Free A Life Worth Living by Irene Brand Page B

It’s lonely eating alone. Consider it a return for all the things you did for me when I was in North Carolina.”
    “All right, I’ll accept your hospitality for one night. Now I want to know what you plan to do with the mill. It’s none of my business, but you asked me to alert you to any problems. Morgan is a problem.”
    “What is he doing or not doing? Do you think he’ll steal from me?”
    “Now, Dora, you know me well enough to realize that I won’t speculate on what might happen. At this point, I don’t know that Morgan is dishonest, but he is greedy. I suspect he’s purchasing things, like that new buggy, for his own benefit. He may have paid for the buggy with his own money, but I doubt it.”
    “I certainly didn’t authorize a new buggy for him.”
    “I could be wrong, but someone hinted to me that he used company money to buy it. He’s also sped up production, and since he’s being paid a percentage of the mill’s income, he’s increased the workload of the mill hands to make more money. They were already working long hours, and they’re mad about it. Besides that, he’s slow in authorizing necessary repairs to the company houses. For instance, part of the roof blew off the house where Kitty lives. He hasn’t ordered a repair order yet.”
    “Isn’t that the little crippled girl?”
    Allen nodded.
    “She’s been on my mind a lot. Father has a good friend who’s a surgeon here in the city. I’m sure he could easily repair the damage in her leg. I’d pay for it.”
    He nodded in agreement. “That’s the type of thing you should do for your workers and their families. Their homes need repair, and most of the managers haven’t been in any hurry to order the work done. It would be easy for you to sit here in luxury and not have any idea of the needs of your employees. My conscience wouldn’t let me rest until you knew what the situation is, so rather than writing a letter, I decided to notify you personally. But I’ve meddled all I intend to. I’ve told you about the situation—that’s all I can do. You’ll have to take it from here. I may be wrong, but I still believe that if you continue to leave everything in Morgan’s control, he’ll bankrupt you.”
    “I wouldn’t like that,” Dora agreed. “And I can already hear my father’s reaction. I can’t make decisions about the mill on the spur of the moment, though. If you’re going to leave tomorrow, let’s take a look at New York this afternoon. We’ll hire a carriage.”

seven
    After they’d traveled through the palatial districts of the city, which Allen admitted were quite impressive, he said to the driver, “Buddy, let’s take a look at the other face of New York. How about going down to the waterfront and to the ghettos? I’ve read the photo documentary How the Other Half Lives published by Jacob Riis. I’d like to see if his facts were true.”
    “I don’t own this rig, and I ain’t allowed to go certain places that you probably want to see,” the driver said. “But I can take you to some areas where you’ll get your eyes full.”
    Thanks to the driver, Allen had a tour of part of the sprawling city of New York. After an hour, he had seen enough to know that the reports he’d heard of the pressures caused by industrialization, sprawling urban cities, violent labor uprisings, economic depression, and fears of the middle classes in the cities were all true. He’d also witnessed firsthand the difference between his upbringing and Dora’s—seen enough to realize that if he’d ever harbored dreams that he and Dora could share a life, it was a false hope. He noticed more than one building that had the name Porter on it, and it was beyond his comprehension to understand how any one man could have so much money.
    Allen noticed that Dora had become quieter, but he couldn’t interpret the expression on her face as they spent the next two hours visiting parts of New York she probably hadn’t seen before.