pass upon the installation of new machinery, the privilege of making visits of inspection and presenting grievances to the superintendents of the mills. During the next two years these committees were incessantly active—often for the sole purpose of keeping their authority in evidence. The mill superintendents came to regard them as pestilential nuisances whose inflictions it was an indignity to bear; more than one superintendent resigned during this period rather than submit to the constant harassments of these committees. And quite apart from the special arrangements made with the union in this two years' agreement were the provisions in the constitution of the union itself, which took note of the smallest details and assumed jurisdiction over the lives of its members to a degree that meant regulation of the business of their employers. The daily output of each man was defined and was not to be exceeded; limits were set to the instruction of other workmen and of apprentices; the constitution bristled with restrictive and mandatory clauses, such, for instance, as the rule that seniority of service should always receive preference in promotion. The recognition of the union by the management meant the conforming to these and countless other irksome requirements.
Floyd carried the burden of the ensuing perplexities, reluctant for two reasons to let his grandfather share it; he wished to spare the old man anxiety and worry and to preserve in him his optimistic, contented spirit; and he was also honestly afraid that any interference on his grandfather's part would produce confusion worse confounded. Colonel Halket's humane liberality and tolerance on all matters pertaining to labor alarmed Floyd and seemed to him to foreshadow a weakening: More than, ever did the Colonel welcome any opportunity to hold forth at a public meeting and preach the gospel of tolerance, human kindness, and friendliness in business relations; it delighted him to feel that he was, as a presiding officer introducing him once put it, "the best-loved man
