the hungerville mills company was one of the creations of the financial genius of van rensselaer senior; the mills had existed before, but they had been run by several rival companies, which were always at war with each other, with the consequence that their stock was a by-word among men. but one day a rumor went flying through wall street, and then the stocks of those companies began to climb the ladder two steps at a time. and when they had once risen they stayed risen, and stood before the world like prosperity upon a monument. robert van rensselaer had quietly secured a controlling interest in them; and a few weeks later their affairs were combined, and the career of the hungerville mills company began.

there was war, of course, from the very beginning, a war of rates that broke the[28] smaller mills by the dozen. the company nearly killed itself, and came still nearer to killing its employees. it ran for months at a loss, and on money furnished by the grim, far-seeing president; until at last came the time when the rivals went to smash, and afterward prices went soaring, and the hungerville company was safe.

the mill employees had helped to bear these trials; and so they afterward submitted a new schedule, asking twenty per cent raise. they got five per cent, and the world seemed rosy indeed. but very soon the price of steel billets, the standard of the wages, began to go down, as fast as the prices of all other steel things rose; and men noticed how the new tariff act made the duty on billets so very low, and wondered if the company had known anything about it.

it was several years after all this that there came the dreadful winter when the snow lay two feet deep in the streets, and the price of coal went five per cent higher a month; and then the hungerville company,[29] in the person of its new president, began to be pestered by delegations from this union and that union, a very annoying thing to the president, who was new at the business. no one must imagine, of course, that he was harsh in the matter. i might quote the experience of the good clergyman who had been persuaded by the unions to plead for them, and narrate how the president told him several capital stories, and finally begged off because he had an engagement to a poker party that night, and laughingly promised the clergyman all his winnings to help the poor along. and what could a good clergyman say to that—especially as mr. van rensselaer had only a few months ago donated to the same church a wonderful window representing the miracle of the loaves and fishes?