Then the stock
ceased to rise, and winter came on apace, and the hard times which the
agent had foreseen came also.
III.
One noon in early March there were groups of men and women gathering
in the Farley streets. For a wonder, nobody was hurrying toward home
and dinner was growing cold on some of the long boarding-house tables.
"They might have carried us through the cold weather; there's but a
month more of it," said one middle-aged man sorrowfully.
"They'll be talking to us about economy now, some o' them big
thinkers; they'll say we ought to learn how to save; they always begin
about that quick as the work stops," said a youngish woman angrily.
She was better dressed than most of the group about her and had the
keen, impatient look of a leader. "They'll say that manufacturing is
going to the dogs, and capital's in worse distress than labor--"
"How is it those big railroads get along? They can't shut down,
there's none o' them stops; they cut down sometimes when they have to,
but they don't turn off their help this way," complained somebody
else.
"Faith then! they don't know what justice is. They talk about their
justice all so fine," said a pale-faced young Irishman--"justice is
nine per cent. last year for the men that had the money and no rise at
all for the men that did the work."
"They say the shut-down's going to last all summer anyway. I'm going
to pack my kit to-night," said a young fellow who had just married and
undertaken with unusual pride and ambition to keep house.
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