She
straightened her shoulders and pressed her lips firmly and
contemplated a duty, painfully but rigorously performed. She cast the
scraps of paper into the grate and applied a match. It is not always
well that duty should leave any circumstantial evidence behind.
The evening papers devoted a good deal of space to the strike at the
Bennington shops. They frankly upheld Bennington. They admitted that
employers had some individual rights. They berated the men for
quarreling over a matter so trivial as the employment of a single
non-union man, who was, to say the most, merely an experimenter.
However, they treated lightly Bennington's threat to demolish the
shops. No man in his right mind would commit so childish an act. It
would be revenge of a reactive order, fool matching fools, whereas
Bennington ought to be more magnanimous. The labor unions called
special meetings, and with one or two exceptions voted to stand by the
action of the men.
There was positively no politics behind this strike; everybody
understood that; at least, everybody thought he understood. But there
were some who smiled mysteriously and wagged their heads.
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