"No, I wouldn't," returned Adam and laughed again. "Well, go ahead. Have it your own way. I am not afraid for you in the long run. You are too much like me not to find out where your own interests lie, once you come squarely up against the situation. I only wanted to help you, but it looks as though you would have to go through the experience for yourself. It's all right, son, go to it! Now call George."
When the superintendent entered the private office, Adam Ward said, briefly, "George, I am turning the Mill over to John here. From to-day on he is the manager without any strings on him in any way. He has the entire responsibility and is the only authority. He accounts to no one but himself. That is all."
Abruptly Adam Ward left the private office. Without even a look toward the men in the big outer room who had served with him for years, he passed on out to the street.
When the whistle sounded, John went out into the Mill to stand near the window where the workmen passing in line received their envelopes.
From every part of the great main building, from the yards and the several outer sheds and structures they came. From furnace and engine and bench and machine they made their way toward that given point as scattered particles of steel filings are drawn toward a magnet. The converging paths of individuals touched, and two walked side by side. Other individuals joined the two and as quickly trios and quartets came together to form groups that united with other similar groups; while from the mass thus assembled, the thin line was formed that extended past the pay clerk's window and linked the Mill to the outer world.
In that eager throng of toilers Adam Ward's son saw men of almost every race: Scotchmen greeted Norwegians; men from Ireland exchanged friendly jests with men from Italy; sons of England laughed with the sons of France; Danes touched elbows with Dutchmen; and men from Poland stood shoulder to shoulder with men whose fathers fought with Washington. And every man was marked alike with the emblems of a common brotherhood--the brotherhood of work. Their faces were colored with the good color of their toil--with the smoke of their furnaces, and the grime of their engines, and the oil from their machines mixed with the sweat of their own bodies. Their clothing was uniform with the insignia of their united endeavor. And to the newly appointed manager of the Mill, these men of every nation were comrades in a common cause, spending the strength of their manhood for common human needs. He saw that only in the work of the world could the brotherhood of man be realized; only in the Mill of life's essential industries could the nations of the earth become as one.