"Шервуд Андерсен. Белый бедняк (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

vastly independent. He had learned his trade after five years' service as
apprentice, and had spent an additional five years in going from place to
place as a journeyman workman, and felt that he knew his business. Also he
owned his shop and his home and had twelve hundred dollars in the bank. At
noon one day when he was alone in the shop, Tom Butterworth came in and
told him he had ordered four sets of farm work harness from a factory in
Philadelphia. "I came in to ask if you'll repair them if they get out of
order," he said.

Joe Wainsworth began to fumble with the tools on his bench. Then he turned
to look the farmer in the eye and to do what he later spoke of to his
cronies as "laying down the law." "When the cheap things begin to go to
pieces take them somewhere else to have them repaired," he said sharply. He
grew furiously angry. "Take the damn things to Philadelphia where you got
'em," he shouted at the back of the farmer who had turned to go out of the
shop.

Joe Wainsworth was upset and thought about the incident all the afternoon.
When farmer-customers came in and stood about to talk of their affairs
he had nothing to say. He was a talkative man and his apprentice, Will
Sellinger, son of the Bidwell house painter, was puzzled by his silence.

When the boy and the man were alone in the shop, it was Joe Wainsworth's
custom to talk of his days as a journeyman workman when he had gone from
place to place working at his trade. If a trace were being stitched or a
bridle fashioned, he told how the thing was done at a shop where he had
worked in the city of Boston and in another shop at Providence, Rhode
Island. Getting a piece of paper he made drawings illustrating the cuts of
leather that were made in the other places and the methods of stitching. He
claimed to have worked out his own method for doing things, and that his
method was better than anything he had seen in all his travels. To the
men who came into the shop to loaf during winter afternoons he presented
a smiling front and talked of their affairs, of the price of cabbage in
Cleveland or the effect of a cold snap on the winter wheat, but alone with
the boy, he talked only of harness making. "I don't say anything about it.
What's the good bragging? Just the same, I could learn something to all the
harness makers I've ever seen, and I've seen the best of them," he declared
emphatically.

During the afternoon, after he had heard of the four factory-made work
harnesses brought into what he had always thought of as a trade that
belonged to him by the rights of a first-class workman, Joe remained silent
for two or three hours. He thought of the words of old Judge Hanby and
the constant talk of the new times now coming. Turning suddenly to his
apprentice, who was puzzled by his long silence and who knew nothing of
the incident that had disturbed his employer, he broke forth into words.
He was defiant and expressed his defiance. "Well, then, let 'em go to
Philadelphia, let 'em go any damn place they please," he growled, and
then, as though his own words had re-established his self-respect, he
straightened his shoulders and glared at the puzzled and alarmed boy. "I