The promoter had told a farmer that the lathe would do the work
of a hundred men, and the farmer had come into Joe's shop and repeated the
statement. It stuck in Joe's mind and he came to believe that the twelve
hundred dollars he had invested in stock had been used for the purchase of
the lathe. It was money he had earned in a long lifetime of effort and it
had now bought a machine that would do the work of a hundred men. Already
his money had increased by a hundred fold and he wondered why he could
not be happy about the matter. On some days he was happy, and then his
happiness was followed by an odd fit of depression. Suppose, after all,
the plant-setting machine wouldn't work? What then could be done with the
lathe, with the machine bought with his money?
One evening after dark and without saying anything to his wife, he went
down along Turner's Pike to the old factory at Pickleville where Hugh with
the half-wit Allie Mulberry, and the two mechanics from the city, were
striving to correct the faults in the plant-setting machine. Joe wanted
to look at the tall gaunt man from the West, and had some notion of
trying to get into conversation with him and of asking his opinion of the
possibilities of the success of the new machine. The man of the age of
flesh and blood wanted to walk in the presence of the man who belonged to
the new age of iron and steel. When he got to the factory it was dark and
on an express truck in front of the Wheeling Station the two city workmen
sat smoking their evening pipes.
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