The men swayed restlessly, and then became still again when they saw that he was going to read something.

“I have here the last letter my father ever wrote me.  As I received it after his death, I might say that it is a voice from the grave.  I will read that part which affects the shops.

“’And so, my son, I leave you this last request.  Day after day, year after year, I have toiled honestly, with the will and the foresight God gave me.  I die prosperous and contented, having acquired my riches without ill to any and without obligation.  I have never wronged any man, though often the power to do so has been in my hands.  But reason always cools hot blood, and I have always kept a strong curb on all my angry impulses.  Some day the men will strike again, what about I know not; but this I do know:  it will be without justice.  I have bent to them nine out of ten times.  Nine of their demands were not wholly unreasonable, but the tenth was.  And this demand was that I should have no non-union men in the shops.  This strike lasted four months.  You will recall it.  I do not know how long it might have gone on, had not the poor devil, who was the cause of it, died.  I and the men came together again.  We patched up our differences, covertly, so to speak.  The men appeared at the gates one morning, and I let them in without referring by a single word to what had taken place.  The principle of unionism is a noble thing, but ignoble men, like rust in girders, gnaw rapidly into principles and quickly and treacherously nullify their good.

“’The destroyer is everywhere.  The apple has its worm, the rose its canker, the steel its rust.  It is the ignorant and envious man who misuses power that, rightly directed, moves toward the emancipation of the human race.  There are cruel and grasping and dishonest employers, who grind the heart and soul out of men.  The banding together of the laboring men was done in self-defense; it was a case of survive or perish.  The man who inaugurated unionism was a great philanthropist.  The unions began well; that is because their leaders were honest, and because there was no wolf in the fold to recognize the extent of power.  It was an ignorant man who first discovered it, and for the most part ignorance still wears the crown and holds the scepter.  The men who put themselves under the guidance of a dishonest labor leader are much to be pitied.  The individual laboring man always had my right hand, but I have never had any particular reason to admire the union leader.

“’There were two hundred and twelve strikes last year, of which only six had cause.  The others were brought about by politicians and greedy unions.  Dishonesty finds the line of least resistance in greed.  Now, I have studied the strike problem from beginning to end.  There can be no strike at the Bennington shops for a just cause.  Had I lived long enough, the shops would have been open-shop.  My son, never surrender once to injustice, for if you do you will