From the day when the thing was decided on, no grass grew under anybody's feet. There was sand along that bucolic and undeveloped river bank, sand that ran well back, getting more and more like loam as you left the river. It was broken and uneven. The freshets of centuries had left hollows here and hummocks there. They were levelled. The knolls--dunes they would call them along Lake Michigan--were scraped down and dumped into the swales, and the excess was thrown into a sedgy morass along the river front, to make it into solid ground and give a clean, healthy shore, which is now one of the chief charms of the place. For the sections where grass was meant to grow--for dooryards and the like--tons upon tons of "top soil" were brought in to give a fertile surface. The mill buildings went up first, on a broad space of one hundred acres levelled off for them, and then the town began to grow. That was sixteen years ago, and it has kept on growing. Every year sees a lot of new houses, of various values, and one and all well built and comely. And in all grades they are better houses than a workman, or a mill boss either, can get anywhere else in America for the same money. [Sidenote: TO MAKE A PROFIT BUT TO SHOW A SAVING] That has been the doctrine from the beginning. Charles G. Roebling said at the time something to the effect that every workingman was a free moral agent, and didn't want to be tied to anybody's apron-strings, that he wanted a square deal and a chance to live his own life out of business hours, and to get the worth of his money when he spent it. "We purpose," he said, "to make a fair profit on our investment, but we can do that and still show a man a saving. And we stop there." It doesn't take long to realize that the Roeblings are living up to the original schedule. The rents, the figures on all sorts of commodities at the "village store," which sells everything from a pork chop to a piano, and the drug store, which is just as "Riker-Hegeman" as any live town could wish, are all below the current price scale in the rest of the country, by a margin sufficient to mean something to a family when they "tote up" at the year's end. Electric light, coal and the other things a man has to pay for in any town are charged for here, but it doesn't take a legislative fight or a big row in the newspapers to keep the price down where a man can afford to pay it. Water is supplied free. The idea is that the man owes the company nothing but good work in return for his pay. After quitting time he's his own boss. The company tries to make life in the town pleasant enough so that he'll be glad to live there, and think he has a good job. And it recognizes that life has many sides. [Sidenote: AND THE TOWN HAD A BAR]