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Poor White by Sherwood Anderson
page 290 of 298 (97%)
had been killed and ill-feeling engendered in hundreds of silent workers.
That strike had been won by Tom and Steve and they had since that time been
victorious in a larger and more serious strike. Ed Hall was now at the head
of a new factory being built along the Wheeling tracks. He was growing fat
and was prosperous.

When Hugh got to his shop he lighted his lamp and again got out the
drawings he had come from home to study. They lay unnoticed on the desk.
He looked at his watch. It was two o'clock. "Clara may be awake. I must go
home," he thought vaguely. He now owned his own motor car and it stood in
the road before the shop. Getting in he drove away into the darkness over
the bridge, out of Turner's Pike and along a street lined with factories
and railroad sidings. Some of the factories were working and were ablaze
with lights. Through lighted windows he could see men stationed along
benches and bending over huge, iron machines. He had come from home that
evening to study the work of an unknown man from the far away state of
Iowa, to try to circumvent that man. Then he had gone to walk and to think
of himself and his own life. "The evening has been wasted. I have done
nothing," he thought gloomily as his car climbed up a long street lined
with the homes of the wealthier citizens of his town and turned into the
short stretch of Medina Road still left between the town and the
Butterworth farmhouse.

* * * * *

On the day when he went to Pittsburgh, Hugh got to the station where he was
to take the homeward train at three, and the train did not leave until
four. He went into a big waiting-room and sat on a bench in a corner. After
a time he arose and going to a stand bought a newspaper, but did not read
it. It lay unopened on the bench beside him. The station was filled with
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