“I don’t understand none of them big words,” Joe finally confessed. “But so far as us working folks is concerned, the situation is just this: Your boy Nat knows how to run this business better’n you. And until he comes back, we don’t care about working.” This was flat and frank. Johnathan was angrily jolted. “If that’s the way you feel about it, you’ll never come back,” he roared. “I ain’t so sure about that.” “You mean you’ll dictate to me how to run my own business?” “No, but I reckon we got something to say about who’ll fill our jobs.” “I’ll hire other people to take your places——!” “Why ain’t you hired ’em already?” “Because I wanted to be fair and square——” “Oh, hell! You ain’t been able to get nobody to take our places! And you won’t be able to get nobody so long’s Nat stays away. We’re seein’ to that.” “You mean you’ll intimidate any persons I may hire in your places?” “We’ll knock the blocks off any one who takes a job here while we’re out. Yes!” “You get out of my office!” “Surest thing you know!” Johnathan held out for nine days. “I’m too nervously constituted to handle such cheap humanity as factory help,” he explained stiffly to Nathan the evening of the ninth day. “I’m not giving in, understand, or admitting you’re anything but a bumptious, swelled-headed boy. But I want you to go back upstairs and get those orders off—somehow! It’s only because I haven’t the patience and time to give to the manufacturing end that I’m temporarily sacrificing my principles——” “The piece rate stands, Pa?” “For the present, yes! When I’ve had time to study into it, we’ll go into conference over it.” “All right—if you’ll promise to keep hands off, I’ll try to get the wheels turning once more. But, Pa!” “Well?” “I’m getting kind of sick working here for next to nothing. I want to go down on the books for twenty dollars a week.” “Twenty dol——” Johnathan nearly fell on his forehead. “Twenty dollars, yeah!” “Not a measly penny! You’re having two whole dollars a week now to squander——” “I’m filling a superintendent’s job here that couldn’t be filled by any one else short of thirty. I’ll pay board at home. But I want what I’m worth and I’m not a bit unreasonable to ask it.” They compromised on twelve dollars. The box-shop “help” trooped back exultantly. Nat knew how to handle human nature. The peak of production was regained in a single afternoon. Outside, the labor differences at the Forge plant were colloquially known as “the box-shop strike.” But Johnathan would have had an arm torn out before he would have admitted any strike. His boy had simply “poisoned the minds” of the help against his own father and they had refused to work.