ST ee ee OE aT SSM 
THE HIRED MAN 27 
farm is due to their personal interest, steadiness 
of purpose, and cheerful optimism. 
William Thompson, forty-six years of age, tall, 
lean, wiry, had been a farmer all his life. His 
wife had died three years before, and a year 
later, he had lost his farm through an imperfect 
title. Understanding machinery and being a fair 
carpenter, he then came to the city, with $200 in 
his pocket, joined the Carpenter’s Union, and 
tried to make a living at that trade. Between 
dull. business, lock-outs, tie-ups, and strikes, he 
was reduced to fifty cents, and owed three 
dollars for room rent. He was in dead earnest 
when he threw his union card on my table and 
'said ¢ 
«I. would rather work for fifty cents a day on 
a farm than take my chances for six times as 
much in the union.” 
This was the sort of man I wanted: one who 
had tried other things and was glad of a chance 
to return to the land. Thompson said that after. 
he had spent one lonesome year in the city, he 
had married a sensible woman of forty, who was 
now out at service on account of his hard luck. 
He also told of a husky son of two-and-twenty 
who was at work ona farm within fifty miles 
of the city. I liked the man from the first, for 
he seemed direct and earnest. I told him to eat. 
= up the fifty cents he had in his pocket and to 
see me at noon of the following day. Meantime 
I looked up one of his references; and when he 
