The Hungerville Mills Company was one of the creations of the financial genius of van Rensselaer senior; the mills had existed before, but they had been run by several rival companies, which were always at war with each other, with the consequence that their stock was a by-word among men. But one day a rumor went flying through Wall Street, and then the stocks of those companies began to climb the ladder two steps at a time. And when they had once risen they stayed risen, and stood before the world like prosperity upon a monument. Robert van Rensselaer had quietly secured a controlling interest in them; and a few weeks later their affairs were combined, and the career of the Hungerville Mills Company began.  
There was war, of course, from the very beginning, a war of rates that broke the[28] smaller mills by the dozen. The company nearly killed itself, and came still nearer to killing its employees. It ran for months at a loss, and on money furnished by the grim, far-seeing president; until at last came the time when the rivals went to smash, and afterward prices went soaring, and the Hungerville Company was safe.
 
The mill employees had helped to bear these trials; and so they afterward submitted a new schedule, asking twenty per cent raise. They got five per cent, and the wor............