d wide-spread
unemployment. If you went to Pittsburgh you might find a few weeks'
work, but it would not pay you to go there for it. You would have to lay
out cash for your board and lodging there before you could send anything
home to mother. Keeping up two establishments is harder than keeping up
one. You have a home here partly paid for, and a big garden that helps
support that home. It is better for you to stick with this establishment
and work at half time in the mill than to roam around at big expense
seeking full time in some other mill. There may be no mill in the land
that is running full time."

This had not occurred to him. What lay beyond the hills was all mystery.
But we young fellows had been brought up in the American atmosphere, we
had read the Youth's Companion and the newspapers, and our outlook was
widened; we could guess that conditions were the same in other states
as they were in our part of Pennsylvania, for we were studying economic
causes.

"It is better for you to stay here and wait for good times to come
again. Hang on to your home, and if in a few months or a few years the
mills begin booming again you will be secure for life. But if the iron
industry doesn't revive, give up that trade and find other work here.
If necessary go out and work on a farm, for the farming industry will
always have to be carried on."

Father saw the force of our argument. So he stayed and kept his home.
He has it to-day. But if he had wandered around as millions of us did in
those hard days he would surely have lost it. This was my first little
attempt to work out an economic problem. I had studied all the facts and
then pronounced my judgment. It proved right, and so I learned that in
my small way I had a head for financiering. This encouraged me, for it
taught me that the worker can solve part of his problems by using his
head.

The fear of ending in the poor-house is one of the terrors that dog a
man through life. There are only three parts to the labor problem, and
this is one of them. This fear causes "unrest." This unrest was used
by revolutionists to promote Bolshevism which turns whole empires into
poor-houses. Such a "remedy," of course, is worse than the disease. I
think I know a plan by which all workers can make their old age secure.
I will go into it more fully in a later chapter.

CHAPTER XX. THE RED FLAG AND THE WATERMELONS

I have said that the labor problem has three parts. I call them