“Not at all. It was this. We got a man in our employ--one of our best hands--an Irishman of the name of O'Day--who's been with us ever since we started manufacturing. You know, when we first went into business, we simply jobbed. We didn't begin to manufacture till '76. Well, that man, O'Day, a year or two ago, he contracted a kind of a nervous disease, which makes it impossible for him to do his work when the other workmen are around. He can work perfectly well alone; but in the room with the others, he gets excited, and loses his head, and can't take a stitch. At the same time, he's got a family to support. So we've given him a machine, and we allow him to do his work in his own home. Well, sir, the men, they're dead set against tenement-house labor; and they wanted us to discharge O'Day. We wouldn't. It struck us as such a dirty mean thing to do, that we made up our minds the Lord would punish us, if we did it. We made up our minds that if we did that, we'd deserve to have bad luck right along. So we told the men we wouldn't. We told them that we'd rather shut down and go out of the trade, than discharge O'Day--which was the fact. We said we'd always been a prosperous house; and that we believed we owed our prosperity chiefly to the fact that we'd never done any thing to offend the Lord. We said that right out. And we said also that if any other man in our employ should get in the same box, we'd treat him the same way. Well, as I say, the men, they thought it over, and they concluded that we were in the right.” “Yes, sir,” added Mr. Blum, “we believe in treating our hands like feller-beings. I was a hand myself, already. Dot's a great advaintage. We don't go on the American plan, and treat them like machines.” “Now, don't you get started on that subject,” cried Mr. Koch. “There's nothing he's so prejudiced about, as every thing American. I'm an Americain We're all Americans. The Americans are the grandest people on the face of the earth.” “I don't see how you make dot out,” retorted Mr. Blum.