the Ranger-Whitney cooperage adjoining--were, every man and boy of them,
as hard at it as if the dinner rest were hours away. On the threshold of
the long room where several scores of filled barrels were being headed
and stamped there suddenly appeared a huge figure, tall and broad and
solid, clad in a working suit originally gray but now white with the
flour dust that saturated the air, and coated walls and windows both
within and without. At once each of the ninety-seven men and boys was
aware of that presence and unconsciously showed it by putting on extra
"steam." With swinging step the big figure crossed the packing room. The
gray-white face held straight ahead, but the keen blue eyes paused upon
each worker and each task. And every "hand" in those two great factories
knew how all-seeing that glance was--critical, but just; exacting, but
encouraging. All-seeing, in this instance, did not mean merely
fault-seeing.

Hiram Ranger, manufacturing partner and controlling owner of the
Ranger-Whitney Company of St. Christopher and Chicago, went on into the
cooperage, leaving energy behind him, rousing it before him. Many times,
each working day, between seven in the morning and six at night, he made
the tour of those two establishments. A miller by inheritance and
training, he had learned the cooper's trade like any journeyman, when he
decided that the company should manufacture its own barrels. He was not a
rich man who was a manufacturer; he was a manufacturer who was
incidentally rich--one who made of his business a vocation. He had no
theories on the dignity of labor; he simply exemplified it, and would
have been amazed, and amused or angered according to his mood, had it
been suggested to him that useful labor is not as necessary and
continuous a part of life as breathing. He did not speculate and talk
about ideals; he lived them, incessantly and unconsciously. The talker of
ideals and the liver of ideals get echo and response, each after his