[Illustration: Sincerely Yours Helen M Winslow]

                       SALOME SHEPARD, REFORMER.

                                   BY

                           HELEN M. WINSLOW.

[Illustration: ART FOR TRUTH....]

                             BOSTON, MASS.:

                      =Arena Publishing Company,=

                             COPLEY SQUARE,

                                 1893.

                            Copyright 1893,
                                   BY
                           HELEN M. WINSLOW.

                          ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

                              ARENA PRESS.

                        “Pardon, gentles all,
              The flat, unraised spirit that hath dared
              On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
                        So great an object.”
                                              SHAKESPEARE.

                       SALOME SHEPARD, REFORMER.

                                   I.

Salome Shepard gazed wonderingly at the crowd of people in the street,
as she guided her pony-phaeton through the factory precincts.

“What can be the matter with these people?” she thought. “I’m sure they
ought to have gone to their work before this.”

It was a wet October day. The narrow street was slippery with the muddy
water that oozed along to the gutters. The factory boardinghouses loomed
up on either side, dingy and desolate. Even the mills looked larger and
coarser, in the gloomy air of the morning.

As she drove by them, the fair owner listened in vain for the rumble of
machinery. Inside, the great, well-lighted rooms looked dreary and
barn-like in the gray mist that struggled through the windows.

One hour before, the machinery, shrieking and groaning, had voiced the
protest of the “hands” against their fancied and their real wrongs. One
hour before, every employe had been in his or her place. But the gloom
of the atmosphere could not obscure the suppressed excitement of the
morning. Shortsighted and blind to their best interest, they might have
been; but there was not a man among them who did not feel a tremendous
underlying principle at stake.

And so, at precisely ten o’clock, the machinery had suddenly and
mysteriously stopped, and every man, woman and child, without a word,
had left the mills.

All this had happened while Salome Shepard was calling on an elderly
friend of her mother’s at the other end of the town. It had been a
delightfully cosy morning in spite of the rain; and, after a gossipy
fashion, they had passed it in discussing, as women will, the newest
pattern of crochet, the last society-novel, the coming concerts in town.

Salome’s mood was the comfortable one conduced by such soothing
intellectual food, as she set forth on her homeward drive. The rain had
ceased, and only along the river did the mists hover, suggesting to her
idle fancy the thick smoke which hangs over a smouldering fire.

But the fire which had been creeping under the life of the Shawsheen
Mills had but just burst into flames, which mounted higher and higher as
the day wore on.

All through the factory precincts the unwonted excitement was manifest.
Groups of employes were everywhere—on the street-corners, in front of
tenements and boardinghouses, in the middle of the street;—and all were
engaged in absorbing discussion of one exciting theme—the strike.

Men without coats or hats; women with shawls thrown loosely over their
heads; girls, bonnetless and neglectful of dress; unkempt old women, who
were perhaps the home-makers for these hard-worked and ill-paid people;
all were indifferent save to one subject.

Even the quick passage, through their midst, of the pony-phaeton and its
mistress failed to attract attention beyond an occasional surly glance
from the men or an envious one from the women. Unmindful of the long
days in store, when there would be ample time to discuss their wrongs,
they remained huddled in excited groups in the wet October air, talking
over the strike,—the famous strike of the Shawsheen Mills.

“I declare!” muttered the young woman who was hurrying the pony out of
these disagreeable surroundings; “it must be a strike! Nothing else
would crowd them into the street so. I wonder what they want? Dear me!
what nuisances these work-people are. Why can’t they be sensible, and
when they are earning a living, be content? Dear me! if I had the making
over of this world I would make everybody comfortably off, and nobody
rich—unless it were myself,” she added, laughing; for absolute
truthfulness was a necessity of Salome Shepard’s nature, and she knew
perfectly well that she could not do without the luxuries to which she
had always been accustomed.

“If I had the making over of the world!”

The words repeated themselves in her mind. If any human being has the
power of making over the world in any smallest degree, something
whispered, that person must be a young, attractive woman, with a vast
property and absolute control of several hundred people, besides two
millions of dollars in her own right.

“Dear me!” she said aloud, as she drove up the graveled road under the
dripping yellow beeches. “How positively dreadful it must be to be a
reformer! How would I look in a bloomer costume and black bombazine
bonnet? No. Let things alone, keep to your sphere, young woman,—the
proper, well-regulated, protected and chaperoned sphere of a delicate
young lady, and let the world right its own wrongs.”

She jumped lightly from the phaeton, tossing the reins to James, and
showing her fine, well-turned figure to excellent advantage as she ran
up the broad steps.

The massive doors turned noiselessly at her approach. She passed through
the fine old hall and went directly up the broad oak staircase to her
room.

“How comfortable this is,” she said to herself, as the blazing wood-fire
threw flickering shadows over the dainty hangings, the warm rugs and the
choice pictures.

But even as she drew a long sigh of contentment with her lot, a picture
of wet and muddy streets, thickset with groups of brawny men and
bedraggled, unkempt women, intruded itself, and the sigh changed its
tenor.

“If I only had the making over of the world!” she said again aloud; and
added resolutely, “but I haven’t.”

                                  II.

The Shawsheen Mills had been established many years before the opening
of this story by Salome’s grandfather, Newbern Shepard. They constituted
one of the chief manufacturing concerns of Shepardtown. They made more
cloth, and that of a better quality, than any other mill outside the
“City of Spindles.” They employed a much larger force of operatives than
any other factory in the place, and had always held a controlling
interest in town affairs.

When the Shawsheen Mills were first started, blooming girls from all
parts of Massachusetts came swarming to them, glad of a new and
respectable employment,—came with earnest purpose to make this new life
and its outcomes subservient to a better future. The conscientious New
England girl of those days took as much pride in making a perfect web of
cloth as though it were for her own wearing. Aware that her employers
took an interest in her welfare, aside from the fact that she was a part
of the motive power of the mill, she rewarded them with a full
performance of her duty. A mutual goodfellowship had existed, then,
between employer and employed in the years when old Newbern Shepard was
at the head of his mills.

All this had changed. Newbern Shepard had died after a long and
successful career, leaving the business to his son, Floyd Shepard. The
latter, educated at Harvard, with five years of study afterward in
Germany, had developed little taste for an active business life such as
his father had led. He had, consequently, placed the entire business in
the hands of Otis Greenough, a friend of his college-days and a
hard-headed business man. Floyd Shepard had idled the greater part of
his time before reaching the age of fifty in various parts of the world.

Then he came home, married a Baltimore belle, and passed his old age in
his native place.

Even then, he gave little thought to the details of business. He added
to and improved the home of his forefathers, until his house and grounds
were acknowledged to be the finest in the state. After four years of
married life, his young wife died, leaving him one child—a babe of three
days. Then he retired into his study, and lived only among his books.

“Don’t trouble me with the business,” he would say to Otis Greenough, on
the rare occasions when it seemed necessary to consult the owner of the
mills. “I care nothing as to how you manage the works, and know less how
it should be done. Suit yourself as to details, and keep the mills
paying a good profit. I shall be satisfied.”

Upon this principle the mills had been run for thirty years. The agent
and his superintendents had devoted themselves to the problem of getting
out more goods and making more money than their competitors, while
keeping the standard of their wares up to its old mark. They had no time
for the problem of human life involved. The first and principal question
had required a severe struggle, with active brains and sharp wits. What
wonder, then, that the increasing mass of operatives had come to be
considered, every year, less as human beings in need of help and
encouragement, and more as mechanical attachments of the mills?

Only such operatives as had been brought up in the mills realized the
difference. The employes were mostly of the unwashed population,
expecting nothing but a place to earn their living and but scanty pay
for it.

Having, at the outset, no confidence in their employers, and no feeling
of goodwill towards them, they had no conscientious motive behind their
work. On the contrary, they stood on the defensive, watching for
oppression and tyranny, and ready to take arms against them.

This was the state of things when the first regularly organized strike
occurred at the Shawsheen Mills.

Otis Greenough, although an old man, was still at the head of the mills.
Floyd Shepard’s death three years before had made no difference with the
vast business interests in his name. In willing everything he owned to
his daughter, who was already heiress to a large fortune from her
mother’s family, he had provided that Otis Greenough should be chief
agent during the remainder of his life; and that the mills should
continue on the same plan by which they had been run for the past
quarter of a century.

Otis Greenough was an arbitrary man, with that enormous strength of will
which a man must have who is to control and manage two thousand people
and an increasing business.

If, in the march of economic progress, he chose to make changes in the
machinery of the mills, he consulted no one, and cared nothing for the
black looks or surly mutterings of the operative who might fancy himself
injured thereby. Had it been hinted to him that his operatives might be
trained to take a personal interest in the success or failure of new
experiments or, indeed, that they had any right to his brotherly
consideration, he would have flouted the idea.

It was his boast that he never wasted words on the operatives. In short,
he was as indifferent to the rights of Labor as his Lancashire spinners
were to the interests of Capital. Hence the strike.

At noon of the day that Salome Shepard had driven through the factory
street, Otis Greenough sat in his private office with his two
superintendents, the treasurer and cashier of the mills, and one or two
subordinates. As the bell struck for twelve, five men from the various
departments filed in and presented a written document. They were the
committee appointed by the new Labor Union.

Mr. Greenough took the paper with an air that showed him to be in
anything but a conciliatory mood. Without opening it, he burst forth
angrily:

“What, in the name of common sense, is this farce anyhow? What do you
mean by leaving your work and presuming to come here, dictating terms to
_me_?”

“The paper will explain everything, sir,” replied the foremost of the
committee. “We have our rights—or should have them. The time has come
when we propose to get them. Will you read the petition, sir?”

“No,” thundered the choleric old man. “Not in your presence. Villard,
treat with them.” Mr. Greenough was too angry to say more.

Mr. Villard, the younger superintendent, stepped forward.

“I think,” he said, “that you had better leave us for a time. We shall
need to consider your proposals, whatever they may be. Go now, and come
again later—say at four o’clock.” Agreeing to this proposition, the five
men turned and left the office. Mr. Villard sat down again, waiting for
the agent to speak.

“The confounded whelps!” ejaculated Mr. Greenough, as soon as he could
find breath. “Open that paper, Villard—the impudent puppies!”

Without answering, John Villard tore open the envelope, and read the
document aloud:

  _Whereas_, we, the undersigned, believing that our interests demand an
  organization which shall promote and protect affairs relating to us as
  laboring men; and

  _Whereas_, we have already organized and maintained such a society; it
  is now unanimously agreed that we insist upon the recognition of such
  a body by our employers, and upon their making certain concessions for
  the benefit of that body.

  _Whereas_, there is a ten-hour system established in this state by
  law; we hereby _resolve_ that we will refuse to work ten and a half or
  eleven hours a day as has been demanded of us.

  _Whereas_, we believe the introduction of the new frames are
  detrimental to the interests of the mule-spinners; we _resolve_ that
  they must be taken out, and the old mules replaced, with a written
  agreement that no more of the obnoxious machinery shall be added for,
  at least, five years.

  _Whereas_, there has been an attempt made to reduce our wages,
  especially in the weaving department; we hereby _resolve_ that we will
  submit to no curtailment of wages, and to demand payment of all wages
  weekly, as is the custom in certain other mills in this state.

  Trusting that these our petitions may be granted, our rights
  respected, and that harmonious relations will soon be established
  between us, we take pleasure in signing ourselves

                                 “MEMBERS OF THE SHAWSHEEN LABOR UNION.”

Before John Villard had finished reading the paper, Mr. Greenough had
risen and was pacing the floor excitedly.

“Shocking!” he exclaimed, as Mr. Villard folded the paper and returned
it to its envelope. “Preposterous! Do they think they can impose upon me
with such a jumble of unreasoning nonsense as that? Labor Union, indeed!
Why, the rascals act as if there were no interests but those of labor.
And a beautiful time they’ve taken to strike—when orders are pouring in
faster than we can possibly keep up with them. A fine time, indeed!”

“I suppose,” said John Villard, fearlessly, “there seems a slight
injustice to them, in cutting down their wages at such a time.”

“What right have they to dictate, I should like to inquire?” answered
the irate agent. “If they were not a bigoted, unreasoning set, they’d
know they never can serve the interests of labor in such a way. They’d
realize that they are only biting off their own noses! They have
probably been worked upon by some crank of an agitator. If they were not
ignorant dogs, they’d know that they could best serve the interests of
labor by being faithful to those of capital. Why,” he concluded, his
face growing redder in his wrath, “is this America? Is this our boasted
New England? Is this a free country? By Jove! I’ve heard of this sort of
thing in England, but in this republican land, this boasted region of
freedom—Great Scott! What are we coming to?”

“It’s this accursed trades-unionism creeping in among us,” put in the
treasurer’s mild voice, as Otis Greenough paused for breath. “I’ve been
expecting it.”

“Blast it, why didn’t you mention it then?” returned Mr. Greenough. But
the treasurer retired in confusion behind his books and did not answer.

“Well, Villard,” continued the agent, “I hope now you will give up the
Utopian schemes you’ve been nursing for the elevation of the laboring
classes. You see just what a foolish, unthinking, unreliable set of men
we have to deal with.”

“On the contrary, sir,” returned the second superintendent, firmly, “I
sympathize, to a degree, with them. I agree that they have taken an
inopportune time to enforce their views, and regret that they could not
have seen fit to keep at work while their petition was being considered;
and I would advise——”

“I want no man’s advice until I ask it,” interrupted the elder man.
“This is our first strike, and it shall be the last so long as I have
authority here. Humph! They think they can intimidate me! They have
chosen this time because they think I _must_ yield now. They little know
me. Otis Greenough has not run the Shawsheen Mills successfully thirty
years, to be brow-beaten and conquered in the end by a pack of ignorant
laborers.”

“But how is this to end?” asked the first superintendent, speaking for
the first time.

“It can end whenever these men will take back their impudent paper and
go to work. Villard, when they show up again—four o’clock did you
say?—you will tell them so. Offer them a chance to go to work to-morrow
morning on the old terms. You needn’t give in to them one inch. Do you
hear? Not a jot or tittle.”

“And what if they do not accept?” asked Villard.

“Why, advertise. Advertise far and near. Get new help. We’ll open the
mills and run them, too, right in their very teeth. I’ll show them that
he who has been master here for thirty years is master until he dies.”

                                  III.

The choleric agent’s blood was fairly up, and he now set himself to plan
for the coming warfare. When the committee from the labor union made its
appearance at four o’clock, the agent refused to treat directly with
them. He retired to his inner office, whence issued a moment later an
“open letter to the employes of the Shawsheen Mills.” The circular was
composed and written entirely by himself, and was quite characteristic
of his high-handed authority. It stated that “as the control of an owner
over his property was guaranteed by the law of the land, and was of such
unquestionable character as ought not to be meddled with by any other
individual or combination of individuals, the agent of the Shawsheen
Mills, acting for their owner, would brook no such interference as had
been attempted.” But, in bombastic language, he went on to say that, on
account of the pressure of work, he offered to take back into the mills
such operatives as, after a day’s idleness and a night’s calm
reflection, might decide to come back peacefully, and accept the old
conditions. The circular closed by adding that all returning operatives
must renounce their connection with the new Labor Union, and stating
that the Shawsheen Mills would be immediately re-opened.

This letter, as might have been expected, only served to fan the
smouldering embers of discord. It was taken at once to the quarters of
the new Union, and angrily discussed. A stormy meeting was held that
evening, and scores of new members were added to the organization, all
unanimously agreeing, not only to keep away from the mills themselves,
but to prevent other operatives from entering them. The trouble which
might have been met at the outset and subdued by candid discussion and a
fair acknowledgment on each side of the claims of the other, was changed
into a barricade of danger between labor and capital over which a battle
was to be fought, involving money and credit and losses on one side, and
daily bread for two thousand people on the other.

“Come,” said Otis Greenough, emerging from his “den” after the committee
had left the office. “I want you, Villard, and you, too, Burnham,” he
added, turning to the other superintendent, “to go with me this evening,
to the owner of these mills, and lay before her the proceedings of the
day, and our reasons for taking a firm stand. Although, precious little
difference it will make with her, I imagine, how many strikes we have,
until her income is affected! Will you be so good as to state, Villard,
what you are smiling at.”

“I was thinking, sir, that it is a queer state of affairs, when a person
owning large and influential mills like these, need not know of the
strike or be consulted with regard to it, until it is half over,”
answered Villard. He had no fear of the agent, with whom he was a
favorite, in spite of his seeming harshness. “It seems to me, if I were
a young woman, with unlimited leisure and wealth, I should care to know
something of so tremendous an interest as the Shawsheen Mills
represent—that is, if I owned them.”

“Ha, ha!” laughed the agent, “that shows how much of a ladies’ man you
are, John. Much you know about the things that interest and amuse the
young ladies. By Jove! I should laugh to see the daughter of Floyd
Shepard meddling with the details of the great business he left her. She
could discuss French and Italian literature, or the different schools of
music and art, by the hour, and fairly inundate you with a flood of
learning; but when it comes to mills—why, she don’t know a loom from a
spinning-jenny—and don’t want to. I’m only going up there as a matter of
form. As for advice, she knows I wouldn’t take it, even if she has any
to offer. But courtesy—proper courtesy,” and Otis Greenough drew himself
up to his fullest height, “and the respect we owe her as the owner of
this property, demand that we go there this evening. I will call for you
in my carriage at half-past seven.”

And, so saying, he left the office.

“I reckon the old man is about right,” said Burnham, when they were
alone. “Miss Shepard knows no more about the practical affairs of her
mill, than that little white kitten over there does. She’ll meet us with
a listless, half-bored air, pretending to listen to the statements of
our chief, and all the time be wishing us at the antipodes.”

“Do you know,” interrupted John Villard, locking the door to the office
as they left it together, “I’ve very little patience with women of that
sort. Think, with her youth and health and money, what a directing,
reforming force in bringing together the conflicting interests of labor
and capital she might be! Great Heavens! I wish I had her opportunity.
I’d make something of it.”

“Oh, you are too Utopian,” replied Burnham. “It is fortunate she isn’t
that kind. We should be overwhelmed with Schemes for the Amelioration of
the Condition of This, That, and The Other Thing, until there would be
nothing left but bankruptcy for all of us. No. I want no reformers in
petticoats at the head of the Shawsheen Mills. But here I am at my
street. Good-bye, till evening.”

Salome Shepard passed a dull afternoon. Although a young woman of
resources she found herself in no mood to enjoy any of them after lunch.
The newest volume of essays seemed insufferably dull, and she turned for
relief to the latest novel; but, in spite of the fact that this book was
talked about throughout the country, she soon threw it aside with a
wearied air and sat gazing into the blazing hickory fire.

Strange! but the red-hot coals formed themselves into a group against
the dull back-log like the groups of miserable, excited men and women of
the morning against a background of rain and fog and muddy streets. It
was an uncomfortable picture, and she rose suddenly, and, going into the
music-room, seated herself at the piano. Chopin’s Nocturnes stood open
on the rack, but she tossed them aside and began some stormy Liszt
music, breaking off when half done and going to the window.

The rain had begun to fall again and the fog had settled like a pall
over everything farther off than the arched gateway. She wondered if all
those people were still standing in the mud and rain.

An elderly lady, with soft white hair and exquisite laces, came in.

Salome ran forward, pushed her aunt’s favorite chair into the position
she liked best, and put her into it.

“Why did you stop playing? And why did you attempt that brilliant
thing?” said Mrs. Soule. “You are so dreadfully out of practice, you
know.”

“It wasn’t that,” answered the younger woman; “I’m not in the mood for
playing anything. I doubt if I could get through with ‘Bounding Billows’
or the ‘Fifteenth Amusement’ to-day. Did you know, aunty, there is a
strike down at the mills?”

“A strike! Mercy, who has struck?” responded the elder in shocked tones.

“Why, the operatives, of course. I don’t know why, or anything about it.
I have never shown any interest in the mills,” she went on eagerly and
half-apologetically, “but I should like to know what it is all about—why
they did it—what they want, and all that. I should think Mr. Greenough
would come up here.”

“He will come as soon as he deems it proper.” Mrs. Soule’s voice was
calmness and precision itself. “It is not nice for young ladies to mix
themselves up in such common things.”

“But, aunty,” laughed Salome, “strikes are not common things here. We
never had one before. And I am not so very young a lady as to need the
same careful guardianship I had when I was sixteen. I am twenty-seven
years old.”

“There is no need of saying so upon all occasions, if you are,” replied
her aunt with some asperity. “A strike, like all things connected with,
or originated by the ignorant laboring class, is common in the sense of
being vulgar. Any woman, young or old, brought up as delicately and
carefully as you have been, demeans herself by connection with such
things. You have an agent—a manly and capable one; leave the settlement
of such things to him.”

“Oh, I’m not going to meddle with the strike. The very suggestion that I
would wish to have anything to do with settling the difficulty makes me
laugh.”

Salome rose and began to pace the room. “But sometimes, lately, aunty,
it has occurred to me that a young woman of average talent, with a great
business on her hands which employs two thousand people, may have
something to do in life more than to seek her own selfish enjoyment—a
pursuit which, after all, is not elevating and leaves but a restless,
unsatisfied spirit in its wake. I came across some of grandfather’s
manuscripts two or three weeks ago and have been reading them. He wasn’t
like papa. The mills were a part of his very self. The operatives were
almost like so many children to him. I’ve read in his, and in other
books, about the mill-girls of his day. Girls whose working days began
at daylight in winter and ended at half-past seven in the evening; who
had only two dresses to their backs, and those of Merrimack print; whose
profits for a week, after their board was paid, were only two dollars.
But girls who could discuss Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton at their
looms; who read Locke and Abercrombie and Pollock and Young (something I
can’t do!); who sent petitions to Congress for the abolition of slavery;
who helped build churches from their pitiful savings; who wrote essays
and poems and stories, even while running their looms; who spent their
evenings in the study of German and French and botany; and who went out,
at last, to become teachers and mothers and missionaries, and, above
all, noble, self-sacrificing, helpful women. And I tell you that, with
all my money and my polished education, I envy them.”

“Salome, really, you surprise me,” exclaimed the excellent lady who was
listening to her. “Calm yourself, my dear.”

“Look at the girls in this mill—in my grandfather’s mill to-day—in my
mill,” she went on. “Beings of bangs and bangles and cheap jewelry, of
low aspirations, and correspondingly low morals! They are not to blame
for their penny-dreadful lives, because they know no better. They dream
of nothing higher than their looms and their face-powder, and their
cheap satins and false hair—why should they? They see rich and educated
women like us wrapped entirely in ourselves, each anxious to outshine
the rest, and all seemingly lost in the mad race after fashionable
attire. They do not know, poor things, that we ever think or talk of
higher subjects. I tell you, I feel that I am, somehow, responsible for
them. And yet, I don’t know how to help them. My grandfather could, but
I can’t.”

“I know nothing of such things,” coldly replied her aunt. “It is not
ladylike to fly into a passion over the fancied wrongs of a lower order
of beings. I beg that you will recollect that you are the daughter of
Cora Le Bourdillon and Floyd Shepard.”

“And more than that,” Salome whispered to herself as she sought the
quiet of her own room, “I am afraid I am the grand-daughter of Newbern
Shepard.”

                                  IV.

It was nearly eight o’clock when carriage-wheels were heard coming up
the graveled drive-way, and Otis Greenough and his associates were
announced. Salome and her aunt were sitting in the music-room, and came
forward at once; the former with an unmistakable air of eagerness.

“Tell me about the strike, Mr. Greenough,” she asked, before he had
fairly seated himself.

“Oh, then, you’d heard of it, eh?” he asked.

“I saw something of it this morning, driving through the town. I could
not help knowing what it was. But why did they do it? What do they
want?”

“They did it,” and Otis Greenough sat up with a judicial air, “because
they are rascally dogs, and do not know when they are well off. And they
want?—well,—the earth—more pay, shorter hours, and the Lord knows what
besides.”

“Well, and why shouldn’t they have it?”

The question fell like a bomb upon her surprised audience.

“To be sure, I know very little of these things, practically, although I
have taken the prescribed doses of social economy in my readings under
Professor Townsend,” she went on; “but it has occurred to me, within a
few days, that the laboring classes have very little control over their
own lives, and are not much more than slaves to us who hold the reins of
power.”

“Bless me!” thought Otis Greenough, staring at her. If his office-door
had suddenly spoken, offering him officious counsel as to his method of
conducting the mills, he could hardly have been more surprised. “Bless
me! No Floyd Shepard about her.”

“If the operatives are poorly paid, and we are making more money than
ever before (I think I understood you so the other day?),” the young
woman was saying, “why shouldn’t their wages be raised? It seems but
fair, to me.”

“Much you know about it, little girl,” Mr. Greenough found voice to say,
addressing her as he used to in by-gone days, when she occasionally
strayed into the mills and teased to be taken through them. “Much any
young lady of the world can know of such matters. We would not have you
turn from being your own charming self, and become a learned
blue-stocking, or bloomered reformer; but there are many, many reasons
which come between the questions of profit and loss, and the petty
details of operatives’ wages, which cannot be explained to you here and
now. They were contented enough until some rascal or other, having
become imbued with the spirit of these labor unions starting up all over
the country, must needs organize one here. By Jove! I’ll employ
detectives and hunt out the disturbing elements and shut them up. I have
offered every mother’s son a chance to go back to work to-morrow
morning, on condition that he drops this union business; but I am told
to-night that not one of them will accept. Ignorant creatures! I’ll show
’em what it means to fight a rich and strong concern like this, in the
vain hope of bringing us to their terms.”

“Meanwhile,” it was Villard who spoke, “we are to go on resisting their
combined ignorance and impatience, and perhaps worse elements, losing
thousands of dollars in the warfare, are we?”

“Yes, rather than give in one inch to them,” answered Mr. Greenough.
“This is the first organized strike and must be made a warning to future
disturbers. It’s those confounded Englishmen trying to transplant their
foreign ideas to American soil. If we give in to them now, we establish
a bad precedent.”

“I must confess,” said Villard, “that I do not see it. I have seen
several strikes, and know that generally both sides lose sight of
reason, and determine to fight it out regardless of cost. I am afraid,
with the course you propose to adopt, sir, that we shall go on until the
losses on our side or the suffering and privation on theirs will become
unbearable; and then one side or the other will be forced to yield. If
it should be they, a smouldering resentment will be left, ready to break
out anew at the first convenient season. If we, they will feel
encouraged to try still more arbitrary measures in the future. Or if a
compromise be effected, it will be one that might as well be made
to-morrow.”

“You talk well for a young man,” admitted Mr. Greenough. “How did you
come by your exceedingly humane and sympathetic views?”

“I began as an employe myself,” answered Villard, “and I know how they
feel to some extent. I know what it is to work at the lowest drudgery of
a mill, and can imagine how it must seem to have no hope of ever rising
to a higher position. Hard, unremitting toil, long hours with endless
years of hopeless work in prospect, the lowest possible wages, a large
and rapidly increasing family, with perhaps an aged parent or invalid
wife to support—I tell you lots of those fellows have all that to bear,
knowing the utter impossibility of ever saving anything, or of raising
their own condition. I say, sir, looking at life from their standpoint,
it’s mighty hard.”

“Well, well,” put in Mr. Greenough, testily, “a great many of them want
nothing better. They would not know what to do with a better chance for
life, as you call it, if they had it.”

“Simply put yourself in their place, sir,” said Villard. “What if you
were forty years younger than you are, and condemned to a life of toil
at the looms, for instance, would you not claim the right to combine
with others of like occupation and interests and ask for a better
chance? These men of ours have taken an unreasonable way of asserting
themselves, but I think they are entitled to our respect, and should be
dealt with as men. An open, fair discussion of the wage question or the
ten-hour law can result in nothing but good for both sides.”

“You are young,” Mr. Greenough replied, “and believe everything in this
world can be made to run exactly as you want it. When you are older,
you’ll realize better the indifference and general mulishness of the
world, and of operatives in particular. I do not believe in meeting and
deferring to them as equals. They are not worth our efforts, and so long
as they are under the influence of hot-headed devils who pose as labor
reformers, just so long we are going to see trouble.”

“If we were to make a fair compromise with them,” Mr. Burnham was
speaking for the first time, “and let them see that we, as humane
employers, have a greater desire for their interest than any foreigner
can have, wouldn’t it work a reaction in our favor? From a strictly
business point of view, perhaps it would be money in our pockets.”

“Yes,” urged Villard, “if we were to show ourselves willing to consider
an intimate knowledge of their needs and thus prove ourselves their best
friends, it would be only a case of practical philanthropy, and one
which would raise our profits every year, I believe. It is only the
first step that costs, you know.”

“I don’t believe it,” stoutly maintained the agent. “In my day there has
been very little talk of managers and owners deferring to their help. I
hire my own operatives and reserve the right to raise, or lower, their
wages as I please.”

“But, Mr. Greenough,” broke in Salome eagerly, “don’t you consider their
circumstances at all? Don’t you, for instance, in a driving time, pay
them any higher wages than in dull times? I think there would be nothing
but fairness in that.”

“My dear young lady,” was the answer in patronizing tones, “don’t bother
your brains with such things. You cannot understand them. Why try?”

“Imagine our Salome posing as a philanthropist or a social economist,”
interrupted Mrs. Soule’s mellifluous tones. “We had a great laugh over
the idea this afternoon.”

Salome bit her lip and said nothing.

“I think,” continued her aunt in the same smooth accents, “that we have
talked business long enough. I am sure, Mr. Greenough, that Salome is,
and will be perfectly satisfied with any course you may see fit to adopt
with regard to the strikers. Women, you know, ladies at least, have no
heads for business, and we, certainly,” with an indescribable turn of
voice on the “we”—“we, certainly, have had no training to fit us for
reformers. And now shall we not have some music? Salome, dear, will you
play that delightful little suite of Moscowzki’s that I like so well?”

The young woman rose and, going to the piano, did as she was bid,
although somewhat mechanically. Then Mr. Greenough proposed a song from
Mr. Burnham, who possessed a fine baritone voice, and the evening wore
away with music and light conversation.

When the three men went home, the elder was in fine spirits, in spite of
having been shocked and discomfited to an unusual degree, by the
unexpected disclosure of views which he termed “strong-minded” on the
part of the fair owner of the Shawsheen Mills.

“If there should come to be hard times and perhaps destitution among the
operatives before this difficulty is settled,” Salome said to John
Villard as he was preparing to go, “such destitution as we read of in
foreign countries in times of labor disturbances, I hope you will let me
do something to relieve it. Strange as it may seem, I have a much better
idea of such a state of affairs there than here—among my own mills.”

“There will be no such state of affairs, I trust,” was his reply, “as is
pictured in English novels.”

“You have guessed accurately as to the sources of my information,” she
laughed.

He smiled too, and continued,

“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.”

This sort of thing was kept up four days. On the fifth morning, the
operatives went as usual to the mill, but the machinery, after a few
insufficient groans, gave up in despair and settled into utter quiet.

What was the matter?

There was a great hurrying to and fro, and a close examination of belts
and machinery. Word was soon brought up from the basement. The engines
had been tampered with; on each of them the belts had been cut. The
jocularly inclined said the “engines had joined the Union;”—while
everybody wondered what effect this stroke would have on the agent.

The premises were examined and the night-watchman questioned. Evidently
the deed had been done by some one familiar with the place, but there
was not the slightest clue. He had done well his work, and the mills
were stopped for repairs.

Otis Greenough blustered about and cursed the whole business; but he was
farther than ever from a compromise, declaring that he would yet beat
them with their own weapons.

The night-watch was doubled and the mills were opened again the next
day. But the employers were fighting a desperate party and little
calculated their strength. The man who had succeeded so well in his
first attempt to stop the mills risked himself again; and on the second
morning the machinery again refused to start. This time a small wheel
had been removed from each engine and carried away. The water-wheel had
long been in partial disuse and could not be trusted without the
engines. Hence, there was nothing to be done but to stop again for
repairs. This time it was a week before the engines were in running
order. And yet, not a word passed between the agent and the strikers.

The night-watch were discharged and new ones engaged. A special police
was secured to patrol the mill-yard, and when the mills were again
opened, it was with the avowed determination to keep them going in spite
of every earthly power.

The next morning, notwithstanding the positive assertions of police and
night-watch that no one had been near the mills, every band connecting
the looms to the machinery above was cut in half a dozen places. Then
the superstitious operatives whispered among themselves that unseen
agencies were linked with the Union, and that the strikers must succeed
in the end; and many of the fainthearted went over to the new labor
party.

“It is of no use trying to run the mills in this way,” said Mr. Burnham.
“We have already lost several thousand dollars. We must compromise.”

“Never,” said Mr. Greenough. “The terms of Floyd Shepard’s will grant me
absolute power here, and so long as I live, it shall never be said that
an educated, trained and levelheaded business man was overcome by a lot
of ignorant bullies and agitators. These Labor Unions all over the State
need an example. There is money enough in the mill treasury to fight
them until they starve themselves out. No other mill or corporation
about here will hire them, and it is only a matter of weeks or months
when absolute poverty forces them to yield. Not one inch will I give in
to them. They shall come back as beggars, glad to accept work at even
lower wages than they have ever had. I’ll teach them a lesson.”

Geoffrey Burnham turned away full of anger that a flourishing business
should be destroyed by one man’s obstinacy. John Villard went back to
the silent looms, full of righteous indignation, not only at the total
disregard of practical business interests, but at the want of humanity
and philanthropy and Christian charity, which by his subordinate
position he must seem to countenance.

Weeks lengthened themselves into months, and still the Shawsheen Mills
were closed.

Salome Shepard, after spending the holiday season with friends in New
York, came home, satiated with social success, and a little tired of the
endless pursuit of pleasure. Still the mills lay idle and Otis Greenough
refused to talk any more with her on the subject of the strike. And the
terms of her father’s will held her powerless, even had she chosen to
exercise her authority.

But she chafed under the knowledge that two thousand people, who were in
a sense dependent upon her for their daily bread, were out of work in
the midst of a hard winter.

One day she went to walk down among the people who were suffering, now,
for a principle.

She was amazed at the gaunt, hungry look of the old men; and
self-accused at the pinched and wan faces of the few children who played
in the narrow streets. Unthinking, she had put on a seal-skin cloak. It
was a cold day, and furs, to her, were only a natural accompaniment to
the frosts of winter.

But going down the uncared-for side-walk, she rebuked herself, noting
the single shawl and calico dress of an old woman who was wearily making
her way a few paces in front of her. Presently the woman stopped, seized
with a paroxysm of coughing.

Salome came up with her, and looked into the white face, which told of
hard times.

“Madam,” she said, respectfully, “can I be of any assistance to you?
Shall I not help you home?”

Her tone and manner were exactly the same she would have used to any of
her aunt’s friends. It did not occur to her to be patronizing or
condescending.

The old woman stared at her. She was not used to being addressed as
“Madam.”

“Yes’m,” she said, presently. “I live up to the other end of the street.
If the cough wasn’t so bad, an’ my side didn’t ketch me so! But if I can
git back to my own chair ag’in——”

Another fit of coughing seized her, and interrupted the “garrulousness
of uncultured old age.” Salome waited until she got breath again and
then took her by the arm, accommodating her steps to the feebler ones.

Here and there a surprised face peered curiously at her through a dirty
window, knowing who she was, and wondering that she condescended to walk
with old Granny Lancaster. Everywhere a general air of poverty, perhaps
of actual hunger, impressed this woman, who had inherited the
tumble-down tenement houses on each side.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, “but do you eat nourishing food enough?
Good beef-steak and roast-beef would help your cough more than
medicine.”

The old woman laughed, a grating, cackling laugh.

“Beef-steak and roast-beef ain’t for the likes o’ me,” she said. “Meat
of any kind ain’t for us in times o’ strikes. May the Lord above send us
oatmeal enough to keep us through till the mills open ag’in is all I
ask. Here’s my house. Much ’bleeged, lady.”

Salome wanted to go inside the rickety old door and follow the woman up
the dirty stairway, but she did not say so, and the old woman hobbled up
the steps without asking her in.

Salome felt impulsively in her pocket, and drawing out her
porte-monnaie, emptied its contents into the dirty, emaciated palm of
Granny Lancaster. Then she turned and walked rapidly back home.

The next day Otis Greenough called on her.

“My dear,” he said, after an hour or two passed in desultory
conversation, “may I beg that you will keep away from the operatives?
Impulsive and injudicious charity does them more harm than anything
else. No doubt the part of Lady Bountiful seems a pleasant and desirable
one, but, just now, you are not fitted for it.”

“What do you mean, sir?” asked she in a puzzled tone.

“For instance,” he went on, “the money you gave a certain old woman on
the corporation yesterday was taken by her son-in-law last night, and
furnished him an opportunity for a glorious old drunk. I beg your pardon
for using their phraseology. He was arrested before morning for
drunkenness and disorderly conduct.”

“I do not comprehend,” she stammered. “The woman said they had no meat.
She was actually suffering for nourishing food. I gave the money,
impulsively it is true, but that they need not go hungry.”

“Now, you see, my dear,” he answered, “just how much encouragement one
gets in trying to do anything for the laboring classes. They turn upon
you and use the goodness of your heart and your generous motives to drag
themselves down to a lower depth of degradation. Good-day, my dear, and
don’t be led away by your feelings.”

Salome stood looking after him, heart-sick and discouraged. The
world—her part of it, at least—was all wrong, and she, with plenty of
money and an awakening desire to help, was powerless. She ordered the
pony phaeton again and started for a drive. She obeyed a sudden impulse
to go through the factory precincts. There were evidences of a
suppressed excitement. Knots of desperate-looking men stood about. But
they hushed their voices as she drew near, and stood in sullen silence
as she passed.

“There is evidently something in the wind,” she thought, urging the pony
to quicken his pace.

She did not know that the committee from the Labor Union had that
morning made a third attempt to treat with her agent and failed.

“No compromise,” was still his watchword.

“I’ll send for Marion Shaw,” she said to herself, on her way home an
hour later. “She is a practical, sensible, business-like woman. Perhaps
she will know of some way to help me to help others. And she needs
rest.”

This idea so inspired her that she arrived home quite elated, and stated
her plan to Mrs. Soule at dinner-time with much animation.

But later in the evening, the groups of men she had seen on “the
corporation” came back to her mind and caused her a certain feeling of
uneasiness. What had they been talking about so excitedly as she drew
near?

It was one of those suddenly warm nights in January that succeed, in our
fickle climate, a bitter cold day, and Salome felt an unaccountable
desire to be in the open air. She threw on a warm wrap and hood, and
saying nothing, went out on the piazza, and crossed the lawn to a
favorite walk of hers in summer—a path under a long group of fir-trees
down by the street at the back of the house.

After a few turns, she heard a peculiar whistle which was answered by
another.

She withdrew still more into the shadow and waited. Presently two men
met.

“Well, what’s the news?” eagerly asked one.

“Sh—sh! not so loud,” replied the other. “It’s all right, and better
than we expected.”

“Why—how better?” asked the first.

They spoke lower, so that Salome could scarcely catch the tones.

“Because,” the first was saying, “the old man himself has gone down to
the mill.”

“Whe—e—w!”

“Yes. What on earth possessed him? But then that’s none of our affairs.
If he wants to run the risk of losing his life—that’s his business, not
mine.”

“Well, but,” and the first voice had a timid note, “that’s going too
far—we were only to blow up the mill—not to kill anybody.”

“Can’t help that. Fifteen minutes more, if everything works well, and
old man Greenough’s day is over. Jim’s just about lighting the fuse, I
reckon, now. It’s an awful long one, but the fire’ll creep round there
in time.”

“What about the police?”

“He’s all right. We’ve fixed him.”

The voices grew fainter and ceased altogether, only the dull sound of
the men’s footsteps reaching her as they passed down the hill away from
the grounds.

Salome stood an instant, rooted to the spot. What was this horrible
thing she had heard?

The factory to be blown up?

She must go for help.

And Mr. Greenough down there, risking his life?

No. There was no time to get help.

“Fifteen minutes more, if everything works well, and old man Greenough’s
day is over.”

The whole plot flashed across her bewildered brain. She dashed through
the back-gate and down the deserted street towards the mills. It was a
ten minutes’ walk across that way, but she ran,—flew,—tore down the
lonely road in less than half that time.

Otis Greenough might be an unreasonable, hot-headed, obstinate agent,
but he was her father’s friend and had loved and petted her when she was
a motherless child.

What could she do? Raise an alarm? Call for help? Rouse everybody?

But the fuse was already lighted.

Where was it?

Under the office window most likely, since they knew that the old agent
was in there.

She came in sight of that window. There was a dim light there. All else
was dark. The south wind moaned dismally.

She hurried faster and came nearer the office window. Under it was
another window with a broken pane, from which hung something she
instantly divined as the fuse.

Yes. A fiery spark crept closer and closer to the wall.

By the time she reached the window it was out of her reach.

Oh, God! could she do nothing?

She had been sewing on some dainty trifle earlier in the evening, and a
pair of small scissors still hung at her waist.

Closer drew the spark of fire to the broken window pane, whence it would
disappear to work its fearful errand. It seemed to twinkle and mock at
her in fiendish delight. She grasped the jutting window-frame and jumped
upon the broad sill.

Thank God, she had it at last. One snip of her scissors, and the spark
of fire dropped harmlessly to the ground. She turned slightly to step
off the window-ledge. Her foot slipped and she fell, a white, faint heap
upon the ground.

                                  VI.

When she opened her eyes again, not only Otis Greenough but John Villard
and an office-boy were bending anxiously over her.

“My dear girl,” the agent was saying, “bless me, my dear, what is it?
How came you here and who has harmed you?”

“Don’t be alarmed, sir,” was her reply, as she got on her feet; and
then, somewhat excitedly, she told the events of the last fifteen or
twenty minutes, interrupted, every other sentence, by such ejaculations
as, “Great Scott,” “Bless me,” “The rascals,” “Confound them,” from the
elderly man, while the younger one listened in silent amazement.

Rapid search was made and the night-watch was found sleeping, in a
stupor which was evidently the work of a drug; while the police were, as
usual, nowhere to be found.

Salome was taken into the office—not without inward trembling, as she
feared further evidences of the miscreants.

Mr. Villard soon reported two kegs of gunpowder and a small dynamite
bomb in the room below, at the same time congratulating, most heartily,
the young woman who had saved their lives as well as the mills.

But her courage was now at a low ebb, and, woman-like, she shivered at
the close proximity of gunpowder, and begged to be taken home.

Mr. Greenough, who had come to realize the danger to himself and to the
mills which his obstinacy had provoked, was also anxious to leave the
premises and glad to accompany Salome home.

John Villard, meanwhile, attended to the duty of finding new watchmen
who should be reliable,—a difficult task. Against his will, he promised
Salome not to sleep at the mills, as he had been doing since the
machinery had been tampered with.

Salome was nearly prostrated when she reached home, and had but little
strength left with which to importune the agent to consent to any terms
for a settlement; but as the old man was, for once, thoroughly
frightened, it was not difficult to exact a promise that he would
consider a compromise.

Mrs. Soule, when she learned of Salome’s intrepidity,—set forth as it
was by Mr. Greenough’s gratitude and gallant appreciation,—was greatly
concerned for her niece and put her straightway to bed, where, in fact,
she had supposed her to be for the past hour, and where she wept over
and caressed her as she had not done since the girl had left home for
boarding-school. And then, what was far more to the purpose, she gave
her a bath of alcohol and olive oil, and soothed her to sleep.

Early the next morning the agent of the Shawsheen Mills sent a messenger
over to the dingy room which served as headquarters for the Labor Union,
begging for an interview.

As this was the first overture of peace from his side, it was natural
that it should be hailed with glee by the officers of the Union. And
although, the day before, the leaders of the strike had been closeted
together in a serious debate as to how much they should yield to
Capital, they now unanimously agreed not to “weaken” in the smallest
degree.

As for the agent, he had been persuaded to yield every point demanded by
the strikers, insisting only upon the one condition, that the Labor
Union should be disbanded.

The question of ten hours he granted without a murmur. He quibbled a
long time over the wage question, and the subject of weekly payments,
and only on seeing the dogged determination of the laborers did he come
to terms on that. But he very properly, and too peremptorily, refused to
remove the spinning frames which had formed one subject of contention.
And then he proceeded to overthrow the good effects of what concessions
he had made, by violently denouncing all labor unions, and vigorously
insisting that the one known as the Shawsheen Labor Union be immediately
and forever disbanded.

“Never,” said the foremost of the committee, “will we submit to so
arbitrary a demand. We have a perfect right to organize our forces and
assert our claims. How can we—a band of day-laborers,—dependent on
capital for a bare living, win a single cause for ourselves without
combinations of this kind? There are scores of questions which involve
not our welfare in one way alone, but our health, our wages, our morals,
our manhood, which we, as single individuals, can never cope with, but
which, as a united force, we can adjust. Besides, in all departments of
labor, the women and children equal or exceed the men. There are to-day
one hundred and seventy-five thousand more women working in mills than
there were ten years ago; and what are they but the weakest and most
dependent of employes? They have no strength to agitate; they have no
power to change any existing order of things. All they can do is to toil
and submit. We owe it to them as men, as husbands, brothers, and sons,
to lighten their burdens. As free American citizens we owe it to
ourselves, to settle the conditions of our own lives, so far as may be.
This can only be done by combinations of the laboring classes strong
enough to compel manufacturers to concede us our rights.”

“You are right to a degree,” answered Villard, before Mr. Greenough
could swallow his surprise at hearing such sentiments from one of his
operatives; “I believe there are some rights which you can only secure
by a combination of your forces as working-men. But when you let reason
lose its sway, and passion take its place; when you are influenced by
unworthy demagogues and unbalanced cranks, and seek to effect by strikes
and such arbitrary measures what might be better secured by a more
conciliatory course, you must not be surprised if you do not succeed in
bull-dozing a rich concern like this into obedience, and——”

“And when, by your —— labour unions, you sink so low as to countenance
incendiarism and murder—yes, sirs—that is what you attempted last night,
sirs,—you can’t expect this mill is going to countenance them. I’ll see
you all starve and rot first,” and Otis Greenough’s face was purple with
anger.

“We have already disclaimed all knowledge in our Union, sir,” said one
of the committee, “of last night’s outrage.”

“Blast it, what do I care for that?” roared the agent, as usual, out of
temper. “Whether you knew it or not, it was done under cover of your
strike, and your Union, and was one of the precious outgrowths of it.
Give up the —— thing, I say—or there is no compromise with these mills.”

“There is little use in prolonging this interview, I am afraid,” said
the first of the committee, taking up his hat.

“Impudent dogs!” said Mr. Greenough, as Villard tried to speak, anxious
to put things on a more satisfactory basis before the meeting closed.
“Let them go. They’ll find hard hoeing before they reach the end of
their row.”

“And, sir,” retorted a fiery-looking man who had not spoken before, “if
it comes to open war you’ll find us tough customers. We shall fight it
out like men, even if we starve like beasts.”

And with these words the committee departed, leaving matters worse than
ever before in the affairs of the Shawsheen Mills.

In vain did the two superintendents plead and argue and threaten the
choleric old agent. His blood was up and he was a veritable charger on
the eve of battle. There was no state board of arbitration then, and
therefore no available way of settling their difficulties except among
themselves. And as discussion only made matters worse, the subject which
was always uppermost in these three men’s minds was tacitly dropped.
Every precaution was taken to insure the mills from the danger it had
escaped the night before, and a detective was obtained from Boston to
hunt out the criminals who had perpetrated the dastardly act.

At noon, they were all surprised by a note from Miss Shepard. It ran as
follows:

  “DEAR MR. GREENOUGH,

  “As the owner of the Shawsheen Mill property, I hereby appoint a
  meeting of all its officers at my house, to-night. Please have them
  here at eight o’clock.

  “Pardon me for the liberty I have seemed to take, and believe me ever
  a loving and respectful friend,

                                                       “SALOME SHEPARD.”

“Well, you hear that, boys,” said Mr. Greenough, after reading it aloud.
“Be on hand. Tell the treasurer and cashier and head book-keeper. We’ll
all be there. The Lord only knows what she is up to; but if that young
woman hasn’t got a level head on her shoulders, then I don’t know who
has.”

“I reckon you’re right, sir,” echoed Mr. Burnham, while John Villard
laughed in his sleeve at the young woman who evidently dreamed of
settling a prolonged strike. “Why,” he said to himself, “she has never
known enough of the practical side of mill-life to recognize one of her
operatives, and hardly knows the different brands of cloth manufactured
by them.”

Salome Shepard had waked at an early hour that morning and found herself
unable to sleep again. Her mind was alive with gratitude for the part
she had been able to play the night before, with apprehension for the
future, and with increasing self-accusation for the state of things in
the Shawsheen Mills, both past and present.

“Pshaw!” she said to herself while dressing, true to her habit of
communing with her own conscience in default of a visible mentor, “how
can I be blamed for the state of things here? The entire business of the
mills was put out of my hands by my father’s will. I could have done no
differently.”

“You could,” replied that sternest of modern inquisitors—a New England
conscience. “It was in your power to see that the moral and physical
condition of these people was improved and cultivated. It was in your
power to give them better homes and more privileges. It was in your
power to raise their standards of life and to create new ones. But you
have ignored their very existence, and let them live a mean and sordid
life of unremitting toil, in order to furnish you with money to live a
selfish life of luxurious ease.”

Salome tied the blue ribbons to her wrapper, and giving her crimps a
last touch went down to breakfast.

Knowing she would be opposed, she said nothing of her plans for the
morning to her aunt, but simply announced, after they had left the
table, that she was going for a long walk.

Then she went upstairs and put on the plainest costume she owned (which,
by the way, was a tailor-made gown that had cost her one hundred and
fifty dollars), and started for the tenement houses where her operatives
lived.

It did not occur to her to feel any fear; nor that the miscreants who
had planned the explosion for the previous night might be watching her
footsteps. She felt it incumbent upon her to see for herself exactly how
these people lived, and what they were bearing and suffering in
consequence of the strike.

In the bright glare of the morning sun, the tenement houses had never
looked so dingy and mean. They were built in Newbern Shepard’s day, and
had received but very few repairs since that time. Although it was cold
January weather, Salome counted a dozen panes of glass gone from the
first house, and noticed that the lower hinge to the front door was
broken. It was a two-story wooden building with four tenements of four
rooms each.

She ascended the rickety steps and rapped on the door. One of the women
saw her from a front window and came to the door, holding it open only
so far as to permit her to see the strange caller.

“Good-morning,” said Salome in pleasant tones.

“Good-morning, miss.” The politeness of Salome’s manner thawed the other
woman, and the door opened a little wider. “Will you walk in?”

That was precisely what she had come for, and Salome stepped inside with
alacrity. She found herself in the sitting-room and living-room of the
family. It was a meager home. The remnant of a faded oil-cloth was on
the floor. The walls were unpapered and devoid of any attempts at
ornament, except one unframed, dilapidated old lithograph of “The Queen
of the West,”—a buxom young woman with disproportionately large black
eyes, a dress of bright scarlet cut extremely _décolleté_, and cheeks of
a yet more vivid hue. A pine table covered with a stamped red cloth was
littered with cheap, trashy story-papers and pamphlets addressed “To the
Laboring Men of America.” An old lounge, with broken springs, and six
common wooden chairs constituted the other furnishings of the room.

Salome’s first thought as she looked about her was:

“I don’t wonder these people get discontented and clamor for something
which seems to them better.”

But she found, before the forenoon was over, many houses that were not
so pleasant as this. For, once inside these rooms, everything was neat
and clean, and the woman who answered her questions was civil if not
talkative.

She found that five people lived in these four small rooms: this woman,
her two daughters, a son-in-law, and a grandchild. She also found that
the other tenements contained five, six, and seven people, making
twenty-three in all. There were absolutely no sanitary arrangements, and
she discovered that the sanitation of this tenement house district
consisted only of surface drainage. According to the statements of her
hostess, there was nearly always somebody “ailing” in these houses.

The first house she went into was a fair sample of the remainder. A few
were slightly better, but more were in a worse condition. In most
instances she was respectfully received, although at three houses she
was met by ungracious people, and received gruff replies to her
kindly-put inquiries.

Everywhere, strong, able-bodied men were lounging about in enforced
idleness; and one of them, resenting, with true American independence,
this intrusion into the sacred precincts of his miserable home, plainly
intimated that “they was well enough off now, and didn’t want no rich
folks as was livin’ on money _they_ earned, to come pryin’ round their
houses.” Finally, at the last of the tenement houses she was met by a
surly, burly mule-spinner, who gruffly refused her admittance.

Nothing daunted, however, she sought out a boarding-house for the young
women of the mills. The landlady, recognizing her, invited her in and
willingly told her all about the life of mill-girls, offering, at last,
to show her their rooms.

Salome gladly accepted and followed the woman up bare, unpainted stairs
to the rooms on the second and third floors. These were small and
perfectly bare of comforts, almost of necessities. The floors were
uncarpeted and guiltless of paint, or even of a very recent application
of soap and water. They had no closets. A common pine bedstead—sometimes
two of them—in each room, two chairs, in one of which stood a tin basin,
while beside it on the floor stood a bucket of water, and a small
bureau, made up the sum total of the furniture. In only one room did
Salome see any evidences of a literary taste, and that, if she had known
it, was a cheap paper, the worst of the sensational class.

Salome’s heart sank within her. She no longer wondered that the
mill-girls of to-day were a discontented, ignorant set, nor that many of
them sank into lives of degradation.

“The rooms are good enough for the girls,” said the woman, noticing the
look of disgust on Salome’s tell-tale face. “They seem poor enough to
elegant ladies like you. But these girls know no better. And they are
good enough to sleep off a drunk in,” she added, roughly.

“You don’t mean to say,” asked her guest, “that any of your girls get
intoxicated?”

“Intoxicated? I don’t know what else you’d call it, when they have to be
helped in at eleven o’clock Saturday night, and put to bed, and don’t
get up again until Monday morning.”

Salome was sick with pity and shame for her sex. She no longer
questioned whether she had a mission toward these, her people.

She went home and wrote the note to Mr. Greenough, given in an earlier
part of this chapter.

                                  VII.

Promptly, at the hour named, Otis Greenough, accompanied by the other
officers of the mill, appeared at the mansion of the Shepard family.

Tall, beautiful, and always impressive in her bearing, Salome was at her
best to-night. The fire of a new-born purpose was in her face, and a new
force, born of spiritual struggles, stamped upon her brow.

There are people who can look calmly upon a sunset, and see nothing but
a glare of red and yellow light. There are others who see in it a
glorious picture with matchless tints and shadows. There are yet others,
fewer, indeed, than the rest, but who hold the secret of God’s holy
purpose written more or less plainly in their souls; who see not only
the glare of red and yellow light, whose brilliant tints and deep tones
make an unrivaled picture, but who read something of the deeper meanings
of the Great Artist; who receive into their own hearts some part of the
glowing light which strengthens purpose, and crystallizes hopes and
ideals hitherto dreamy and undefined.

Salome Shepard had stood at a western window at sunset. In the hush and
stillness of the hour, the poet-quality of her soul had interpreted to
her the meaning of life and the great fact of human brotherhood. And
when she finally drew the curtains on the deepening night, she felt that
a sudden revelation had come to her—that, at last, her life purpose, in
the shape of a sternly defined duty, stood revealed.

“Well,” said Mr. Greenough, after a few moments of aimless conversation,
for nobody seemed desirous of taking the initiative, “what are you going
to do with us all to-night, little girl? Don’t you think you rather
usurp the privileges of an old man in calling together a meeting to
discuss business, of which he is the legal head? Come, give an account
of yourself and your quixotic actions.”

“Oh, I beg that none of you will think that.” And Salome looked around
the room appealingly. “I simply wished that we might have a fair and
honest talk. I want every one here to express his views. And I want to
express mine—for at last, thank heaven, I have some.”

“Getting strong-minded, eh?” retorted Mr. Greenough. “Well, go on. I
suppose you want to practice on us before taking a larger field. Going
to take the suffrage platform? or build school-houses for the niggers?
Or do you aspire to the bureau of Indian Affairs? Which is it?”

“None of them,” responded Salome, inwardly resenting the untimely jest,
but determined not to show her impatience. “None of them. I propose to
begin nearer home. I propose to go to work, earnestly, and I hope
practically, to raise the condition, morally, mentally and physically,
of my own factory-people.”

“Bravo!” exclaimed Villard and the head book-keeper.

“And I have called you here,” pursued Salome, “to ask each and every one
of you to be my assistant and coadjutor. I have not been thinking of
nothing, during the last three months. I am a woman, comparatively
young, and with absolutely no knowledge of the practical side of a
working-man’s life. But I have been thinking, and my conclusions are
these: that a strike is a much more serious matter for the
working-people than it is for us. We act as if they go out on a strike
either to annoy us or to have a good time. I have been down among
them—sought the by-ways and hedges, as it were—and I tell you they are
having anything but a good time. This strike is the outcome of want and
privation, and it has brought the people to still greater want and
privation. I believe they are not a set of noisy malcontents on the
lookout for an opportunity to create a disturbance. On the contrary,
they see in this course the only chance of bringing before the public
questions of vital importance to them. They earn their bread by the
sweat of their brow—and not always good bread either,—while we, as
capitalists, are hoarding up money. At the most, they get very little of
what their work really yields. I desire, above all things, sir, that you
grant their desires and no longer require them to give up their Labor
Union. Capitalists have their Board of Trade, which virtually amounts to
the same thing. Let the workmen have their one chance to assert
themselves by a combination of their forces. And let each side show to
the other that tolerance and Christian charity which each demands from
the other.”

“What about the tolerance and Christian charity of the outrage they
tried to perpetrate last night?” asked Mr. Greenough.

“I do not believe the Labor Union is responsible for that,” replied
Salome, with a far-seeing sympathy in her eyes. “Unfortunately it was an
outgrowth of their opinions, passions and prejudices. But you must
confess, sir, that had you met them with the tolerance which the growing
spirit of the age demands, there is little likelihood that matters would
ever have reached the point where such an action could have been
planned. I want this strike ended on any terms. I want to see the
operatives, every one of them, at work again at fair wages. And then,
God helping me, I propose to do something for their elevation—something
to help them live better, cleaner, manly and womanly lives—something
which shall carry out my grandfather’s noble plans, and help make the
factory system of New England one of her grandest achievements.”

“Miss Shepard is right,” said Mr. Burnham: “our factory, like many
another, has been run too long on the system of _laissez-faire_. I have
come to believe in a political economy which insists upon the liveliest
activity on the part of capitalists, to put their employes upon the best
possible footing as to the material surroundings of life; that they have
all the advantage as to health, morals and happiness which comes from
sanitary regulation and practical education. I believe that only when we
adopt such a political economy as this shall we draw the largest
possible dividends from the products of a community comparatively free
from crime, intemperance, poverty and vice of every kind.”

“Yes,” urged Villard, “each one of us, laborer or capitalist, has duties
to perform which cannot be shirked or shifted to the shoulders of
Fate—another name for the theory of _laissez-faire_. The new political
economy will demand that every one who, in his or her public or private
capacity, can do anything to relieve misery, to combat evil, to redress
wrong, to assert the right, shall do so with heart and soul.”

“You see,” said Salome, delighted that two strong, thinking men thus
endorsed and voiced her sentiments, “we have been acting on the Quaker’s
advice to his son: ‘Make money—honestly if you can; but make money.’ We
have forgotten that Christianity says: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself,’ ‘Do unto others as ye would that men should do unto you,’
‘Bear one another’s burdens,’ and ‘Love one another.’ But we have
practically said: ‘Love thyself; seek thine own advantage; promote thine
own welfare; put money in thy purse; the welfare of others is not thy
business.’”

“I must confess,” answered Otis Greenough, speaking slowly and huskily,
“that I cannot, after a life-long devotion to old-fashioned ideas, take
any stock in these new-fangled, impracticable ones. I cannot, at my time
of life, change my ideas; and neither can I endorse your proposition to
make a public spectacle of ourselves in the future. Mills are run to
make money. So long as I hold the position imposed upon me by the late
Floyd Shepard, so long shall I refuse to countenance extravagance and
quixotism. But I am an old man. No one cares any longer what I think. It
is the young people with no experience whose opinions count nowadays. I
am an old man who has had his day——”

“Don’t, I beg of you, sir, talk like that,” interrupted Salome. “We do
value your opinion; we do intend to refer to your judgment; we——”

“What is that?” cried Mrs. Soule in alarm, from her seat near the
window.

“It is some one throwing gravel against the panes,” said the cashier as
a second shower came rattling against the window. He parted the curtains
and looked out.

“The grounds are full of men. We are mobbed, by George!”

The old agent’s blood was up in a moment, and regardless of the presence
of ladies he swore in good, set terms, that the rascals should be
arrested and imprisoned for this.

Then, unconscious of danger, in spite of the attempts of Villard and the
rest to hold him back, he marched, like an old hero, boldly out on to
the veranda which faced a crowd of excited workmen.

They had held a stormy meeting at the Labor Union, and the worst element
among them had become desperate, and swore to “bring the old man to
terms.” They had gone in a body to the mills, where they hoped to find
some of their employers in consultation. There they had found that the
whole force of their opponents had gone to the great Shepard Mansion.
Nothing daunted, they turned their steps thither, and at every street
corner were joined by the element of hoodlumism which is always
scattered about over the streets of a large and poorly-governed town.

Hence the mob that confronted the officers of the Shawsheen Mills held
all the elements of danger and disturbance.

When Otis Greenough’s bald head appeared before them, the crowd set up a
yell of mingled derision and defiance.

“Give us our rights, old Baldy” shouted one voice.

“Give us fair play and fair wages,” called another, while worse epithets
were hurled at him, from the roughs in the rear.

Otis Greenough’s face was purple.

“This is outrageous!” he exclaimed in hot haste. “What right have you to
come here and defile an honest citizen’s premises with your wretched,
polluting presence?”

“Stop that, now!” shouted one of the leaders. “Fair play all round. If
you won’t come to us, we’ll come to you, and compel you to make terms,
and decent ones, with us. We want——”

But the crowd of street idlers who had come in search of excitement, and
not argument, grew restless, and broke in noisily; and when Otis
Greenough opened his mouth to speak again, he was struck squarely in the
face by a handful of gravel and mud.

Then a sudden hush fell over the mob.

For what was this unexpected white form which appeared in the doorway,
and advanced to meet them?

Salome was dressed in a clinging, white, soft serge, with falls of fine
lace at the neck and wrists, and under the dim light of the piazza-lamp,
she seemed like an angel of retribution, her eyes flaming reproach, and
her hands raised in deprecation.

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?” she burst forth, in ringing tones.
“You, who call yourselves honest men, and loyal citizens! You who come
here with a claim for fair play, you who come here to assert the right
of every American to be treated with respect by every other; to insult
and maltreat an old man with white hair—a man whom, as a long associate
in your work, you should honor? Do you come to my house to call forth a
man who was even now listening to plans for the improvement of your
homes and lives and prospects, simply that you may turn yourselves into
a pack of dogs to bark at him? Go home. Lay aside your prejudices and
your low, unworthy passions, and think whether we be entirely in the
wrong. Think whether you are showing yourselves worthy of being trusted?
Go home and weigh calmly your conduct against that of these officers,
and decide for yourselves whether you deserve to be met half-way. And I
give you my word of honor as owner of the Shawsheen Mills, that when you
decide to behave like men and not like beasts, you shall be treated as
men. You shall have good places with good pay. You shall find that we
are willing to do as much as—yes, more, than you are willing to do for
us, and that we will meet you half-way in the open, fair discussion of
all points connected with the labor question.”

“Three cheers for the lady!” shouted a hoodlum, who cared not which side
he was on, provided he could make a noise.

But the cheers were stayed, and further demonstration was choked in
utterance. For Otis Greenough fell suddenly at the feet of the woman who
stood there boldly championing him and her sense of right.

The superintendent carried him quickly within and put him on a sofa; a
physician was hastily summoned, and in a few words Villard dismissed the
mob, now hushed and awe-stricken.

But Otis Greenough in one moment had passed beyond the disturbances of
howling malcontents, beyond the petty smallness of his old-fashioned and
cramped ideas, out into that world where there is no fear of anarchy and
socialism, no disgrace in being a philanthropist, no bounds to the heart
of love for all mankind, and no limits to the horizon of a larger,
diviner life.

                                 VIII.

Death is never fully realized until he is an actual presence; and Otis
Greenough’s sudden demise before their eyes and almost under, if not by,
their own hands, solemnized and terrified the mob, and brought the
strikers to a sense of the desperate pass to which they had come.

The members of the Labor Union laid their grievances aside for the time,
and paid every mark of respect to the old agent now that he had passed
beyond the recognition of it. A sudden fit of apoplexy had blotted out
his choleric and intolerant behavior, and left only the remembrance that
he had been their head for many years.

But when he had been laid away in the new cemetery on Shepard Hill, the
smouldering embers of discord began again to break forth into hot flames
of prejudice and passion.

Geoffrey Burnham and John Villard were consulting together in the mill
office the day after the funeral, when the door opened and the owner of
the mills walked in.

“I have come,” she said, in answer to their ill-concealed surprise, “to
talk over the situation of the strike. I want the mills re-opened.”

“We shall be only too happy to comply with your wishes, Miss Shepard,”
said Burnham, placing a chair in a comfortable light for her. “Upon what
terms do you propose it?”

“I want to compromise,” she answered, “and give them a better chance
than they have ever had. It may take us some time to decide on the exact
terms. Would it be better, do you think,”—she unconsciously turned to
Villard—“to take them back on the old terms, re-instate them precisely
as they were, and then go on and make our changes?”

“That would hardly do,” he replied. “Experience has proved them very
jealous of new methods, and unwilling to consent to untried theories. If
we yield everything they demand now, we shall establish a bad precedent;
eh, Burnham?”

“Decidedly, and we shall meet with opposition if we undertake any
changes. If there is to be a remodeling of the old system, it had better
come now.”

“There must be a remodeling, it seems to me,” urged Salome. “Dear Mr.
Greenough acted wisely, so far as he could, no doubt; but I feel that
the time is come to make decided changes here. Perhaps I am not very
clear in regard to them, even in my own mind. But I have some idea of
what I want, and I shall be glad to have you both state your convictions
and objections, if you have them, relating to everything I propose.”

“It will be no light matter,” said Burnham, “to select a plan and
perfect it at once. It must be a work of time and much thought. Still,
what is your idea?”

“I want to put the relations between us and the employes,” Salome went
on, “on a better footing—an ethical basis, if you like the term. We must
combine the question ‘Will it pay?’ with a higher one, ‘Is it right?’”

The two men looked at each other. Burnham bit his lip.

“I do not propose to promise the people an era of absolute prosperity
and uninterrupted progress, and let them take it as a blind destiny
without exertion or sacrifice or patriotism on their part. I want to
teach them to be healthy, intelligent, and virtuous citizens, and to
expect from us the treatment such citizens deserve. I believe that such
a course is for the pecuniary interests of the mill, as well as for
theirs. I have heard enough of the conflicting interests of labor and
capital; and on the other hand I do not believe in the twaddle that
proclaims them one. I believe they are reciprocal, and that we must take
that idea as fundamental.”

“You propose a radical change, I fear.” Geoffrey Burnham’s tone held a
new respect for this woman whom he had believed wrapped up in the toils
of worldly and shallow aims.

“Yes, I may as well own it; I do,” assented Salome. “Among my
grandfather’s manuscripts, I came across, the other day, these
sentences: ‘I would like to prove my luminous ideal of what a
superintendent may be among his people. I would like to live long enough
to show the world that the spirit of the Crucified may rule in a
cotton-mill as fully as in the life of a saint.’ That sentence,
gentlemen, must speak for me. In those words lies the germ of my plan of
action.”

Silence followed her. Geoffrey Burnham told himself that a new era must
be dawning,—the era foreshadowing the millennium, since she who held the
power could so bravely avow her intentions to make the Shawsheen Mills
an experiment in what he called Christian socialism. But John Villard,
after a moment, rose and extended his hand to Salome.

“I pledge my hearty co-operation,” he said, “and thank God for the
opportunity to prove what a cotton-mill may become by the new Christian
political economy.”

“Thank you,” said Salome. “And now let us see just what the strikers
demand, and how far we can grant their wishes.”

John Villard produced the paper which had been presented on the first
day of the strike, and placed it in Salome’s hands. It was the first
time she had seen it. She read it through very carefully.

“It seems to me there was no need of these long months of idleness,” she
commented, when she had finished the paper. “Now, let us see. First,
they demand recognition, as the Shawsheen Labor Union. I think we may
yield that point, safely enough.”

“Without modification?” inquired Geoffrey Burnham.

“Why not?”

“They will take advantage of us. They will dictate and become arbitrary.
The Labor Union grows by what it feeds on. It will become an elephant on
our hands.”

“Not if they have something better to take its place,” said Salome. “I
am fully persuaded that they will meet us half-way, if we give them a
union that is better than theirs. Let their union alone for the
present.”

“I am with you there,” said Villard. “It devolves upon us to change its
character into something that shall be, at least, as helpful as they
_want_ to make this one.”

“Next, the ten-hour system,” pursued Salome, who was not yet ready to
discuss the improved union. “Certainly there can be no possible
objection against granting this clause?”

“Certainly not,” said Burnham, feeling himself appealed to.

“‘The new frames must be taken out and the mules replaced, with a
written agreement that no more of the obnoxious machinery shall be added
for five years.’ That seems rather arbitrary. How is it, Mr. Villard?”

“It is arbitrary,” he responded. “The frames must be retained. We must
be allowed to adopt improved machines and methods, or where shall we be
in this age of competition? But I think there will be little trouble
with the men, if I am allowed to approach them in the right way. Anyhow,
I will try.”

“Do so,” was the reply. “Make them see that improved methods are for
their interest as much as for ours. As to the wage-section—were their
wages actually cut down?”

“Yes,” replied both men.

“That must not be allowed,” said Salome. “The mills were paying a
handsome profit when this was done, weren’t they?”

“They were,” said Villard. “Better than for a year before.”

“Give them their old pay, with the understanding that wages will be
increased when work is heavier. I propose to myself a wild scheme of
profit-sharing, or a sliding scale of wages, in the future.”

“Good,” cried Villard. “The very thing I’ve been wanting to try. I
believe in it heartily. But where did you get the idea of it?”

“Oh, I’ve been reading all the practical articles I could find on
political economy, as applied to mills and factories, for some months,”
Salome replied, “and I have evolved some queer theories, I fear; but I
propose to give them a fair trial, unless you pronounce them too
visionary. I am glad you approve of profit-sharing. And you, Mr.
Burnham?”

“I approve of making the experiment,” said the more cautious
superintendent. “I do not jump at conclusions. Nevertheless, the idea,
though new, looks practicable, and I should like to see it tried.”

“They have already tried it in one or two places where it is proving a
great success, I believe,” said Salome. “You know the experiment was
tried as long ago as 1831, when Mr. John S. Vandeleur put it into effect
successfully in County Clare, Ireland. The Paris and Orleans Railway
Company began to share profit with its employes in 1844, and the Maison
Leclaire, I think, two years before, both of which have proved very
successful. I do not see why we cannot adopt it.”

“We can,” asserted Villard, confidently. “It is already being tried on a
small scale by several firms in this country. Why should not we join the
procession?”

“What are you going to do about the demand for weekly wages?” asked
Burnham.

“What objections are there?” Salome asked.

“It will entail extra expense for clerks and book-keepers,” responded
Burnham. “That seems unnecessary.”

“The men claim that they have to depend in great measure on the credit
system at the stores,” explained Villard. “Their wages coming only once
a month, they get short of money. If sickness or other additional
expense comes upon them, they are often seriously inconvenienced by lack
of their rightful wages. Again, if they are able to put a little money
in the savings-bank, why should they not have the benefit of the
interest that accrues through the month, rather than we? The money is
theirs.”

“On the other hand,” interrupted Burnham, “those men whose first duty,
on being paid off, seems to lie in getting gloriously drunk, would have
the opportunity just four times as often.”

“We have a work to do in that direction,” said Salome in a pained voice.
“In a sense we are our brother’s keepers. I half believe that the
solution of the temperance question is largely in the control of the
employers of labor; and that the secondary, and often the primary,
causes of intemperance are bad and unwholesome food, which create a
craving for drink; bad company, which tempts it; squalid houses, which
drive men forth for cheerfulness; and the want of more comfortable
places of resort which leaves them no refuge but the saloons. It is in
our power to remedy all these evils. Give them good sanitation,
well-ventilated houses, comfortable homes, and reading-rooms, and
coffee-parlors, and only the most depraved will be tempted by the low
saloons.”

“But, Miss Shepard, surely you do not propose all these things?” and
Geoffrey Burnham looked his astonishment.

“Why not?” was the terse reply.

“Where will your profits come in? You cannot afford it.”

Salome smiled. Her money was her own. Why should she not use it as she
pleased?

“No. For the first year or two I shall not pocket an immense profit;
that is true,” she assented. “But I am not likely to come to want. And
Newbern Shepard’s mills must be put on the basis where he desired, above
all things, to see them during his lifetime. He planned a noble scheme.
It is my birthright and my duty to carry it into effect. It will cost me
something to get the mills where they must be; but it will pay in the
end. Of that I feel sure.”

“You are quite right,” said John Villard. “What may we not hope for when
the condition of the working-people shall receive that concentrated
attention which has hitherto been devoted to the more favored ranks?
When charity, which has, for ages past, done so much mischief, shall
learn to do good? When the countless pulpits of our country, which have
always been so active in preaching Catholicism or Anglicism, Calvinism
or Armenianism, and all other isms, shall preach pure and simple
Christianity? When, by a healthy environment of the toiling masses, and
the exercise of hygienic sense and science, mankind shall be healthy and
free from questionable instincts and morbidly exaggerated appetites? I
tell you, we cannot even approach an estimate of the extent to which
every improvement, social, moral or material, reacts on the nation’s
ethical and intellectual progress, and the prosperity of her
industries.”

“But you are taking us entirely away from the question in hand,” said
Geoffrey Burnham, “which was, shall we grant the demand for weekly
wages?”

“Not so far away as you seem to think,” retorted Villard. “The questions
of sanitation and morality affect them, and us too, as well as the
question of weekly wages. As for the latter, I am in favor of trying it
on.”

“So am I,” said Salome. “I am in favor of trying every new method until
we can know positively which are the best ones.”

“With modifications,” said Burnham, smiling at her vehemence. “I don’t
exactly approve of the weekly system, but the majority are against me,
and I may as well cast my vote with yours. Shall we send for their
committee, then, and offer them all concessions, except those relating
to the spinning frames?”

“Yes, I should do so,” said Salome, “and prepare to open the mills at
once, provided they decide to accept our terms.”

“That is practically decided already,” laughed Burnham, “by our
accepting theirs. Villard, you may negotiate with them about the frames.
They are inclined to listen to you better than to me, for some reason.”

“They know I’ve been in their place,” said Villard. “That makes all the
difference in the world to them. They think I understand their side of
the question; that is all.”

“Then you will confer with them immediately?” said Salome, rising to go.
“And will you make all necessary preparations to open the mills? And
then will you confer with me?”

“Most certainly, Miss Shepard.” Geoffrey Burnham spoke for both of them.
“But—I beg your pardon, you have not spoken of a new agent. We must have
one, you know. I trust you have made some wise selection?”

“I am prepared to surprise you,” Salome replied, buttoning her glove.
“You two men will oblige me by transacting all necessary business for
the present, in your positions of first and second superintendents, and
by looking closely after the thousand details which I do not yet
understand. Meanwhile, I shall come to the office every day and, with
your co-operation and kind help, shall learn the business. I have too
many schemes for the general improvement of the Shawsheen Mills and its
operatives, to trust the mills in the hands of a stranger. I propose to
be my own agent. Good-morning.”

Salome Shepard never looked handsomer, or smiled more sweetly, than she
did when she uttered the last sentence, and closed the door behind her,
leaving her two completely astonished hearers standing in the middle of
the office.

“Whe-e-w!” ejaculated Geoffrey Burnham, after a little. “How does that
strike you? The Shawsheen Mills run by a ‘female woman,’ as A. Ward
would put it! And, by George! we are expected to stay and work,—under a
woman!”

John Villard broke into a peal of laughter. “It’s awfully funny at
first,” he said, calming down again. “But, after all, why not? She isn’t
the empty-headed, aimless creature we thought her. She’s read and
studied, and has some very sound notions.”

“But, Villard—a woman-agent!” gasped Burnham. “We shall be the
laughing-stock of the whole state.”

“Let them laugh,” answered Villard. “They laugh best who laugh last. And
with her notions, her thirst for further knowledge, her enthusiasm, and,
above all, her money, the Shawsheen Mills will be in a position at the
end of a few years to do the laughing, while those who laugh at us now
will set to studying our methods and come to us for advice.”

“But she knows nothing of the practical part of mill-economy,” objected
Burnham. “The mills will go to rack and ruin. Jove! Old Mr. Greenough
would turn over in his grave if he could have heard her as she stopped
in the door and said: ‘I propose to be my own agent.’ A woman!”

“I know,” replied Villard, “that it will seem odd, and perhaps
uncomfortably so, at first, to acknowledge her as head. But, after all,
she does not propose to dictate as to the business itself.”

“She will,” interrupted Burnham. “Women always do. She will jump at
conclusions, mistake her inferences for logical deductions and the
wisdom which comes only with experience, and, after the first month,
will know more than we do. I know women. They are impulsive and
illogical; and they can’t subvert nature and become good business men.”

“No; but they may prove good business women,” was Villard’s answer. “We
do not know, yet, what she can or what she will do. I believe she will
be willing to leave the details of the business to us yet, for a long
time. She is not a conceited woman; and although she has the faculty
common to her sex of making some surprising jumps at conclusions, I do
not believe her to be obstinate about them. She proposes to make a study
of the business, and realizes that this is a work of years. And,
besides, what will save the mills is this: she has an extended plan in
manuscript of her grandfather’s scheme for making this an ideal
institution. If she is willing to leave the business to us for the
present, and is capable of adapting Newbern Shepard’s theories of years
ago to the needs of to-day, we are all right, Jeff; and a new era is
about to begin for the Shawsheen Mills.”

“I only hope we may like it,” assented Burnham doubtfully. “And now for
the conference with the Labor Union.”

                                  IX.

Marion Shaw was one of those women whose lives are a constant giving of
their best, with no thought of return. We have all seen such women. From
the self-sacrificing maiden aunt in the humblest home, up to the
Florence Nightingales and Dorothea Dixes of the world, they are God’s
angels, everywhere, to suffering humanity.

Marion Shaw and Salome Shepard had been in boarding-school together; and
although the former had been left from the start to support herself and
her widowed mother, the friendship between the two girls had never
abated.

Marion’s mother had died a year before, and something material had
dropped out of life for the girl. Grief and the solitude which ensued
after her mother’s death told upon her constitution; and when Salome’s
letter of invitation reached her, it was like a boon from Heaven. She
threw up her situation in Madame Blanc’s private school and went to
Shepardtown, arriving there late in the evening, before Salome’s visit
to the counting-room.

When the latter came home they settled cosily in Salome’s room for an
“old-time talk,” such as they had enjoyed as girls.

“Why didn’t you let me know you were tired to death with that
interminable teaching?” asked Salome. “I should have had you come to me
long ago. You are as pale as a ghost.”

“Oh, I’m all right now,” answered Marion, who never cared to talk of
herself. “Tell me about the strike here. I read of it in a Boston
newspaper, when it came on, and again when Mr. Greenough died. But,
after the fashion of newspapers with regard to anything you care
particularly to follow up, they dropped the subject the minute one’s
interest was roused. And your letter was so meager! Yes, it was. You
only write the barest details, and not too many of them. Is the strike
ended?”

“No, but I hope it will be before night,” Salome replied. “I’ve given
orders this morning that a compromise be made at once. Yes, don’t stare
at me, please. Why shouldn’t I give orders? They’re my mills.”

“I’m not staring. It’s vulgar to stare, and the lady professors at Mme.
Blanc’s fashionable boarding-school do not stare. Why, it would be as
much as their position is worth!” retorted Marion. “Yes, they’re your
mills, I suppose, and a handsome piece of property they are too, in the
eyes of poor me, who own only the clothes on my back. But, pardon me,
dear, it does seem a little odd to hear Salome Shepard, the most
exclusive and the most fashionable girl at school, talk about giving
orders in a cotton-mill. You’re not getting strong-minded, are you,
dear?”

“If to begin to take an active interest in two thousand souls, who are
dependent upon my money and the business interests it represents, is to
become strong-minded, I’m afraid I shall have to plead guilty.” Salome
looked narrowly at her friend. Possibly she had mistaken her, and their
sympathies were farther apart than she had hoped.

“Bless you!” responded Marion heartily, “I’m strong-minded myself; want
to vote and all that. Don’t believe intemperance and lots of other evils
will ever be subdued in this country, until women have something to say,
and say it through the ballot-box. It is not so very dreadful when you
once get on to that platform, is it?”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of voting particularly,” Salome hastened to
answer. “I don’t really think I want that. But I do want to do something
for my people.”

“And you’ll find,” retorted Marion, “before you’ve gone very far, that
if you had the power of legislation, you could help them ten times as
well.”

“Possibly,” Salome answered, doubtfully. “But, Marion, there are so many
things absolutely necessary to be done for the Shawsheen operatives. If
you could see them and the homes they live in, the temptations to which
they are exposed, the poverty in which they live!”

“And you propose to go to work among them,—to reform them?”

“Yes, God helping me; them and the factory system together. Behold me,”
said Salome, rising to her full height, and putting on a mock-tragic
air: “Behold and see: Salome Shepard, Reformer. That’s my platform.”

“Salome, dear, what do you mean?” Mrs. Soule had just come in. “Don’t
mind her, Marion, she delights in hearing herself talk like a suffrage
leader, lately. I don’t approve of it, as she knows; but I can only wait
for the mood to pass.”

“Which it never will, aunty dear,” Salome hastened to say. “So long as I
live and am in a condition to work for the people who need substantial
and material aid, as these people do, my life will be devoted to their
service. I cannot go on living the aimless, indifferent life which has
been mine ever since I left school. I must have some active interest, or
I shall stagnate, or, worse still, settle into a cold, hard, selfish
woman of the world. Unfortunately I was born with a heart; unfortunately
for your ideal of the proper young lady of the period, I was born with a
conscience, and this conscience tells me that my fortune was given me
only in trust. It is not mine for selfish enjoyment alone; it is mine to
make the world better and happier and purer.”

“And you are going to work among those miserable drunken operatives,”
said her aunt coldly, “whose sordid lives, and ungrateful hearts, the
whole of them, are not worth the effort of even one month of your life,
even if you were at all a capable woman of affairs, a woman of judgment
and discretion, a woman of sound business sense,—which you are not.”

“Yes, ‘among the drunken miserable operatives,’” replied Salome,
ignoring the latter part of her aunt’s speech. “Among those sordid lives
and ungrateful hearts, that were worth the Christ’s dying, and for whom
He worked, living.”

“You don’t think of joining the Salvation Army, I hope?” exclaimed her
aunt, quite beside herself at this new development of her niece’s
purposes.

Salome laughed.

“I shall hardly have the time, aunty. I’ve accepted a position at the
Shawsheen Mills.”

“A position?” gasped Mrs. Soule. “Oh, Salome! Who offered you—who
_dared_ offer you a _position_?”

“The fair owner of the mills offered it,” answered Salome, enjoying the
situation to its fullest extent. “And I accepted, aunty. Marion, in me
you see the agent of the Shawsheen Mills!”

Marion Shaw rose and clasped her friend closely to her bosom. She
admired her splendid courage and avowed principles, and honored this
woman, with money and leisure at her command, who was willing and
anxious to devote her life to service for others. But not so Mrs. Soule.

She applied a delicate mull and lace handkerchief to her eyes, and wept
to think to what an end had come her years of training; her careful
watch, that Salome should never, by any chance, come in contact with a
lower world; her life-long aim to make of Salome the perfect being
prescribed by her somewhat limited and narrowed rules of ladyhood.

She begged; she pleaded; she argued; she threatened; she resorted to
ridicule; but Salome stood firm, and now laughingly and then earnestly
defended the course she had taken.

“It’s of no use, aunty, as you see, for us to argue the case. I do not
forget all your kindness and love for me; but I must choose for myself,”
she said, finally. “I am old enough to decide questions of right and
wrong. Hereafter we will not argue any more. I must do this; you must
submit; and that is all there is about it. Now, let’s make up and be
friends,” and she bent down and kissed her aunt on both cheeks, as she
used to do when she was a little girl.

“You, a child of Cora de Bourdillon’s!” murmured her aunt, softening a
little.

“Cora de Bourdillon was my mother,” said Salome. “But before and above
all else, Newbern Shepard was my grandfather. I am like him. I must be
like him. And you must submit to the laws of heredity.”

So there was never any more prolonged discussion between them. Salome’s
nature being so much the stronger, kind-hearted, weak Mrs. Soule could
not oppose her further. But many times, in after years, was she heard to
deplore the fact that Cora de Bourdillon’s child was so thorough-going
an epitome of Newbern Shepard.

“A good man,” she would say. “A perfectly honest and well-meaning man;
but not like Us!”

                                   X.

Early that evening Geoffrey Burnham and John Villard were announced.
Mrs. Soule and Salome were alone in the parlors when they came in, but
Marion was sent for.

“And you’ve brought good news?” asked Salome. “They’ve consented to go
to work again?”

“Of course,” Burnham replied. “They were only too glad to meet us on any
sort of terms.”

“Wait till my friend comes down,” said Salome. “She is interested, and
will want to hear the details. Oh, here she is. Miss Shaw, allow me to
present my two confrères (and teachers as well), Mr. Burnham and Mr.
Villard.”

“And so it is really settled?” Salome asked, “and the mills are to be
opened again?”

“Monday morning, if you like,” replied Burnham, “or earlier. But to-day
is Wednesday, and there are many things to be done where the mills have
stood idle for months.”

“I’m so glad,” returned Salome.

“There is hearty rejoicing throughout the corporation,” said Villard. “I
was coming through there to-night and met a couple of little boys with
bundles of groceries in their arms. The smallest looked up and smiled.
‘We’re going to have a good supper of meat and potato to-night,’ he
said. ‘The mills are going to open and pa’s got work.’ I asked him how
long since he had had meat, and he said not since Christmas; and even
then he only had a turkey’s wing that somebody gave him.”

“Poor boy! Tell me about your conference with the Labor Union.”

“It passed off smoothly,” Villard went on. “Burnham told him we came
from you, and were prepared to make terms with them. We only saw the
committee you know, and they are to lay our terms before the Union
to-night; but there is no doubt that they will accept. They are really
very sensible and shrewd, those fellows on the committee, eh, Burnham?”

“Remarkably,” replied the first superintendent. “I didn’t know we had
such intelligent men.”

“But it is our business to know it,” Villard returned, and Salome nodded
her head. “We laid our plans before them, and told them that we would
concede all their wishes, except about the machinery of course. And one
of their own number spoke up promptly and said it was hot-headed bigotry
on their part that had made them stick for the removal of the frames.
And that most of them, even the Lancaster spinners, had come to see that
every improvement to the mills meant an improvement of their condition.
Then the secretary wanted to know if they were to be allowed to exist as
a Union. Burnham told them that you were taking a great interest in the
management of the mills; and that we all believe that no harm can come
of their organizing themselves into an association, provided they were
willing to be reasonable, and to confer with us before taking extreme
measures again. He begged them to believe that you are their friend, and
want them all to have a fair chance. And he ended by assuring them that
we, as superintendents, fully concurred with you; and that he hoped they
would be willing to start on a new basis, and to consider our interests
as they expect and desire us to remember theirs. Burnham did himself
proud, Miss Shepard, and I could see they were a good deal affected by
his conduct.”

“I am covered with blushes,” declared Burnham. “Spare my modesty.”

“Blushing must be a novel sensation to you,” retorted Villard. “The
leaders shook hands with us when we came away and thanked us for what we
had said, assuring us that they would be ready to enter the mills again
at once. And a different spirit is evident to-night, all through the
corporation.”

“Don’t be too sanguine,” interrupted Burnham. “We’re not through the
woods yet. And there are several ends to be achieved before the
millennium dawns.”

“I should like,” said Salome, “if it will not bore you too much, to
outline the general plan I have formed for raising the condition of
things at the mills.”

“Nothing would give us greater pleasure than such a proof of your
confidence,” replied Burnham.

“And we can assure you beforehand,” said Villard, “of our hearty
co-operation.”

No one but Salome noticed that her aunt had quietly slipped away when
she spoke of her plan. Mrs. Soule did not care to hear Salome “talk
shop.”

“In the first place,” Salome began, “are the mills all they should be?
Are they well lighted, aired and drained? Is the machinery such as to
benefit both the operators and the business interests of the mills?”

“No, they are not quite up to modern standards,” Villard replied,
promptly.

“I don’t know,” pursued Burnham, “but they are quite as good as the
average. There are many worse mills than the Shawsheen.”

“That isn’t the point,” Salome replied. “Are there any better? Or are
they capable of improvement?”

“Well, yes, if you don’t consider expense,” assented Burnham.

“Are they well-lighted? Are their sanitary conditions good?”

“They are very well-lighted indeed,” said Villard; “your grandfather
built much in advance of his time, and the mills are all light and
strong. But they need better ventilation in cold weather; and, as you
know, sanitary science in Newbern Shepard’s day was hardly up to modern
demands.”

“I propose putting in the best drainage system we can find. I propose
bath-rooms, wash-rooms and elevators.”

“Good!” said both her superintendents.

“As for machinery, you will know what is needed there. We want the
latest improved methods of doing our work. It will not do for us to be
behind the times, or the world will laugh at our philanthropic efforts.
The standard of the mills must be as high now as it was in my
grandfather’s day. Nothing but the best of goods, made after the most
approved modern methods, must go out from us. Otherwise the world will
say we are visionary and lack good business sense.”

“That is true,” assented Burnham. “The business must not suffer.”

“At the same time, I want the mills made so pleasant and comfortable
that our operatives will prefer them to any other, knowing that we
propose to consult their interests and happiness in little things, as we
desire that they shall consult ours in great. Then their homes. Those
old rickety tenement houses must be abolished from the face of the
earth.”

“Hear, hear,” cried Villard, “they have long been an eyesore to me.”

“They are a disgrace to us,” was Salome’s emphatic answer.

“But you can’t do that all at once,” said Burnham. “That is something
that will take time.”

“It is April now,” said Salome. “I propose to begin at once on new
houses for the operatives. They will have to stay where they are for the
summer, but by cold weather I mean that every one of them shall be in
new quarters.”

“Whew!” said Burnham; “you _are_ a woman of business, Miss Shepard. But
you will have your hands full this year to build new houses for two
thousand people.”

“It can be done though,” Villard replied. “There are plenty of
carpenters and builders to be had. What kind of tenements do you
propose?”

“I have not fully decided. At first I thought of having single cottages
for every family, with a tiny plot of land for each. But sometimes I
wonder if some of the plans for model tenement houses would not be more
feasible. What do you think?”

“There are advantages in both,” said Burnham. “It is doubtful if many of
the operatives would appreciate a whole house, or take good care of one.
On the other hand, the best tenement house system in the world has its
drawbacks.”

“In a country-place where there is room enough, as there is here,”
advised Villard, “it seems to me that the single cottage system is the
better. Each family can then have a certain privacy, impossible to the
tenement house system. They can soon be educated up to caring for their
places, and, I think, will soon come to take pride in them. They may not
pay, at first; but they will serve a higher purpose. I have thought it
would be a fine thing,—in the Utopia of which I have often dreamed,—if,
connected with such a factory as this, could be built some substantial,
inexpensive cottages which could be sold to the working-men with
families, on very easy terms. Let them occupy them as tenants, for
instance, until their rentals amount to a certain sum—say two hundred
dollars,—unless they have been fortunate enough to have saved that
amount, which they can pay down, and then let them take a deed of the
place and give us a mortgage. Pardon me, Miss Shepard, I am only
supposing a case.”

“And quite a supposable one,” said Salome, her eyes glowing. “Why can’t
it be done?”

“Doubtful if any of them would burden themselves with a debt like that,”
demurred Burnham.

“I think they would,” Villard responded. “The desire for a home of one’s
own is an instinct which is implanted in every human breast. If the
steadier, more sensible men of the mills could be induced to try it, it
would soon become the ambition of all the younger ones to own their
homes. I am sure the overseers, at least, would like to try it. So many
of our operatives live in a hand-to-mouth fashion, never saving
anything. Let them see that what they pay for rent will be credited to
them; that they are actually saving that money, and they will, for the
most part, gladly fall in with the scheme. And when a man begins to save
up money, and to feel that he is worth something, his self-respect
increases and ambition makes a man of him. I tell you, I believe the
thing could be done here, and the condition of our working-men be vastly
improved by it.”

“We will, at least, make the experiment,” said Salome earnestly. “At
first a wild dream came to me of building model tenement houses and
practically giving them the rent. But I soon came to see that it would
be better for them to pay what they could afford for improved
conditions.”

“That would be far wiser,” said Villard. “To make them objects of
charity would be to lower their condition in the long run.”

“Then I have a plan for the girls,” Salome went on. “So many of them
live in those dreadful boardinghouses. I’ve been into one, and I wonder
how any girl can keep her self-respect and live there. I am going to
build a large building, which shall have plenty of light, airy bedrooms,
prettily and inexpensively furnished; so that a girl may feel that she
has a cosy little spot somewhere on earth of her very own. I am going to
have model bath-rooms and a large, cheerful dining-room. There will be a
matron to the establishment who will be like a mother to the girls; not
one who will care nothing whether her girls are sober and respectable,
or miserable and besotted, so long as they pay. This woman will win the
confidence of the girls, and lead them into habits of personal
cleanliness and common sense; she will take an interest in their little
personal affairs, and advise them kindly and judiciously. In short, she
will make a home for them in the truest sense of the word.”

“You will have to have her made to order, Salome,” interrupted Marion
from the sofa where she had been an interested listener. “Such paragons
do not exist.”

“And would scarcely be appreciated by the average factory girl if they
did,” added Burnham, smiling at Marion.

“I shall have a large and pleasant parlor with a piano and a comfortable
reading-room,” Salome continued, as though not hearing; “I don’t suppose
the girls, judging from what I hear and see of them, will care much for
reading at first; but if I put plenty of light, healthful literature in
their way, with illustrated books and good pictures on the walls, they
will gradually come to like them. And then, there must be weekly
entertainments, and perhaps a hall.”

“And what about the young men?” inquired Villard. “Are you going to
leave our sex out in the cold?”

“Yes, if you educate the girls so much above them, what are the young
fellows to do?”

“They shall have such a boarding-house too,” said Salome, “only we’ll
call them Unions. I hate the name boarding-house, and I should think
they would; and then, by and by, there are still other schemes in my
mind. There are children, plenty of them, on the corporation. They are
poor, sickly, unkempt, uncared-for. All this must be changed.”

“That will come, I think,” said Burnham, “with their improved conditions
and surroundings. It is unhealthful where they now are. Shall you build
the new houses there?”

“Oh, no, I forgot to say,” answered Salome, “that we must put up their
new quarters on the hill, the other side of the mills. It is much
pleasanter up there, and a far more healthful locality. Work on them can
begin right away. Will you find me the proper man to undertake the
building of the houses, Mr. Villard?”

John Villard’s heart fairly burned with enthusiasm. This was a project
he had long cherished, although he had been entirely without means or
prospect of ever being able to carry it out.

“You may be sure I will do my best,” he answered.

“And we will reserve the power of directing and planning the buildings
ourselves,” she added.

“I’m glad you’re going to do something for the children,” said Marion.
“If you don’t succeed in improving things in this generation much, you
will in the next, if you educate the children.”

“That is what I propose to do,” said Salome. “They must have better
schools than they ever had.”

“And be compelled to attend them,” interposed Burnham.

“Oh, there are so many things to be done. It will take years to get
everything in working order.”

“You have laid out a beautiful scheme, Miss Shepard,” remarked Geoffrey
Burnham, “and in most respects a practical one. But you must not be too
sanguine. These people are ignorant,—fairly steeped in ignorance. They
are jealous, too, and doubtless will mistrust your motives, and believe
you have some selfish reason behind all your endeavor.”

“I have,” laughed Salome. “I want my mills to be models, and my people
to be the best, most skilled, most intelligent, and most progressive
community in America.”

“Bravo!” said Villard. “So do I.”

“I am not so sanguine as you may think,” Salome went on. “I know they
are ignorant. How should they be anything else? All their lives they’ve
been used as we use the machines in the factory,—to make good cloth, and
plenty of money. Nobody has thought of their welfare, or cared what they
did, or thought, or became, when working-hours were over. How do we know
what sort of men they are, or what capabilities they possess? I read
somewhere, only the other day, that there may still be Fichtes tending
geese, and Robert Burns’ toiling on the farm; that there may be, yet,
successors of William Dean Howells at the type-forms, of T. B. Aldrich
at the book-keeper’s desk, of Mark Twain at the pilot-wheel. We have no
right to keep them back. But this writer went on to say, that the world
has less need of them, even, than of those who cannot aspire to thrive
outside the shop, and who go to their daily toil knowing that their
highest hope must be not to get ‘out of a job’ and not to have their
wages cut. I don’t suppose they will, at once, appreciate our efforts to
better their condition. Possibly they will oppose us at first; but we
can have no better task to perform than to make them prosperous,
contented and joyous in their work. And by making a man of the
operative, I fully believe we shall bring material prosperity to the
mills.”

“But the expense,” urged Burnham. “Have you calculated that? I doubt if
the mills could stand so heavy a burden all at once.”

“I have calculated the expense,” Salome answered him. “And what cannot
be done from the yearly profits of the mills, I will do myself.”

“We shall be eagerly watched by the whole manufacturing world,” said
Burnham.

“So much the better,” added Villard. “It is time somebody set the
example. If we succeed in carrying out all these plans, and keep the
mills on a paying basis as well, it will be the beginning of a mighty
reform in the working-man’s world. I believe we can succeed.”

“You will be called quixotic and all sorts of pleasant things, Salome,”
said her friend Marion.

“The beginner in any reform is always called a crank, if nothing worse,”
replied Salome. “If I chose to build a million-dollar castle to live in
myself; if I preferred to dress in cloth of gold and silver; if I
insisted upon eating off solid gold dishes; or even if I were to endow a
church or a female college, the world would admire and praise me, and
say these things are a rich woman’s prerogative. If I choose instead to
spend my fortune on the Shawsheen Mills, and elevate by its judicious
expenditure two thousand operatives for whom I ought to feel morally and
socially responsible, the world will probably wonder and call me
quixotic. Christ Himself was called a fanatic. Most people to-day, if
they voiced their real sentiments, would wonder that He could be so
democratic as to die for the whole world, ignorant, uncultivated,
detestable sinners, and all.”

One of those silences fell upon the room, that always follows the
mention of Christ’s name in a conversation not strictly “religious” in
character. Marion was admiring the courage of her friend; Burnham was
rather taken aback at this fearless reference to a Being whom he seldom
heard mentioned outside the churches; and Villard was surprised and
delighted with this unworldly woman of the world, and her avowal of
principles and hopes and wishes which he had cherished for years. He was
the first to speak.

“You must have done some hard thinking,—and a good deal of reading, in
the past six months.”

“Yes,” answered Salome. “I have. I have read everything I could think or
hear of, on subjects bearing on this case; and I have lain awake many a
night, since it was really borne in upon me that I have something to do
here, planning my work. But the greater part of the credit, if there is
any, in my plans, lies with my grandfather. He thought out many of these
things, years ago; I have simply adapted his theories to our modern
times and conditions.”

                                  XI.

And so the great strike ended.

Had Salome realized the burden of care which she was taking upon
herself, it is doubtful whether she would have assumed it as cheerfully
as she did. But as weeks rolled into months, and responsibilities
multiplied and cares increased until she became as hard a worker as any
in the mills, she did not flinch. She had put her hand to the plough,
and it did not once occur to her to turn back.

She went to the office of the mills the day they were opened, and began
to study, thoroughly, the details of the business. Villard and Burnham
were her teachers, and both were often astonished at her business
keenness and cool judgment. She had pressed Marion into service
immediately, and always took her to the counting-room, where the two
staid throughout the entire morning, going home to lunch at two, and
usually remaining there the rest of the day. But always, whether she was
in the house, or out driving, or overseeing the new houses, which were
progressing rapidly, Salome’s one thought was the improvement of
conditions at the Shawsheen Mills.

When Marion had been with her a week, Salome said to her:

“Marion, I want you to stay with me all the time.”

“I should be so glad,” replied her friend, “but I can’t afford it. I
shall have to go out into the world again, before long, to earn my
living, dear; but I will stay here as long as I can.”

“You good girl!” was Salome’s answer. “Why not stay here and earn your
living? I want a companion, shall very soon need a secretary, and as
soon as I get things in running order, ought to have a woman like you to
help draw in my people. You need a congenial place at a comfortable
salary. Now, why not stay? I will pay you a thousand dollars a year.”

Marion drew a breath of astonishment.

“It isn’t worth that,” she said; “Madame Blanc only paid me seven
hundred.”

“Madame Blanc is not fixing a scale of wages for me,” said Salome; “as
to your ‘worth,’ my dear, I must judge of that. When we get fairly at
work, I shall give you enough to do, and you will find yourself a very
busy woman. Besides, if I had a young man to do what I want you to do
for me, he would ask a thousand dollars, wouldn’t he? And why shouldn’t
you have it? Because you are a woman?”

Marion was not demonstrative. On the contrary, she had a great deal of
the true New England reserve; but she got up and went over to her
friend, put both arms around her neck and then——cried.

“If you could know what a chance this is for me!” she said at last. “If
you had known what a dreary thing existence had become, and what a
hopeless prospect I had in the future! And now, to live here and work
with you,—in your grand scheme,—Oh, Salome!” And she wept again.

“Then I will put the care of the cottages into your hands first of all,”
said Salome, patting her cheek. “You’ve kept house and know what one
ought to be like for an ordinary family,—what things are necessary for