jowl with the workmen, she had also a clear perception that it would be a mistake to discourage such energy and thoroughness. She therefore resolved to consult M. Schenk on the morrow, and, if he saw no special objection, to allow Max to have his way.

M. Schenk did see several objections, foremost among which was his view that for the master's son to work like a common workman would tend to lessen the present extremely strict discipline in the workshops. Max, however, scouted such an idea as an unfair reflection on the men, and continued to press his point of view most strenuously. In the end he managed to get his way, and within a week had started work at the firm's smelting furnaces.

This story does not, however, deal with the experiences of Max Durend in learning the various activities of the great manufactory founded by his father. It will, therefore, suffice if we relate one incident that had, in the sequel, an important influence upon his career, an incident, too, that gives an insight into his character and that of the different classes of workmen that would, in the course of time, come under his control.