And when it comes to carpenter work, the CARPENTER decides what shall constitute a day's work. In olden times the clergymen, the lawyers, the rich, the lucky class in general, decided for THEMSELVES what THEY should do, and then they decided for their so-called inferiors what those INFERIORS should do. Our prosperous class are having a very painful time indeed getting into their minds the fact that such a thing as the right of the majority REALLY EXISTS. And they find it very hard indeed to believe that the doctrine of human equality is to be taken seriously in matters of business. Labor unions are performing an important educational function when they drive into the heads of these would-be superiors the fact that this nation is becoming actually a republic in which the workingmen shall decide for themselves questions affecting themselves, and in which they shall no longer be guided by the whims or financial interests of would-be "superiors." CATCHING A RED-HOT BOLT Men were working on the roof of a Pennsylvania ferryhouse, overhanging the North River on the Jersey side. The passengers on one of the big ferryboats watched with admiration the work of the fearless young mechanics. The men stood on a board not more than a foot wide. They had nothing to hold to. Sixty feet below them was a mass of rough piles. A misstep would have meant death. One of the men, standing perfectly at ease on his narrow ledge, swung a heavy sledge-hammer, while the other held in place the bolt to be driven home in the iron-work. ---- The work on that bolt was finished, and one of the young men, a wiry giant over six feet tall, picked up in his arms a small wooden keg which stood on the board beside him. It was a keg such as nails are packed in. About forty feet away from the bridge, up among the iron beams, a smith was at work heating the bolts red-hot. This smith saw the young man on the narrow board holding the wooden keg in his arms. He knew that another bolt was needed. The bolt, white-hot, was seized with a pair of tongs, thrown violently through the air, sending off a shower of white sparks as it went. As the white bolt shot toward the metal worker, he held out the wooden keg in a matter-of-fact way, caught the bolt, picked it out of the keg with a pair of pincers, and soon the heavy sledge- hammer was at work driving the metal, still white-hot, into the hole. ---- Passengers who make their living in a less exciting way watched with great excitement as one after another of these heavy red-hot bolts came flying through the air, each in its turn caught by the mechanic standing on the narrow board. If the bolt had struck or burned him, he must almost inevitably have fallen. He must have fallen had he made a misstep reaching out the wooden keg to catch the flying iron.