“You know the general condition of the people here,” he explained humbly.  “I have taken great pains to keep hold of the best that have come here; we can depend upon them now and upon the quality of their work.  They made no resistance when we had to cut down wages two years ago; on the contrary, they were surprisingly reasonable, and you know that we shut down for several weeks at the time of the alterations.  We have never put their wages back as we might easily have done, and I happen to know that a good many families have been able to save little or nothing.  Some of them have been working here for three generations.  They know as well as you and I and the books do when the mills are making money.  Now I wish that we could give them the ten per cent. back again, but in view of the general depression perhaps we can’t do that except in the way I mean.  I think that next year we’re going to have a very hard pull to get along, but if we can keep back three per cent., or even two, of this dividend we can not only manage to get on without a shut-down or touching our surplus, which is quite small enough, but I can have some painting and repairing done in the tenements.  They’ve needed it for a long time—­”

The old director sprang to his feet.  “Aren’t the stockholders going to have any rights then?” he demanded.  “Within fifteen years we have had three years when we have passed our dividends, but the operatives never can lose a single day’s pay!”

“That was before my time,” said the agent, quietly.  “We have averaged nearly six and a half per cent. a year taking the last twenty years together, and if you go back farther the average is even larger.  This has always been a paying property; we’ve got our new machinery now, and everything in the mills themselves is just where we want it.  I look for far better times after this next year, but the market is glutted with goods of our kind, and nothing is going to be gained by cut-downs and forcing lower-cost goods into it.  Still, I can keep things going one way and another, making yarn and so on,” he said pleadingly.  “I should like to feel that we had this extra surplus.  I believe that we owe it to our operatives.”

The director had walked heavily to the window and put his hands deep into his side-pockets.  He had an angry sense that the agent’s hands were in his pockets too.

“I’ve got some pride about that nine per cent., sir,” he said loftily to the agent.

“So have I,” said the agent, and the two men looked each other in the face.

“I acknowledge my duty to the stockholders,” said the younger man presently.  “I have tried to remember that duty ever since I took the mills eight years ago, but we’ve got an excellent body of operatives, and we ought to keep them.  I want to show them this next year that we value their help.  If times aren’t as bad as we fear we shall still have the money—­”

“Nonsense.  They think they own the mills now,” said the director, but he was uncomfortable, in spite of believing he was right.  “Where’s my hat?  I must have my luncheon now, and afterward there’ll hardly be time to go down and look at the new power-house with you—­I must be off on the quarter-to-two train.”