For a time Jim made it a practice to come to where Joe stood at work at his bench and consult with him regarding prices to be charged for work. Then he returned to the customer and charged more than Joe had suggested. After a few weeks he slopped consulting Joe at all. “You're no good,” he exclaimed, laughing. “What you're doing in business I don't know.” The old harness maker stared at him for a minute and then went to his bench and to work. “Business,” he muttered, “what do I know about business? I'm a harness maker, I am.” After Jim came to work for him, Joe made in one year almost twice the amount he had lost in the failure of the plant-setting machine factory. The money was not invested in stock of any factory but lay in the bank. Still he was not happy. All day Jim Gibson, whom Joe had never dared tell the tales of his triumph as a workman and to whom he did not brag as he had formerly done to his apprentices, talked of his ability to get the best of customers. He had, he declared, managed, in the last place he had worked before he came to Bidwell, to sell a good many sets of harness as handmade that were in reality made in a factory. “It isn't like the old times,” he said, “things are changing. We used to sell harness only to farmers or to teamsters right in our towns who owned their own horses. We always knew the men we did business with and always would know them. Now it's different. The men now, you see, who are here in this town to work--well, next month or next year they'll be somewhere else. All they care about you and me is how much work they can get for a dollar. Of course they talk big about honesty and all that stuff, but that's only their guff. They think maybe we'll fall for it and they'll get more for the money they pay out. That's what they're up to.”