“Well,” he asked, “what's the trouble now?”
Orcutt seemed incapable of reading storm signals. When anything happened, he had the air of declaring, “I told you so.”
“You may remember I spoke to you once or twice, Mr. Ditmar, of the talk over the fifty-four hour law that goes into effect in January.”
“Yes, what of it?” Ditmar cut in. “The notices have been posted, as the law requires.”
“The hands have been grumbling, there are trouble makers among them. A delegation came to me this noon and wanted to know whether we intended to cut the pay to correspond to the shorter working hours.”
“Of course it's going to be cut,” said Ditmar. “What do they suppose? That we're going to pay 'em for work they don't do? The hands not paid by the piece are paid practically by the hour, not by the day. And there's got to be some limit to this thing. If these damned demagogues in the legislature keep on cutting down the hours of women and children every three years or so—and we can't run the mill without the women and children—we might as well shut down right now. Three years ago, when they made it fifty-six hours, we were fools to keep up the pay. I said so then, at the conference, but they wouldn't listen to me. They listened this time. Holster and one or two others croaked, but we shut 'em up. No, they won't get any more pay, not a damned cent.”
Orcutt had listened patiently, lugubriously.
“I told them that.”
“What did they say?”
“They said they thought there'd be a strike.”