“I didn’t suppose that the work could have gone much faster,” replied the younger man, moodily. “Yes, we might have saved that much time easily in the cuts.” “Working by hand?” “Yes. My experience with this chap was up in New Jersey. The firm I was working for at the time was developing a big ice business up in the lakes in the northern part of the state. It was necessary to lay a few short lines of track to connect the different ice-houses with the main line, and I was given charge of it. I got my laborers--several hundred of them--from an Italian padrone in New York City. Neither myself nor my assistants spoke their language, of course, and, as it turned out, we didn’t think in their language either, for after two or three days they all walked out--to a man. I could do nothing with them. So I rang up the padrone and told him he would have to furnish a better lot than that. ‘But,’ said he, ‘I can’t let you have any more men.’ I asked him why not. ‘Because you don’t know how to handle them.’ That was a surprising sort of an answer, but I needed the laborers and I kept at him. Finally he said, ‘I’ll tell you what I will do. I will send you the men, but you must let me send a foreman with them, and you must agree to give all your instructions through that foreman.’ ‘All right,’ I replied, ‘send them along. If they do the work, I won’t bother them.’ “The next day, when I was at the office in Newark, one of my assistants called me up and told me it would be worth my while to come right out on the work. When I reached there, he met me and took me down the track to a deep cut where the force was at work. The laborers were placed just as I have placed our men lately, packed close together on terraces; and after I had watched for a moment it dawned on me that I had never seen Italians work so fast as those were working. ‘How did you do it?’ I asked. The assistant grinned, and advised me to watch the man at the top, and then I saw that a giant of an Italian was standing on the hill above the top terrace, where he could look down at the rows of laborers. He wore a long ulster, and kept his hands in his pockets. “Pretty soon a laborer down on the lowest terrace rested his pick against his knees and stood up to stretch. ‘Watch now!’ whispered my assistant. I looked up at the big man just in time to see him draw a stone out of his pocket--no pebble, mind you, but a jagged piece of road ballast--and throw it right at that laborer’s head. The fellow simply dodged it, seized his pick, and went to work harder than ever; and not another man stopped, even long enough to draw a good breath during the twenty minutes I stood there. Then the whistle blew, and as I was curious to see what would happen I waited.” “What did happen?” asked Young Van. “Nothing whatever, except that the laborers crowded around this foreman and seemed proud to get a word from him.” “But I don’t understand. What gave him such a hold over them?”