Produced by Rick Niles, John Hagerson, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.
1906
In six minutes the noon whistle would blow. But the workmen—the sevenhundred in the Ranger-Whitney flour mills, the two hundred and fifty inthe Ranger-Whitney cooperage adjoining—were, every man and boy of them,as hard at it as if the dinner rest were hours away. On the threshold ofthe long room where several scores of filled barrels were being headedand stamped there suddenly appeared a huge figure, tall and broad andsolid, clad in a working suit originally gray but now white with theflour dust that saturated the air, and coated walls and windows bothwithin and without. At once each of the ninety-seven men and boys wasaware of that presence and unconsciously showed it by putting on extra"steam." With swinging step the big figure crossed the packing room. Thegray-white face held straight ahead, but the keen blue eyes paused uponeach worker and each task. And every "hand" in those two great factoriesknew how all-seeing that glance was—critical, but just; exacting, butencouraging. All-seeing, in this instance, did not mean merelyfault-seeing.
Hiram Ranger, manufacturing partner and controlling owner of theRanger-Whitney Company of St. Christopher and Chicago, went on into thecooperage, leaving energy behind him, rousing it before him. Many times,each working day, between seven in the morning and six at night, he madethe tour of those two establishments. A miller by inheritance andtraining, he had learned the cooper's trade like any journeyman, when hedecided that the company should manufacture its own barrels. He was not arich man who was a manufacturer; he was a manufacturer who wasincidentally rich—one who made of his business a vocation. He had notheories on the dignity of labor; he simply exemplified it, and wouldhave been amazed, and amused or angered according to his mood, had itbeen suggested to him that useful labor is not as necessary andcontinuous a part of life as breathing. He did not speculate and talkabout ideals; he lived them, incessantly and unconsciously. The talker ofideals and the liver of ideals get echo and response, each after hiskind—the talker, in the empty noise of applause; the liver, in thesilent spread of the area of achievement.
A moment after Hiram roused the packing room of the flour mill with