CHAPTER XXII

THE FIGHT

With a reunited board behind her and canny Macon Hammerly to advise with, it might seem at the rising of the curtain on Ethel Clayton’s régime as _de facto_ manager of the Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing Company that her course would be along pleasant paths.

Instead she very soon found that she was walking over burning plowshares.

That Grandon Fuller was beaten in his control of the board of directors did not make him amenable to the new policies of the Hapwood-Diller Company and the reign of a girl as manager of the business.

He boldly stated that he considered the knell of the company had rung because of the situation in the offices. If a full-grown man like Jim Mayberry could not handle the business so as to make a profit, how could a girl be expected to do so?

That Mr. Fuller’s intention was still to discourage the small stockholders so that he could buy up their holdings at a low price and finally control the corporation, could not be overlooked. Yet he was careful to do nothing now that would give Hammerly a legal hold on him.

Mayberry was out of it, or so it seemed. He went to work for the Mailsburg Addition Real Estate Company, of which Mr. Fuller was known to be the backer. It was a good deal of a come-down for Jim Mayberry.

On that wonderful day when Hammerly had carried his point and had given the welfare of the business into Ethel’s hands, the foremen of the shops had been called in before the board and the situation explained to them.

They were not asked to express their opinion of Jim Mayberry’s oversight of the factory, nor to explain their own apparent shortcomings and the failure of their several shops to keep up to the standard of output established by Mr. Barton.

Merely they were asked if they would be loyal to the corporation, and if they were willing to work in harmony with Ethel Clayton until such time as a general superintendent could be found to take Mayberry’s place. These questions brought enthusiastic and unanimous affirmative responses.

But a willingness upon the part of all the hands was not all that was needed. When a manufacturing plant, either in its mechanical part or in its working force, has been allowed to deteriorate, it is uphill work to get it back on a firm foundation.

Ethel felt that with the good teamwork of the office force which she could depend upon, her burden at that end would be light. In the factory administration lay her difficult problem.

She depended on Benway Chase in no inconsiderable degree, as she knew he had gained a working knowledge of the factory affairs. Benway had continued to make himself acquainted with practical things and much shoplore. The foremen liked him, too, and would discuss things with the young fellow that they might have been chary of talking over with “the lady boss,” as they began to call her.

There was not an ounce of business jealousy in Ethel Clayton’s makeup. She gave Benway all the encouragement possible, and after the first two weeks she reported to the board that she could not possibly carry on the work at all were it not for Benway, or somebody equally efficient and willing in his stead.

Since the news of the air raid on the American camp in France, Benway had been even gentler and more considerate of Ethel than before; but there was, too, a certain aloofness in his manner which the girl quite understood.

He had captured Ethel’s secret. His own love for her had given him an immediate key to her emotion when she first saw the headlines spread over the news sheet. Frank Barton’s peril had caused her to betray her feeling for him to the love-sharpened vision of Benway.

Since that time no news save that he was still missing had come of Frank Barton. It was well Ethel’s mind was so filled with business matters and that her every waking hour was occupied by the affairs of the Hapwood-Diller Company. She had no opportunity of dwelling in thought upon that line in the casualty list that had not been explained: “_Lieut. F. Barton, Field Artillery, missing_.”

When the clergyman prayed on Sunday for those who had gone “over there” to fight in their country’s cause, Ethel thought of but one person. It seemed to her as though the whole war--the fate of a worldwide democracy--was as nothing compared to the mystery of what had happened to Frank Barton.

She was not alone in this desire to know the fate of the general manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company. Mrs. Trevor came more than once to discuss the mystery with her. She began to learn how many friends Frank Barton really had in Mailsburg. His cheerful, kindly spirit had won him a following of which any man might feel proud.

Mr. Macon Hammerly had used his influence to make inquiry. But the War Department, like most large bodies, moves slowly. The questions from Lieutenant Barton’s friends were not the only fear-fraught queries that must be answered.

Nobody in Mailsburg, it seemed, had heard from any of the town’s sons who had gone to France when Barton went. The boys drafted from the town were still in the training camps on this side of the water. As far as Ethel could learn no one had heard directly from Morrison Copley or Charles Bradley since that tragic happening.

Ethel’s pillow was often wet at night because of Frank Barton’s fate; but by day the business difficulties that faced her held her mind in thrall. She began to appreciate more than ever before what Barton himself had gone through when he had first taken hold of the job of putting the Hapwood-Diller Company on a paying basis.

And she had problems to solve that Barton had not been obliged to consider. In two years and a half circumstances had greatly changed. The labor situation was one of the hardest of Ethel’s enigmas.

Besides the hundred or more men who had been drafted from the shops, and others who had enlisted, many of the best mechanics had gone away to work in munition plants where the wages were vastly higher than the Hapwood-Diller Company could afford to pay.

This had brought into the shops a class of workmen who were not, to say the least, high grade. There was unrest among them, too. Having no feeling of loyalty for the corporation, these new workmen were really a menace to the peaceful conduct of the business.

Little troubles rose almost daily, many of which could not be settled by the shop foremen. After all, the absence of a strong hand over the factory as a whole, began to be felt. And Ethel realized this lack quite as soon as anybody.

With the old hands she would have had some personal influence. With the new workmen--many of them foreigners--she could do little.

Jim Mayberry was a burly man, and not afraid to “bawl a man out” if occasion arose. If he threatened to knock a man down he looked as though he could do it. That may not be the most approved way of keeping a lot of unruly workmen in order; but it is often efficacious.

Benway Chase could merely be Ethel’s errand boy. Benway felt his limitations keenly. “If I only had a good right arm!” he groaned more than once.

“No use worrying about that, Bennie,” she said. “We must find some way to manage besides knocking their heads together. There are only a few who make trouble. Don’t you think we can get rid of them?”

But labor was so scarce and the factory was so crowded with orders that she shrank from such a drastic course. She had an intuitive feeling, too, that the discharge of certain trouble-makers would bring other trouble-makers to the surface.

More than once she was stopped in front of the office or on her way home by some worker grown bold by the changed condition of affairs.

“What about more wages, Miss?” one burly man asked her, quite abruptly. “If wages don’t go up soon, I quit.”

“Everything is so high, my wife says I’ve got to earn more,” was what a tall, thin workman told her right in front of her own home. And two days later both of these men demanded their time and left.

“It sure is getting worse every day,” was the way Benway Chase put it. “I don’t see how it’s going to end.”

“Maybe we’ll have to shut down,” Ethel answered.

“Oh, you don’t mean that!”

“No, I don’t. But there is no telling what will happen,” said the girl, soberly.

She felt that poison was seeping into the working force from without. Nothing she could say or do would stop it. The foremen admitted that the tone of the shops had entirely changed. If they were able to get a fair day’s work turned out they were doing well. And many of the men did their stint grudgingly.

The wages of all the hands had been advanced twice since Frank Barton had first taken hold of the corporation. Had business remained good and profits increased, it had been his intention, Ethel knew, to ask the board of directors for another advance at the end of the third year.

But with affairs in the mess they were--a quarterly dividend passed and the output decreased--there would be no hope of following out this intention of the absent general manager.

Many factories in neighboring towns had turned to war work of one kind or another. But the machinery of the Hapwood-Diller Company, built for special need, could not be used on any war work that Ethel had ever yet heard of.

The factory of the defunct Bogata Company was being used for munition work. People from Mailsburg were flocking to Norville, attracted by the high wages. One by one the Hapwood-Diller Company’s best workmen left and went to work at the Norville plant.

Ethel’s report to the board was sure to be a report of failure. She realized that she did not measure up to the demands of her position. To claim she was helpless would not absolve her from the fact she was a failure. That could not be cloaked.

This was her job. She had accepted it. If she could not make good she should give it up. She began to feel that Ethel Clayton might be a good enough hack; but she lacked the ability necessary to carry her to the front in the business race. She was away back in the ruck.

These were her feelings and meditations one evening when, after the others had gone, she still remained in the office, as she often did.

Her work for the day was done. Hours of consideration, it seemed, would not aid her in making the figures on the credit side of the ledger add up to a larger sum than the figures on the debit side.

She stood with her back to her desk, hands gripping its edge, her eyes emptily staring at the wall. Her mental vision was alert, not her physical.

If Frank Barton could only return! If he would only walk in at that door--just to advise with her, to hearten her, to suggest to her agitated mind some scheme by which she might put life into this business.

Would she ever see him again now that he had marched away? Her mind pictured the marching past of that host of high-hearted men and boys, bound for a foreign shore from which many necessarily would never return. And it seemed Frank Barton was one of the very first to be lost to the knowledge of his friends--lost to those who loved him!

The outer door banged open heavily. She knew John Murphy had not yet gone home, and she looked up expecting to see his grizzled visage.

Instead it was the sharp and eager features of Mabel Skinner. The younger girl came in like a whirlwind.

“Oh, Ethel! Miss Clayton!” she gasped. “Guess!”

“Guess what?”

“Guess what I just heard down at Rhyncamp’s store! That Marble girl was there! You know--the Marbles who live right next to the Fuller house.”

“I know. What of it?” asked Ethel, excited, though she did not know why she should be.

“She’s chums with that Fuller girl. You know--Grandon Fuller’s daughter Helen. She went to France to join the Red Cross.”

Ethel’s clasped hands showed her interest. She could not speak. Her eyes searched the vivid face of Little Skinner pleadingly.

“The Marble girl’s just got a letter from Helen Fuller. I heard her tell Mr. Rhyncamp. Miss Fuller is nursing in a hospital over there somewhere. She says her very first patient was Mr. Barton. He ain’t dead, then, Miss Clayton! He ain’t dead! He’s only wounded! Oh, Miss Clayton!”