It humiliated him.

He felt it to be a reflection upon his system of management, upon his ability to lead and control, indeed, upon his personality.

But, more than all, it grieved him to feel that he had lost that sense of comradeship which for forty years he had been able to preserve with those who toiled with him in a common enterprise.
A sense of loneliness fell upon him.

Like many a man, self-made and self-sufficing, he craved companionship which his characteristic qualities of independence and strength seemed to render unnecessary and undesired.

The experience of all leaders of men was his, for the leader is ever a lonely man.
This morning the reports he had just received convinced him that a strike with his workers would not long be delayed.