I answered curtly.

* In that day there were many thousands of these poor
merchants called PEDLERS. They carried their whole stock in
trade from door to door. It was a most wasteful expenditure
of energy. Distribution was as confused and irrational as
the whole general system of society.

"Notice the sleeve of his left arm," Ernest said gently.

I looked, and saw that the sleeve was empty.

"It was some of the blood from that arm that I heard dripping from your
roof-beams," Ernest said with continued gentleness. "He lost his arm in
the Sierra Mills, and like a broken-down horse you turned him out on
the highway to die. When I say 'you,' I mean the superintendent and the
officials that you and the other stockholders pay to manage the mills
for you. It was an accident. It was caused by his trying to save the
company a few dollars. The toothed drum of the picker caught his arm. He
might have let the small flint that he saw in the teeth go through. It
would have smashed out a double row of spikes. But he reached for the
flint, and his arm was picked and clawed to shreds from the finger tips
to the shoulder. It was at night. The mills were working overtime. They
paid a fat dividend that quarter. Jackson had been working many hours,
and his muscles had lost their resiliency and snap. They made his
movements a bit slow. That was why the machine caught him. He had a wife
and three children."

"And what did the company do for him?" I asked.