e calls all the laborers together. They stand all around,
some with arms akimbo, some with folded arms, wondering what the boss
is going to do now. The manufacturer says: "Men, times are very hard;
I don't make twenty dollars where I used to make one hundred. Somehow,
there is no demand now for what we manufacture, or but very little
demand. You see I am at vast expense, and I have called you together
this afternoon to see what you would advise. I don't want to shut up
the mill, because that would force you out of work, and you have
always been very faithful, and I like you, and you seem to like me,
and the bairns must be looked after, and your wife will after awhile
want a new dress. I don't know what to do."

There is a dead halt for a minute or two, and then one of the workmen
steps out from the ranks of his fellows, and says: "Boss, you have
been very good to us, and when you prospered we prospered, and now you
are in a tight place and I am sorry, and we have got to sympathize
with you. I don't know how the others feel, but I propose that we take
off twenty per cent. from our wages, and that when the times get good
you will remember us and raise them again." The workman looks around
to his comrades, and says: "Boys, what do you say to this? all in
favor of my proposition will say ay." "Ay! ay! ay!" shout two hundred
voices.

But the mill-owner, getting in some new machinery, exposes himself
very much, and takes cold, and it settles into pneumonia, and he dies.
In the procession to the tomb are all the workmen, tears rolling down
their cheeks, and off upon the ground; but an hour before the
procession gets to the cemetery the wives and the children of those
workmen are at the grave waiting for the arrival of the funeral
pageant. The minister of religion may have delivered an eloquent
eulogium before they started from the house, but the most impressive
things are said that day by the working-classes standing around the
tomb.

That night in all the cabins of the working-people where they have
family prayers the widowhood and the orphanage in the mansion are
remembered. No glaring populations look over the iron fence of the
cemetery; but, hovering over the scene, the benediction of God and man
is coming for the fulfillment of the Christlike injunction,
"Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to
them."

"Oh," says some man here, "that is all Utopian, that is apocryphal,
that is impossible." No