nothing to show for it, and no way to make it up. Maybe that's as it
should be, but the worker can't see it, especially if the boss can still
buy gasoline and tires when the plant is idle. Oh, yes, laddie, I know
the working man is headstrong. I'll tell you privately, I think he's a
fool, because so often he gets into a blind rage and wants to smash the
very tools that earn his bite and sup. He may have reason to hate some
employer, but why hate the job? It's a good job, if he makes good
chairs. He goes on strike, many's the time, without caring that it hurts
him and his worse than it hurts the boss. And often the boss thinks he
wants nothing bigger than a few more things. Maybe he _is_ wild for a
phonograph and a Ford and golden oak rockers of his own in the parlor,
and photographs enlarged in crayon hanging on the walls--and a steady
job. But, listen to me, John Wesley, Jr., and you'll be a credit to your
namesake: these wild, unreasonable workers, with all their foolishness
and sometimes wickedness, are whiles dreaming of a different world, a
better world for everybody. 'Twould be no harm if some bosses dreamed
more about that too, me boy. Your preacher--he's a fine man too, is Mr.
Drury--he understands that, and he wants to use it for something to
build on. That's why I tell folks he's a Methodist preacher with a real
method in his ministry. Now I'll quit me fashin' and get back to the
job. I doubt you'll be busy yourself this afternoon."

He gripped J.W.'s hand, so that the knuckles were unable to forget him
all day, but what he had said gripped harder than his handshake. If the
furniture factory was a mixed blessing, what of the cannery?

Somewhat to his own surprise, J.W. was getting interested in his town,
but if at first he was inclined to wonder how he happened to develop all
this new concern, he soon ceased to think of it. So slight a matter
could not stay in the front of his thinking when he really began to know