In a Little Town

copic care. Wages must be kept down; hours kept up; the workers driven every minute, fined if they were late, nagged if they dawdled. Profit could be wrung from the trade only by ugly battle

t debts, but lenient as a collector. The rest of his inheritance fared no better. Eddie was an ideal mortgagee. The first widow wept him out of

mark. Eddie overheard such comment eventually, and it wounded him as deeply as it bewildered him. Bitterer than the contempt

im. They had sat up nights devising schemes to gain cash for him. He was a cause of industry and thrift and self-denial. He paid poor wages, but he kept the factory going. He squeezed a penny until the eagle screamed, but he made

l man he succeeded. He increased the wages and cut down the hours, and found that he had diminished the output of everything except complaints. The men

hat virtue may prove vicious in effect; and viciousne

e people of Carthage-the sort of attention that people on shore devote

dding, but she soon grew genuinely glad that Eddie had