John had not begun in the office.  On the contrary, during school vacations he worked as a puddler’s apprentice, as a molder’s apprentice, in the rail-shop, in the sheet-and wire-shops.  He worked with his hands, too, and drew his envelope on Saturday nights like the rest of them.  There was never any talk about John’s joining the union; the men looked upon his efforts good-naturedly and as a joke.  The father, with wisdom always at his elbow, never let the fishing trips go by.  John had his play.  At the age of twenty he knew as much about the manufacture of steel as the next one.  He loved the night shifts, when the whole place seethed and glowed like an inferno.  This manual education had done something else, too.  It had broadened his shoulders, deepened his chest, and flattened his back.  Many a time the old man used to steal out and watch the young Hercules, stripped to the waist, drag rails to the cooling-room.  When John entered college athletics he was not closely confined to the training-tables.

Under the guidance of such a father, then, there could not be as a result anything less than a thorough man.

On the following Monday morning succeeding the encounter with Bolles, John boarded a car and went out to the shops as usual.  He found nothing changed.  The clerks in the office were busy with huge ledgers, though it is true that many a hand was less firm than on ordinary days.  Rumors were flying about, from clerk to clerk, but none knew what the boss intended to do.  From the shops themselves came the roaring and hammering that had gone on these thirty years or more.  Bennington opened his mail and read each letter carefully.  There were orders for rails, wire rope and sheets for boilers.  The business of the concern always passed through his hands first.  Even when he was out of town, duplicates of all orders were sent to him.  He laid each letter in the flat basket; but this morning there was no “O.  K.—­J.  B.” scrawled across the tops.  There would be time enough for that later.  He rose and went to the window and looked down into the court.  His heart beat heavily.  There was something besides the possibility of a strike on his mind.  But he flung this thought aside and returned to the strike.  Was it right or was it wrong?  Should he follow out his father’s request, letter for letter?  To punish two or three who were guilty, would it be right to punish several hundred who were not?  And those clerks and assistants yonder, upon whom families depended, who had nothing to do with unionism, one way or the other, what about them?  Fate strikes blindly; the innocent fall with the guilty.  The analysis of his own desires was quick enough.  Surrender?  Not much!  Not an inch, not a tenth part of an inch, would he move.  If men permitted themselves to be sheep in the hands of an unscrupulous man, so much the worse.  He promised himself this much:  all those who appealed to him honestly, for these he would find employment elsewhere.  There were other mills and shops in town that would be glad enough to employ a Bennington man, which signified capability.