ccepting over-expensive Christmas presents. "Let
'em have the rest of the lunch--_all they want_." He smiled again, much
pleased with his kindly astuteness. He was a constructive statesman and
would be famous for longevity.

But the sandwich-men swaggered about, realizing that under the
leadership of the boss they had won; they had obtained something to
which they had no right; by threats of force they had secured food; the
boss had made men of them. They therefore crowned Hendrik king. The
instinctive and immemorial craving of all men for a father manifests
itself--in republics that have forgotten God--in the election of the
great promisers and the great confiscators to the supreme power. History
records that no dynasty was ever founded except by a man who fought both
for and with his followers. The men that merely fought for their
fellows have uniformly died by the most noble and inspiring death of
all--starvation. Names and posthumous addresses not known.

When not a scrap remained on any of the platters, Hendrik called his men
to him and told them:

"Meet me at the sign-painter's, corner Twenty-ninth Street and Ninth
Avenue next Friday night after seven. We'll be open till midnight. Be
sure and bring your boards with you."

"We gotter give 'em up before we can get paid," remonstrated Mulligan.
"If we don't we don't eat."

"That's right!" assented a half-dozen.

"_Bring them!_" said Hendrik. The time to check a mutiny is before it
begins.

"A' right!" came in a chorus of fourteen heroic voices.

"Beginning next Monday, you'll get twenty cents an hour. I guarantee
that to you out of my own pocket. You must each of you bring all the
other sandwiches you run across. If necessary, drag them. We must have
about one hundred to start, if you want forty beers a day."

"We do! We do!"

"Then bring the others, because we've got to begin with enough men in
the union to knock the stuffing out of those who try to scab on us. Get
that?"

"Sure thing!" they shouted, with the surprised enthusiasm of men who
suddenly understand.

They were deep in misery and accustomed to a poverty so abject that they
no longer were capable of even envying the rich. They, therefore, could
hate only those who were poorer than themselves--the men who dared to
have thirsts that could be assuaged with less than forty beers per day.
Not obey the boss, when they already felt an endless stream trickling
down their unionized gullets? And not