"What you're doing in business I don't know." The old harness
maker stared at him for a minute and then went to his bench and to work.
"Business," he muttered, "what do I know about business? I'm a harness
maker, I am."
After Jim came to work for him, Joe made in one year almost twice the
amount he had lost in the failure of the plant-setting machine factory. The
money was not invested in stock of any factory but lay in the bank. Still
he was not happy. All day Jim Gibson, whom Joe had never dared tell the
tales of his triumph as a workman and to whom he did not brag as he had
formerly done to his apprentices, talked of his ability to get the best of
customers. He had, he declared, managed, in the last place he had worked
before he came to Bidwell, to sell a good many sets of harness as handmade
that were in reality made in a factory. "It isn't like the old times," he
said, "things are changing. We used to sell harness only to farmers or to
teamsters right in our towns who owned their own horses. We always knew the
men we did business with and always would know them. Now it's different.
The men now, you see, who are here in this town to work--well, next month
or next year they'll be somewhere else. All they care about you and me is
how much work they can get for a dollar. Of course they talk big about
honesty and all that stuff, but that's only their guff. They think maybe
we'll fall for it and they'll get more for the money they pay out.
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