allowed my freight handlers to dictate to me whose freight they should handle. Those men courted discharge and they got it. Out they went and out they stay if I have to handle every pound of freight myself." There was dead silence a moment in the office. The committeemen stood uneasily before their old friend and chief; three of them looked as though they wished they hadn't come and wanted to quit, two were more determined. It was one of these who spoke. "Then, Mr. Williams, you refuse to listen to our appeal for justice!" Mr. Williams whirled around in his chair, sharply confronting the speaker; his clear blue eyes seemed to look him through and through, a flush almost of anger swept over his face a moment, and he waited before he spoke. He had picked up a ruler, and was lightly tapping the edge of the desk as he tilted back in his chair. "Your name is Stoltz, I believe. I refuse nothing of the kind, and you know it. I have listened with more patience than it deserved. None of these, the old hands, would have hinted at such a thing, and if they and their fellows will take the advice of a man they've known ten years to your ten months they'll not again be led by a word-juggler. Now if there's any other matter any of the rest of you wish to bring up," and here the Superintendent looked frankly around upon the anxious, almost crest-fallen faces of the other men, "I'll listen to you gladly, but you, Stoltz, have been far too short a time an employe of the road to presume to speak for those who have served it almost as long as I have." "Yes, and what have they got for it? Do they sit in a swell office, ride in parlor cars, drive fast horses, sport handsome clothes--" began Stoltz, sneeringly. "That's enough, Stoltz. They know that with a railway as with an army the men can't all be generals and colonels. Say to your friends, boys," he continued, in kindly tone, "that when they want anything of the road hereafter they'll be far more apt to get it by coming themselves than by sending Stoltz. That's all, then." "No, it isn't all!" declaimed Stoltz, angrily. "You haven't heard our side. If those three men ain't back in their places at twelve o'clock, we of the Switchmen's Union go out to a man," and the spokesman paused to let this announcement have its due effect. It had. "So far as one of the Union is concerned he goes out here and now, and that one," said Mr. Williams, "is yourself. The others will, I hope, think twice before they act." "You mean I'm discharged?" "On the spot," said Mr. Williams, "and there is the door."