and night.

The writer had two advantages, however, which are not possessed by the
ordinary foreman, and these came, curiously enough, from the fact that
he was not the son of a working man.

First, owing to the fact that he happened not to be of working parents,
the owners of the company believed that he had the interest of the works
more at heart than the other workmen, and they therefore had more
confidence in his word than they did in that of the machinists who were
under him. So that, when the machinists reported to the Superintendent
that the machines were being smashed up because an incompetent foreman
was overstraining them, the Superintendent accepted the word of the
writer when he said that these men were deliberately breaking their
machines as a part of the piece-work war which was going on, and he also
allowed the writer to make the only effective answer to this Vandalism
on the part of the men, namely: "There will be no more accidents to the
machines in this shop. If any part of a machine is broken the man in
charge of it must pay at least a part of the cost of its repair, and the
fines collected in this way will all be handed over to the mutual
beneficial association to help care for sick workmen." This soon stopped
the willful breaking of machines.

Second. If the writer had been one of the workmen, and had lived where
they lived, they would have brought such social pressure to bear upon
him that it would have been impossible to have stood out against them.
He would have been called "scab" and other foul names every time he
appeared on the street, his wife would have been abused, and his
children would have been stoned. Once or twice he was begged by some of
his friends among the workmen not to walk home, about two and a half