At ten next morning, Whiffler handed over the
safe-key to Wade, and departed to ruin some other
property, if he could get one to ruin. Wade
walked with him to the gate.

“I 'm glad to be out of a sinking ship,” said
the ex-boss. “The Works will go down, sure as
shooting. And I think myself well out of the

[figure description] Page 134.[end figure description]

clutches of these men. They 're a bullying,
swearing, drinking set of infernal ruffians. Foremen
are just as bad as hands. I never felt safe of
my life with 'em.”

“A bad lot, are they?” mused Wade, as he
returned to the office. “I must give them a little
sharp talk by way of Inaugural.”

He had the bell tapped and the men called together
in the main building.

Much work was still going on in an inefficient,
unsystematic way.

While hot fires were roaring in the great furnaces,
smoke rose from the dusty beds where
Titanic castings were cooling. Great cranes, manacled
with heavy chains, stood over the furnace-doors,
ready to lift steaming jorums of melted
metal, and pour out, hot and hot, for the moulds to
swallow.

Raw material in big heaps lay about, waiting
for the fire to ripen it. Here was a stack of long,
rough, rusty pigs, clumsy as the shillelahs of the
Anakim. There was a pile of short, thick masses,
lying higgledy-piggledy, stuff from the neighboring
mines, which needed to be crossed with foreign
stock before it could be of much use in civilization.

Here, too, was raw material organized: a fly-wheel,
large enough to keep the knobbiest of
asteroids revolving without a wabble; a cross-head,
cross-tail, and piston-rod, to help a great sea-going
steamer breast the waves; a light walking-beam,
to whirl the paddles of a fast boat on the

[figure description] Page 135.[end figure description]

river; and other members of machines, only asking
to be put together and vivified by steam and
they would go at their work with a will.

From the black rafters overhead hung the heavy
folds of a dim atmosphere, half dust, half smoke.
A dozen sunbeams, forcing their way through the
grimy panes of the grimy upper windows, found
this compound quite palpable and solid, and they
moulded out of it a series of golden bars set side
by side aloft, like the pipes of an organ out of its
perpendicular.

Wade grew indignant, as he looked about him
and saw so much good stuff and good force wasting
for want of a little will and skill to train the
force and manage the stuff. He abhorred bankruptcy
and chaos.

“All they want here is a head,” he thought.

He shook his own. The brain within was well
developed with healthy exercise. It filled its case,
and did not rattle like a withered kernel, or sound
soft like a rotten one. It was a vigorous, muscular
brain. The owner felt that he could trust it for an
effort, as he could his lungs for a shout, his legs for
a leap, or his fist for a knock-down argument.

At the tap of the bell, the “bad lot” of men
came together. They numbered more than two
hundred, though the Foundry was working short.
They had been notified that “that gonoph of a
Whiffler was kicked out, and a new feller was in,
who looked cranky enough, and wanted to see 'em
and tell 'em whether he was a damn' fool or
not.”

[figure description] Page 136.[end figure description]

So all hands collected from the different parts of
the Foundry to see the head.

They came up with easy and somewhat swaggering
bearing, — a good many roughs, with here
and there a ruffian. Several, as they approached,
swung and tossed, for mere overplus of strength,
the sledges with which they had been tapping
at the bald shiny pates of their anvils. Several
wielded their long pokers like lances.

Grimy chaps, all with their faces streaked, like
Blackfeet in their war-paint. Their hairy chests
showed, where some men parade elaborate shirt-bosoms.
Some had their sleeves pushed up to the
elbow to exhibit their compact flexors and extensors.
Some had rolled their flannel up to the
shoulder, above the bulging muscles of the upper
arm. They wore aprons tied about the neck, like
the bibs of our childhood, — or about the waist,
like the coquettish articles which young housewives
affect. But there was no coquetry in these
great flaps of leather or canvas, and they were
besmeared and rust-stained quite beyond any bib
that ever suffered under bread-and-molasses or mudpie
treatment.

They lounged and swaggered up, and stood at
ease, not without rough grace, in a sinuous line,
coiled and knotted like a snake.

Ten feet back stood the new Hercules who was
to take down that Hydra's two hundred crests of
insubordination.

They inspected him, and he them as coolly. He

[figure description] Page 137.[end figure description]

read and ticketed each man, as he came up, —
good, bad, or on the fence, — and marked each so
that he would know him among a myriad.

The Hands faced the Head. It was a question
whether the two hundred or the one would be
master in Dunderbunk.

Which was boss? An old question. It has to
be settled whenever a new man claims power, and
there is always a struggle until it is fought out by
main force of brain or muscle.

Wade had made up his mind on this subject. He
waited a moment until the men were still. He was
a Saxon six-footer of thirty. He stood easily on
his pins, as if he had eyed men and facts before.
His mouth looked firm, his brow freighted, his nose
clipper, — that the hands could see. But clipper
noses are not always backed by a stout hull.
Seemingly freighted brows sometimes carry nothing
but ballast and dunnage. The firmness may be all
in the moustache, while the mouth hides beneath,
a mere silly slit. All which the hands knew.

Wade began, short and sharp as a trip-hammer,
when it has a bar to shape.

“I 'm the new Superintendent. Richard Wade
is my name. I rang the bell because I wanted to
see you and have you see me. You know as well
as I do that these Works are in a bad way. They
can't stay so. They must come up and pay you
regular wages and the Company profits. Every
man of you has got to be here on the spot when the
bell strikes, and up to the mark in his work. You

[figure description] Page 138.[end figure description]

have n't been, — and you know it. You 've turned
out rotten iron, — stuff that any honest shop would
be ashamed of. Now there 's to be a new leaf
turned over here. You 're to be paid on the nail;
but you 've got to earn your money. I won't have
any idlers or shirkers or rebels about me. I shall
work hard myself, and every man of you will, or
he leaves the shop. Now, if anybody has a complaint
to make, I 'll hear him before you all.”

The men were evidently impressed with Wade's
Inaugural. It meant something. But they were
not to be put down so easily, after long misrule.
There began to be a whisper, —

“B'il in, Bill Tarbox! and talk up to him!”

Presently Bill shouldered forward and faced the
new ruler.

Since Bill took to drink and degradation, he
had been the but-end of riot and revolt at the
Foundry. He had had his own way with Whiffler.
He did not like to abdicate and give in to this new
chap without testing him.

In a better mood, Bill would have liked Wade's
looks and words; but to-day he had a sore head,
a sour face, and a bitter heart, from last night's
spree. And then he had heard — it was as well
known already in Dunderbunk as if the town-crier
had cried it — that Wade was lodging at Mrs.
Purtett's, where poor Bill was excluded. So Bill
stepped forward as spokesman of the ruffianly element,
and the immoral force gathered behind and
backed him heavily.

[figure description] Page 139.[end figure description]

Tarbox, too, was a Saxon six-footer of thirty.
But he had sagged one inch for want of self-respect.
He had spoilt his color and dyed his moustache.
He wore foxy-black pantaloons tucked into
red-topped boots, with the name of the maker on
a gilt shield. His red-flannel shirt was open at
the neck and caught with a black handkerchief.
His damaged tile was in permanent crape for the
late lamented Poole.

“We allow,” says Bill, in a tone half-way between
Lablache's De profundis and a burglar's
bull-dog's snarl, “that we 've did our work as
good as need to be did. We 'xpect we know our
rights. We ha'n't ben treated fair, and I 'm
damned if we 're go'n' to stan' it.”

“Stop!” says Wade. “No swearing in this
shop!”

“Who the Devil is go'n' to stop it?” growled
Tarbox.

“I am. Do you step back now, and let some
one come out who can talk like a gentleman!”

“I 'm damned if I stir till I 've had my say
out,” says Bill, shaking himself up and looking
dangerous.

“Go back!”

Wade moved close to him, also looking dangerous.

“Don't tech me!” Bill threatened, squaring
off.

He was not quick enough. Wade knocked him
down flat on a heap of moulding-sand. The hat in
mourning for Poole found its place in a puddle.

Bill did not like the new Emperor's method of

[figure description] Page 140.[end figure description]

compelling kotou. Round One of the mill had not
given him enough.

He jumped up from his soft bed and made a
vicious rush at Wade. But he was damaged by
evil courses. He was fighting against law and
order, on the side of wrong and bad manners.

The same fist met him again, and heavier.

Up went his heels! Down went his head! It
struck the ragged edge of a fresh casting, and
there he lay stunned and bleeding on his hard
black pillow.

“Ring the bell to go to work!” said Wade, in
a tone that made the ringer jump. “Now, men,
take hold and do your duty and everything will go
smooth!”

The bell clanged in. The line looked at its prostrate
champion, then at the new boss standing
there, cool and brave, and not afraid of a regiment
of sledge-hammers.

They wanted an Executive. They wanted to be
well governed, as all men do. They wanted disorder
out and order in. The new man looked like
a man, talked fair, hit hard. Why not all hands
give in with a good grace and go to work like
honest fellows?

The line broke up. The hands went off to their
duty. And there was never any more insubordination
at Dunderbunk.

This was June.

Skates in the next chapter.

Love in good time afterward shall glide upon
the scene.

Previous section

Next section