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while gathering a trifling share of nature's bounty to feed his starving children.
A few years ago TOM STRANG was in comfortable circumstances, and had the respect and good-will of all who knew him. He had a little home of his own that he had toiled for in the mills night and day. He had a good wife and a young family growing up around him. He was steady and temperate In his habits, a model of health and strength, and he had been guaranteed life and a few other things by the Constitution of his country.
Poor STRANG was happy and hopeful of the future. He was generous, too; and, strangely enough, in one incident of his life he himself pointed the moral for the story of his death. A friend who had been crippled In the mill came to TOM STRANG one day and asked him for assistance to save his home, which was about to be sold over his head. "Certainly," said STRANG, In his prompt, manly way. "I am a poor man, of course, and often find myself pinched to pay the taxes on my own little place, but I guess I can give you a lift, for I'll live anyway, and that's all the Burdens can do." Poor STRANG! The sequel proves that he could not live unless the Burdens saw fit to allow him to live.
There came a dullness in the iron business, and shut-downs at the mills became frequent. STRANG and hundreds like him, who depended on the mills for a living, bore it patiently. They did not ask for double pay, and, because the mills only ran half time, they were willing to stand their share of reverses, waiting for better times.
But the Burden Brothers, of Troy, were not so patient, and struck for double pay; they wanted their usual dividend of $80,000 out of the iron works, whether they ran six months or twelve—their usual profits, work or play. To accomplish this capitalist feat, they resorted to the usual policy of reducing the force, lengthening their hours, and cutting their wages.
Finally, after serving fifteen years In the employ of the Burden Iron Company, it came his turn, and TOM STRANG walked the plank to drift with the tide. Thus he had drifted for the past few years, picking up odd jobs here and there, struggling along as best he could. But debts accumulated rapidly; his little home was soon mortgaged to the last penny. The usual signs of poverty began to appear in the STRANG family, in patched clothing, shoeless children, and the absence of the family from the little chapel from which young STRANG, then the finest specimen of manhood in Troy, led his young bride, thirteen years ago.
