“It is better for you to stay here and wait for good times to come again. Hang on to your home, and if in a few months or a few years the mills begin booming again you will be secure for life. But if the iron industry doesn't revive, give up that trade and find other work here. If necessary go out and work on a farm, for the farming industry will always have to be carried on.” Father saw the force of our argument. So he stayed and kept his home. He has it to-day. But if he had wandered around as millions of us did in those hard days he would surely have lost it. This was my first little attempt to work out an economic problem. I had studied all the facts and then pronounced my judgment. It proved right, and so I learned that in my small way I had a head for financiering. This encouraged me, for it taught me that the worker can solve part of his problems by using his head. The fear of ending in the poor-house is one of the terrors that dog a man through life. There are only three parts to the labor problem, and this is one of them. This fear causes “unrest.” This unrest was used by revolutionists to promote Bolshevism which turns whole empires into poor-houses. Such a “remedy,” of course, is worse than the disease. I think I know a plan by which all workers can make their old age secure. I will go into it more fully in a later chapter. CHAPTER XX. THE RED FLAG AND THE WATERMELONS I have said that the labor problem has three parts. I call them (1) Wages, (2) Working Conditions and (3) Living Conditions. By living conditions I mean the home and its security. My father had reached the stage where this was the problem that worried him. He was growing old and must soon cease working. But his home was not yet secure and he was haunted with the fear that his old age might be shelterless. We told him not to worry; the Davis boys were many and we would repay him for the fatherly care he had given us. But he was a proud man (as all muscular men are), and he could find no comfort in the thought of being supported by his sons. I am glad he never had to be. Independence has made his old age happy and he has proved that a worker, if he keeps his health, can provide for his old age and bring up a big family too.