"On the spot," said Mr. Williams, "and there is the door."
For hours that hot June day had the story of that interview sped from tongue to tongue. The managers of the Switchmen's Union had been shrewd and wise in naming as members of their committee three of the oldest, stanchest, and most faithful hands in the employ of the company. They were sure of a hearing. Then to do the aggressive, this comparatively new man, Stoltz, was named, together with a kindred spirit of less ability, and these two men were the backbone, so said the managers, of the first attack. Stoltz was a German-American of good education, though deeply imbued with socialistic theories, and a seductive, plausible speaker on the theme of the wrongs of the laboring man. It was he who, under the guidance of shrewd agitators and "walking delegates," had been most active and denunciatory at the switchmen's meetings. Honest laboring men are slow of speech, as a rule, and fluency often impresses them where logic would have no effect. The committee came away, two of them exultant and eager for the fray. They had been disdainfully treated, said they, sneered at, reviled, and one of them summarily "fired" as the result of this visit to the magnate. The others were gloomily silent. It was too late to recede. The javelin was already thrown. At the stroke of five every man on duty quietly quit his post. Many left the yard. Others, eager to see what the officials might do, remained. Stopped at the outskirts of the city, no trains came in. Only the evening mail crept out, its own crew manning the successive switches.
It was now 8.45, and barely dark. The western sky was still faintly illumined. Old Wallace could no longer read, and bent down to take a hand in the talk between his boys. Silence still reigned in the deserted yards. Men hovered in muttering groups, and watched the few officials who flitted about with lanterns in their hands. A rumor was going around that the management had determined to send out all the night passenger trains as usual, and the first of these should be along by ten o'clock. As Mr. Wallace bent over Jim's broad shoulder his wife and daughters ceased their low chatter. Evidently something was on the old man's mind.