Quigg began by begging a ride in one of Tom's return carts, and
taking this opportunity to lay before the driver the enormity of
working for Grogan for thirty dollars a month and board, when
there were a number of his brethren out of work and starving who
would not work for less than two dollars a day if it were offered
them. It was plainly the driver's duty, Quigg urged, to give up
his job until Tom Grogan could be compelled to hire him back at
advanced wages. During this enforced idleness the Union would pay
the driver fifty cents a day. Here Quigg pounded his chest,
clenched his fists, and said solemnly, "If capital once downs the
lab'rin' man, we'll all be slaves."
The driver was Carl Nilsson, a Swede, a big, blue-eyed,
light-haired young fellow of twenty-two, a sailor from boyhood,
who three years before, on a public highway, had been picked up
penniless and hungry by Tom Grogan, after the keeper of a sailors'
boarding-house had robbed him of his year's savings. The change
from cracking ice from a ship's deck with a marlinespike, to
currying and feeding something alive and warm and comfortable, was
so delightful to the Swede that he had given up the sea for a
while. He had felt that he could ship again at anytime, the water
was so near. As the months went by, however, he, too, gradually
fell under the spell of Tom's influence.
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