Four Workers at the Door
The coal merchant stood at my gate, looking past me at the mare. He could not make me sell her for the pigment works' bill. Then our four workers came for their wages. New York, 1848: by evening, my daughter would watch a stranger lead the mare away.
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That spring, two partners and I filed a certificate with the county clerk to make blue pigment for cloth printers. We sent a duplicate to the secretary of state. We had formed a corporation without asking the legislature to grant us a charter of our own.
We paid in every dollar we had pledged as capital and recorded another certificate for that payment. I took both papers home. My wife read the company's name. I looked from the papers to the mare outside and told her a coal merchant could no longer demand the horse for a bill against the works. Our daughter asked if she could ride past the blue barrels when the next order was ready.
The next order was larger than any we had made. Four men ground color and filled barrels. We bought coal on credit. The cloth printer took the first shipment, then failed before paying for it. The vats cooled. There was no money for the men who had kept them burning.
On Saturday they came to our house. One held out a sheet with their hours. I asked them to wait while I found the law under which we had formed the company.
I had passed over one line. For wages owed to our laborers, it made us shareholders answerable ourselves. I read it twice, hoping I had mistaken the words. The coal merchant had gone home with a bill against the works. These men stood in my kitchen with a claim against me and my partners. I had shown my wife the wrong part of the paper.
My partners brought what they could. I could have asked the men to wait longer, but they had already given us their weeks. I sold the mare I had owned before there was a company. Then I counted the rest of the wages into four waiting hands.
My daughter watched the buyer lead her down the street. She stayed at the window long after they were gone.