A Life's Secret Part 20

'Hold there,' cried Sam Shuck, who had not brooked the interruption patiently. 'Just tell us, old White, before you go on, whether coercion answers for British workmen?'

'It does not,' replied the old man, lifting his quiet voice to firmness.

'But perhaps you will tell me in your turn, Sam Shuck, whether it's likely to answer for masters?'

'It _has_ answered for them,' returned Sam, in a tone of irony. 'I _have_ heard of back strikes, where the masters were coerced and coerced, till the men got all they stood out for.'

'And so brought down ruin on their own heads,' returned the old man, shaking his. 'Did you ever hear of a lock-out, Shuck?'

'Ay, ay,' interposed quiet, respectable Robert Darby. 'Did you ever hear of that, Slippery Sam?'

Slippery Sam growled. 'Let the masters lock-out if they dare! Let 'em.

The men would hold out to the death.'

'And death it will be, with some of us, if the strike comes, and lasts.

I came down here to-night, on my son's arm, just for your good, my friends, not for mine. At your age, I thought as some of you do; but I have learnt experience now. I can't last long, any way; and it's little matter to me whether famine from a strike be my end, or----'

'Famine' derisively retorted Slippery Sam.

'Yes, famine,' was the quiet answer. 'Strikes never yet brought nothing but misery in the end. Let me urge upon you all not to be led away. My voice is but a feeble one; but I think the Lord is sometimes pleased to show out things clearly to the aged, almost as with a gift of prophecy; and I could only come and beseech you to keep upon the straight-forrard path. Don't have anything to do with a strike; keep it away from you at arm's length, as you would keep away the evil one.'

'What's the good of listening to him?' cried Slippery Sam, in anger. 'He is in his dotage.'

'Will you listen to me then?' spoke up Peter Quale; 'I am not in mine. I didn't intend to come here, as may be guessed; but when I found so many of you bending your steps this way to listen to Slippery Sam, I thought it time to change my mind, and come and tell you what _I_ thought of strikes.'

'_You!_' rudely replied Slippery Sam. 'A fellow like you, always in full work, earning the biggest wages, is sure not to favour strikes. You can't be much better off than you are.'

'That admission of yours is worth something, Slippery Sam, if there's any here have got the sense to see it,' nodded Peter Quale. 'Good workmen, on full wages, _don't_ favour strikes. I have rose up to what I am by sticking to my work patiently, and getting on step by step. It's open to every living man to get on as I have done, if he have got skill and pluck to work. But if I had done as you do, Sam, gone in for labour one day and for play two, and for drinking, and strikes, and rebellion, because money, which I was too lazy to work for didn't drop from the skies into my hands, then I should just have been where you be.'

'Is it right to keep a man grinding and sweating his life out for ten hours a-day?' retorted Sam. The masters would be as well off if we worked nine, and the surplus men would find employment.'

'It isn't much of your life that you sweat out, Sam Shuck,' rejoined Peter Quale, with a cough that especially provoked his antagonist. 'And, as to the masters being as well off, you had better ask them about that.

Perhaps they'd tell you that to pay ten hours' wages for nine hours'

work would be the hour's wage dead loss to their pockets.'

'Are you rascal enough to go in for the masters?' demanded Sam, in a fiery heat. 'Who'd do that, but a traitor?'

'I go in for myself, Sam,' equably responded Peter Quale. 'I know on which side my bread's b.u.t.tered. No skilful workman, possessed of prudent thought and judgment, ever yet went blindfold into a strike. At least, not many such.'

Up rose Robert Darby. 'I'd just say a word, if I can get my meaning out, but I'm not cute with the tongue. It seems to me, mates, that it would be a great boon if we could obtain the granting of the nine hours'

movement; and perhaps in the end it would not affect the masters, for they'd get it out of the public. I'd agitate for this in a peaceful way, in the shape of reason and argument, and do my best in that way to get it. But I'd not like, as Peter Quale says, to plunge blindfold into a strike.'

'I look at it in this light, Darby,' said Peter Quale, 'and it seems to me it's the only light as 'll answer to look at it in. Things in this world are estimated by comparison. There ain't nothing large nor small _in itself_. I may say, this chair's big: well, so it is, if you match it by that there bit of a stool in the chimbley corner; but it's very small if you put it by the side of a omnibus, or of one of the sheds in our yard. Now, if you compare our wages with those of workmen in most other trades, they are large. Look at a farm labourer, poor fellow, with his ten s.h.i.+llings (more or less) a-week, hardly keeping body and soul together. Look at what a man earns in the malting districts in the country; fifteen s.h.i.+llings and his beer, is reckoned good wages. Look at a policeman, with his pound a-week. Look at a postman. Look at----'

'Look at ourselves,' intemperately interrupted Jim Dunn. 'What's other folks to us? We work hard, and we ought to be paid according.'

'So I think we are,' said Peter Quale. 'Thirty-three s.h.i.+llings is _not_ bad wages, and it is only a delusion to say it is. Neither is ten hours a-day an unfair or oppressive time to work. I'd be as glad as anybody to have the hour took off, if it could be done pleasantly; but I am not going to put myself out of work and into trouble to stand out for it.

It's a thing that I am convinced the masters never will give; and if Pollock's men strike for it, they'll do it against their own interests----'

Hisses, and murmurs of disapprobation from various parts of the room, interrupted Peter Quale.

'You'd better wait and understand, afore you begin to hiss,'

phlegmatically recommended Peter Quale, when the noise had subsided. 'I say it will be against their interests to strike, because, I think, if they stop on strike for twelve months, they'll be no nearer getting their end. I may be wrong, but that's my opinion. There's always two sides to a question--our own, and the opposite one; and the great fault in most folks is, that they look only at their own side, and it causes them to see things in a partial view. I have looked as fair as I can at our own side, trying to put away my bias _for it_; and I have put myself in thought on the master's side, asking myself, what would _I_ do, were I one of them. Thus I have tried to judge between them and us, and the conclusion I have drawed is, that they won't give in.'

'The masters have been brought to grant demands more unreasonable than this,' rejoined Sam Shuck. 'If you know anything about back strikes, you must know that, Quale.'

'And that's one of the reasons why I argue they won't grant this,' said Peter. 'If they go on granting and granting, they may get asking themselves where the demands 'll stop.'

'Let us go back to 1833,' spoke up old White again, and the man's age and venerable aspect caused him to be listened to with respect. 'I was then working in Manchester, and belonged to the Trades' Union; a powerful Union as ever was formed. In our strength, we thought we should like a thing or two altered, and we made a formal demand upon the master builders, requiring them to discontinue the erection of buildings on sub-contracts. The masters fell in with it. You'll understand, friends,'

he broke off to say, 'that, looking at things now, and looking at 'em then, is just as if I saw 'em in two opposite aspects. Next, we gave out a set of various rules for the masters, and required them to abide by such--about the making of the wages equal; the number of apprentices they should take; the machinery they should or should not use, and other things. Well, the masters gave us that also, and it put us all c.o.c.k-a-hoop, and we went on to dictate to 'em more and more. If they--the masters--broke any of our rules, we levied fines on 'em, and made 'em pay up; we ordered them before us at our meetings, found fault with 'em, commanded 'em to obey us, to take on such men as we pointed out, and to turn off others; in short, forced 'em to do as we chose.

People might have thought that we was the masters and they the operatives. Pretty well, that, wasn't it?'

The room nodded acquiescence. Slippery Sam snapped his fingers in delight.

'The worst was, it did not last,' resumed the old man. 'Like too many other folks emboldened with success, we wasn't content to let well alone, but went on a bit too far. The masters took up their own defence at last; and the wonder to me now, looking back, is, that they didn't do it before. They formed themselves into a Union, and pa.s.sed a resolve to employ no man unless he signed a pledge not to belong to a Trades'

Union. Then we all turned out. Six months the strike was on, and the buildings was at a standstill, and us out of work.'

'Were wages bad at that time?' inquired Robert Darby.

'No. The good workmen among us had been earning in the summer thirty-five s.h.i.+llings a-week; and the bricklayers had just had a rise of three s.h.i.+llings. We was just fools: that's my opinion of it now. Awful misery we were reduced to. Every stick we had went to the p.a.w.n-shop; our wives was skin and bone, our children was in rags; and some of us just laid our heads down on the stones, clammed to death.'

'What was the trade in other places about, that it didn't help you?'

indignantly demanded Sam Shuck.

'They did help us. Money to the tune of eighteen thousand pounds came to us; but we was a large body--many mouths to feed, and the strike was prolonged. We had to come-to at last, for the masters wouldn't; and we voted our combination a nuisance, and went humbly to 'em, like dogs with their tails between their legs, and craved to be took on again upon their own terms. But we couldn't get took back; not all of us: the masters had learnt a lesson. They had got machinery to work, and had collected workmen from other parts, so that we was not wanted. And that's all the good the strike brought to us! I came away on the tramp with my family, and got work in London after a deal of struggle and privation: and I made a vow never to belong willingly to a strike again.'

'Do you see where the fault lay in that case?--the blame?--the whole gist of the evil?'

The question came from a gentleman who had entered the room as old White was speaking. The men would have risen to salute him, but he signed to them to be still and cause no interruption--a tall, n.o.ble man, with calm, self-reliant countenance.

'It lay with the masters,' he resumed, n.o.body replying to him. 'Had those Manchester masters resisted the first demand of their men--a demand made in the insolence of power, not in need--and allowed them fully to understand that they were, and would be, masters, we should, I believe, have heard less of strikes since, than we have done. I never think of those Manchester masters but my blood boils. When a princ.i.p.al suffers himself to be dictated to by his men, he is no longer a master, or worthy of the name.'

'Had you been one of them, and not complied, you might have come to ruin, sir,' cried Robert Darby. 'There's a deal to be said on both sides.'

'Ruin!' was the answer. 'I never would have conceded an inch, though I had known that I must end my days in the workhouse through not doing it.'

'Of course, sir, you'd stand up for the masters, being hand in glove with 'em, and likely to be a master yourself,' grumbled Sam Shuck, a touch of irony in his tone.

'I should stand up for whichever side I deemed in the right, whether it was the masters' or the men's,' was the emphatic answer. 'Is it well--is it in accordance with the fitness of things, that a master should be under the control of his men? Come! I ask it of your common sense.'

'No.' It was readily acknowledged.

'Those Manchester masters and those Manchester operatives were upon a par as regards shame and blame.'

'Sir! Shame and blame?'

'They were upon a par as regards shame and blame,' was the decisive repet.i.tion; 'and I make no doubt that both equally deemed themselves to have been so, when they found their senses. The masters came to them: the men were brought to theirs.'

'You speak strongly, sir.'