They both looked up as J. Harker burst into the room. He was a short, squat, angry-looking man, a man who, a long time ago, had found out that the only way to get anything was to take it. He had br
ought himself up from nothing to owning the largest hop ranch in the world. He had fought every step of the way—even when there was no need for fighting, he had fought—and every punch he had taken had made him angrier.
“Look at this,” Harker said, holding out a letter toward Taylor. There were no preliminary courtesies of, good morning, nor even any acknowledgment of his daughter, merely the handing of the letter to Taylor, whom he, quite simply, thought was the smartest man on earth. Taylor’s illustrious family—albeit a penniless one—his education, his manners, his ease in society, were things that awed J. Harker.
Carefully blotting the corners of his lips, Taylor took the letter and read it.
“Well?” J. Harker demanded in his blunt way.
Taylor carefully folded the letter and took his time answering. The letter was from the governor of California, stating that he was afraid there might be labor trouble this year with the migrant workers who came to pick the hops. The ULW, the United Laborers of the World, were talking of coming to Kingman and seeing if they could get the laborers to strike against the hop growers and, since the Caulden ranch would be the first to be picked, the governor suspected the trouble would start there.
Taylor ignored J. Harker’s glaring and continued to give the matter some thought. This year hop prices were at rock bottom and the Caulden ranch was going to have to cut corners to make ends meet, and these cut corners would, no doubt, cause problems with those crazy labor leaders. But those men could be handled. Didn’t J. Harker contribute enough to the various causes in Kingman to be able to ask for a little protection from the sheriff and his deputies? Yes, the labor leaders could be dealt with.
It was the second part of the governor’s letter that bothered Taylor—and what was no doubt enraging J. Harker. The governor wanted to send some college professor, some man he’d just appointed Executive Secretary of Immigration and Migrant Labor, to Kingman to see if the professor could prevent any trouble. It would be all right, Taylor thought, if this man were stupid, but, somehow, Taylor doubted that he was. A Ph.D. in economics from Heidelberg University in Germany. No doubt this man had spent the last forty years of his life studying labor problems and had never been two miles off a college campus. No doubt he was all for the laborer and had never given a thought to the problems of the ranch owner, never considered the amount of money it cost to grow hops, just expected the “rich” owner to pay exorbitant wages to the “starving” pickers.
Taylor looked up at J. Harker. “Invite the man to come here,” he said.
“Here? To Kingman?” J. Harker’s face was getting red. He hated the concept of the government telling him how to run his ranch. It was his land, wasn’t it? And the pickers were free people, weren’t they? If they didn’t like what was going on, they could leave, yet the governor seemed to believe he had a right to tell J. Harker how to run his own ranch.
“No,” Taylor said, “I mean, invite him here to this house.” Before Harker could protest, Taylor continued. “Think about it. He’s a poor college professor, makes perhaps twenty-five hundred, three thousand a year. I wonder if he’s ever seen a ranch like this or visited a house like this. Bring him here now, weeks before the pickers arrive, and let him see that we aren’t monsters, let him see—” He broke off to turn his gaze on Amanda, who had put her hand out for the jam jar. “No,” he said simply, and Amanda withdrew her hand guiltily.
“A college professor?” J. Harker said. “Who’ll take care of the old guy? With the hops about ripe, I can’t spare a minute and I need you to—”
“Amanda,” Taylor said, making Amanda start.
She’d been only halfheartedly listening to the conversation since it didn’t pertain to her and now Taylor had caught her daydreaming.
“Amanda will entertain him,” Taylor said. “She can discuss several different aspects of economics with him and, if she doesn’t know enough, he can teach her. She can also show him Kingman. You can do that, can’t you, Amanda?”
Both Taylor and her father were staring at her with the intensity of hungry hawks watching a rabbit running across an open field. These were the two people she most wanted to please, but she knew she wasn’t very good with strangers. She didn’t meet too many people—rarely was meeting someone put on her schedule—and when she did, she didn’t have much to say to them. People didn’t seem to want to discuss what had made the Nile flood. They liked to talk of dances (something she’d never attended) and clothes (Taylor chose her clothes) and moving pictures (she’d never seen one) and baseball (never seen a game but she knew all the rules; she’d made 98 on that exam) and cars (she rarely went anywhere and then only with Taylor and a chauffeur, so she knew little about automobiles). No, she wasn’t good with strangers.
“Amanda?” Taylor said louder.
“Yes, I will try,” she said sincerely. Perhaps a college professor would be easier to talk to than other people.
“Good,” Taylor said and seemed disappointed in her hesitancy. He glanced at the tall clock at the end of the dining room. “You are three minutes off schedule. Now go and study.”
She rose immediately. “Yes, Taylor.” She glanced at her father. “Good morning,” she murmured before leaving the room.
Alone in her room, she sat down at her little desk, opened a drawer and took out her notes on French irregular verbs. At ten A.M. she worked on her essay on Puritan ethics. Twice she miswrote a word and had to start over again. Taylor insisted that each of her papers be in perfect form, with no errors.
At eleven A.M. Mrs. Gunston was waiting for her in a basement room. Amanda wore a blue serge gymnastic dress that reached only to mid-calf. Taylor had said this dress was necessary but he had designed a modest, long dress to be worn over it while Amanda walked down the back stairs—not the front stairs where she might be seen—to the basement.
For thirty minutes, Mrs. Gunston put Amanda through a rigorous program using heavy Indian clubs and weighted pulleys attached to the wall.
At 11:30, faint with hunger and fatigue, Amanda was allowed seventeen minutes in a tub full of cool water (Taylor said hot water aged a person’s skin). According to her usual schedules, then she had to dress, study for tomorrow’s exam and be at luncheon at one sharp.
But today was different.
When Mrs. Gunston appeared in Amanda’s room at 12:45 with a tray of food, Amanda was immediately concerned.
“What has happened to Mr. Driscoll?” she asked, fearing that only death could make Taylor upset the schedule.
“He is with your father,” Mrs. Gunston said, “and he has given you a new schedule.”
With her eyes wide in wonder, Amanda took the new schedule.
From 1:17 to 6:12 read the following: Veblen’s Instinct of Workmanship Hoxie’s Scientific Management Royce’s Philosophy of Loyalty Montgomery’s Labor and Social Problems