The worship of the golden calf: A story of wage-slavery in MassachusettsFrench, Charles Sheldon
General
The worship of the golden calf: A story of wage-slavery in Massachusetts
French, Charles Sheldon
Massachusetts -- Fiction; Mills and mill-work -- Fiction; Political fiction
“Wild flowers, pop. Please hold up, and let me get some.” The boy
soon returned to the carriage, with his hands full of the blossoms
of the coltsfoot, white, blue, and yellow violets, bell-flowers, and
wake-robins. As they ascended the mountains, they found the trailing
arbutus and the spring-beauty, which had bloomed earlier in the valleys.
A beautiful farm was reached.
“Who owns this?” asked Mrs. Wycliff.
“Thomas Bothan. He has retired from business, and spends some of his
time here. I hope I may find him.” Then, for the first time, he told
his wife of the last day at Beauna Vista,--how Sharp and Bothan had
conspired to keep back a part of his wages on Bothan’s old debt. He had
not dared to tell her at the time.
He soon found Mr. Bothan.
“I want a receipt in full,” he said, as he produced the money due
Bothan, and then, taking leave of him, he added:--“The last debt I owe
will be paid to-day, and I have paid every debt as fast as I was able
to do so. You would have received yours just as promptly, had you not
tried to take the bread away from my family to get it.”
For a distance their route lay through a grand old forest of large
trees. The boy was jubilant as he saw, first a striped squirrel, then a
red one, then a gray, and then:--
“Oh, look quick, pop; what was that? It looked like a squirrel, but it
flew, or rather it sailed, from one tree to another.”
“A flying squirrel.”
“And there’s a rabbit. Oh, now I begin to see why you call this God’s
country.”
About noon they reached their destination, the farm of Phillips Porter,
in Sprucemont, where they were expected, and where a substantial meal
was awaiting them.
“You have been very patient with me,” said Wycliff, as he paid Porter
about one hundred dollars, the last debt he owed. Mr. Porter told again
to-day, (and he seemed to enjoy telling it,) the story of how he came
to leave Papyrus.
“It was many years ago, and Mack Baldwin, father of the present
generation of paper-makers, was in control, although Zechariah and
David were young men then, just learning the business. The Baldwins
were not then so completely in control of the town of Papyrus as they
are now. Captain Bolton Wesson, who built the paper-mills at Papyrus
Center, was a broader and better man than Mack Baldwin, and the two
were often opposed to one another in town-affairs.
“Captain Wesson wanted the town-hall located at the Center, the natural
and proper place for it, but Mack Baldwin demanded that it be built at
the West End, the part of the town which he owned. At the approaching
town-meeting, every employee of Mack Baldwin was warned to vote for
locating the hall at the West End. At the town-meeting Baldwin had
spotters to take the names of any of his employees who voted against
him. I was working in his mill then, but I voted for building the hall
at the Center. Next morning I was called into the mill-office, where
I met Mack Baldwin and his sons, Zechariah and David. David is the
present Congressman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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