Page:The unhallowed harvest (1917).djvu/389

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384
THE UNALLOWED HARVEST

engaged in other occupations, many of them were still idle. It stood to reason that the old men, who were familiar with the plant and the machinery, could do much better and more profitable work than men who were new and untried. Indeed, that was already the experience of the management. Sound business judgment required the reëmployment of the old workmen. All this Westgate told the president of the company, and he told him more. He told him that the time for stubbornness and resentment had passed. That his men were human beings like himself. That he had no moral right to condemn them to poverty or chance employment simply to satisfy a grudge. That the time had come when charity for the weakness of others should be displayed, good feeling restored, and those friendly relations between capital and labor, which alone can ensure the prosperity of both, should be firmly reëstablished. And Westgate's counsel finally prevailed.

When it became known that Mr. Malleson was willing to let bygones be bygones, his old men came back to him, one by one, for he still refused to take them in a body, and were given their old places so far as that was practicable or possible. But Bricky Hoover did not come back. After the riot he had dropped out of sight. What had become of him no one knew. His tall and angular figure, crowned by the shock of dull red hair, was never again seen on the streets of the city.

Christ Church, too, pulled itself slowly out of the pit into which it had fallen. The resignation of the Reverend Robert Bruce Farrar as rector of the church was accepted without comment. No member of the vestry cared to criticize or condemn him further. So soon as his wife was able to travel he had gone away, to some out-of-the-way place in the far west it was said, where the calm serenity of Christ Church parish would never be disturbed by him again. Yet there were those who missed him; "sorrowing most of all . . . that they should see his face no more."