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Updated: May 7, 2025
He stared at the machines, clicking busily against the wall. An idea began to form in his head. Helpless? Not quite. Not if the others could see it, go along with it. It was a repugnant idea. But there was one thing they could do that even Torkleson and his fat-jowled crew would understand. They could go on strike.
It'll tie the Robling office into granny knots, and scabs won't be able to get any more data out of the machines than Torkleson could. With a lawyer to handle injunctions, we've got them strapped." "For what?" asked the lawyer. Walter turned on him sharply. "For new contracts. Contracts to let us manage the company the way it should be managed.
Just a minor item, but it's a starter. We found it in Towne's desk, blueprints all ready, promotion all planned." "Good, good," Torkleson breathed. "I have a directors' meeting right now, have to get the workers quieted down a bit. You put the program through, and give those electronics men three more hours to unsnarl this knot, or we throw them out of the union." He started for the door.
Walter had fought it tooth and nail since the day Torkleson had installed the moose heads in Walter's old office, and moved him down to the cubbyhole, under Bailey's watchful eye. He had argued, and battled, and pleaded, and lost. He had watched the company deteriorate day by day. Now they blamed him, and threatened his job, and he was helpless to do anything about it.
He sat back smugly, his cheeks quivering with emotion. "You might say that I was a national leader in the movement. But I did it only for the men. The men want their dividends. They own the stock, stock is supposed to pay dividends." "But they're cutting their own throats," Walter wailed. "You can't build a company and make it grow the way I've been forced to run it." "Details!" Torkleson snorted.
The door burst open, and a lawyer stuck his head in. "What about those injunctions, Dan?" "Get them moving," Torkleson howled. "They'll start those machines again, or I'll have them in jail so fast " He turned back to Bailey. "What about the production lines?" The shop steward's face lighted. "They slipped up, there. There was one program that hadn't been coded into the machines yet.
At first until that fateful night when Daniel P. Torkleson of TWA and Jake Squill of Amalgamated Buttonhole Makers spent a long evening with beer and cigars in a hotel room, and floated the loan that threw steel to the unions. Oil had followed with hardly a fight, and as the unions began to feel their oats, the changes grew more radical. Walter Towne remembered those stormy days well.
The union boss's office was crowded with TV cameras, newsmen, and puzzled workmen. The floor was littered with piles of ominous-looking paper. Torkleson was shouting into a telephone, and three lawyers were shouting into Torkleson's ear. He spotted Bailey and waved him through the crowd into an inner office room. "Well? Did they get them fixed?" Bailey spread his hands nervously.
But since the switchover seven years ago, you and your board have forced me to play the cheap products for the quick profit in order to give your men their dividends. Now the bottom's dropped out. We couldn't turn a quick profit on the big, important accounts, so we had to cancel them. If you had let me manage the company the way it should have been run " Torkleson had been slowly turning purple.
"The electronics boys have been at it since yesterday afternoon. Practically had the machines apart on the floor." "I know that, stupid," Torkleson roared. "I ordered them there. Did they get the machines fixed?" "Uh well, no, as a matter of fact " "Well, what's holding them up?" Bailey's face was a study in misery. "The machines just go in circles. The circuits are locked. They just reverberate."
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