hip compana. Steamship compana, they needa da
mon', too, see? They talk to us mucha, fixa her easy, come here easy,
getta da job easy, see? Steamship men, they keepa right after me, so I
come, see?"

Big Jim lighted his pipe. "Tell Mama that was a good dinner, Jimmy," he
said. "I haven't got anything personal against you, 'Masso," he went on.
"You're a human being like me, trying to take care of your family. I
suppose you can't help it that Italians as a class are a lawless lot of
cut-throats. You certainly are willing workers. But I'd like to bet that
if we'd shut the doors after the Civil War and let those that was in
this country have their chance, this country would have a wholesomer
growth than it has now. I'll bet if they had fifty men in this quarry
like me instead of a hundred like you, it would turn out twice the work
it does now."

"But Dad, they say you can't get real Americans to do this kind of
work," said Little Jim.

"Deal with facts, Jimmy; deal with facts," drawled his father. "I'm
working here. Will Endicott, John Allen, Phil Chadwick are all day
laborers. Our forefathers founded this government and this town. What's
happened to it and to us? It's too late for us older men to do much. But
you kids have got to think about it. What's happened to us? What's
happened to this old town? I want you to think about it."

Little Jim took the dinner bucket and started for home. His father had
not been talking on a topic new to the Mannings or to the Mannings'
friends. Little Jim had been brought up to wonder what was the matter
with his breed, what had happened to Exham. Little Jim's forefathers had
once held in grant from an English king the land on which the quarry
lay. His grandfather had given it up. Farm labor was hard to get. The
mortgage had grown heavier and heavier. The land all about was being
bought up by Polish and Italian hucksters who lived on what they could
not sell and whose wives and children were their farm hands. Grandfather
Manning could not compete with this condition.

Big Jim had gone to New York City in his early twenties. He had had a
good high school education and was a first-class mechanic. But somehow,
he could not compete. He was slow and thoroughgoing and honest. He could
not compete with the new type of workman, the man bred to do part work.
When Little Jim was five, the Mannings had come back to Exham, with the
hope of somehow, sometime, buying back the old farm.

Little Ji