Then, when a certain quantity
was ready, they would be cast one after another into that trough of
smooth poles which pitched sharply down from the heart of his timber
to the river. One after another they would gather way, slipping down,
faster and faster, to dive at last with a great splash into the
stream, to accumulate behind the confining boom-sticks until they were
rafted to the mill, where they would be sawn into thin sheets to make
tight roofs on houses in distant towns. And for the sweat that labor
with axe and saw wrung from his body, and for the directing power of
his brain, he would be rewarded with money which would enable him to
satisfy his needs. For the first time in his life Hollister perceived
both the complexity and the simplicity of that vast machine into which
modern industry has grown. In distant towns other men made machinery,
textiles, boots, furniture. On inland plains where no trees grew, men
sowed and reaped the wheat which passed through the hands of the
miller and the baker and became a nation's daily bread. The axe in his
hand was fashioned from metallic ore dug by other men out of the
bowels of the earth.
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