with tremendous profit, and to the complete satisfaction of employer and employee. For convincing proof he had but to turn to his monthly balance-sheet.
"Floyd," he said to his grandson one day, "what should you consider a fair price for the works?"
"Are you thinking of selling them?" Floyd asked, in surprise.
"No, no, indeed. I was just wondering how nearly our ideas of the value would correspond."
"Twenty millions?" Floyd spoke dubiously.
"Twenty! My dear boy, I would n't consider an offer of fifty millions, cash down. I would n't think of it!"
"I don't believe you'll ever be offered it," Floyd said, with a smile.
"Oh, I'm not so sure," responded the old man. "It would be a good bargain at that figure for a man who understood the business and appreciated what it was to have a force of workmen in such thorough harmony with the employer as ours now are. With the perfection to which we've at last brought our organization and policy, there should be no limit to our growth."
Floyd was so surfeited with this kind of talk that for once in his weariness he spoke out incautiously.
"Sometimes I don't feel so sure of the harmony," he said. "I find I don't harmonize with the Knights of Labor for a cent. I can worry along with the Affiliated, but when the 'parent organization,' as the Knights loves to call itself, makes demands on me, I object."
"What trouble has there been?" Colonel Halket asked.
"Oh, nothing much, and there won't be. A committee of the Knights waited on me to-day with the most preposterous demand I've ever had presented. It seems there's an old fellow named Tibbs, who's been with us more than twenty years; he was one of the last to join the union and he did it reluctantly. Some of those unwilling members the union is apparently trying to freeze out; anyway it looks as if they had it in for Tibbs. His
