CHAPTER XVIIITHE GREAT TICKET-OF-LEAVE STRIKE
This great dispute in the iron trade of Keighley, about the year 1871, was known as the “ticket-of-leave” strike. The “Iron Lords” of Keighley amalgamated and practised a system of boycotting upon their workpeople. If a workman left one firm and took up with another, the latter would enquire of the man’s late employers what were the reasons of his leaving, &c. The reply took the form of a “Ticket,” sent under cover, of course, and practically decided the fate of the workman. Containing as this ticket usually did particulars as to the class to which the workman in question belonged; as to the wages he was worth, &c., the scale of ironworkers’ wages in the town got to an unbearably low ebb. The masters held the full sway for a while; then the workpeople broke out in open revolt against the pernicious system of their masters, and thus commenced the great “ticket-of-leave” strike. Early in the dispute I was applied to by the strike authorities to write and expose the unfair dealings of the “Iron Lords” of Keighley, and on the first day of the strike I composed several verses to go to the tune of the National Anthem. This was sung at the first great meeting of the strikers held in the Temperance Hall. The verses were as follow:—
Men of the iron trade,
Whose hands have England made
Greater than all!
How can you quietly stand
With the chains on your hands?
Hear you not through the land
Liberty’s call?
Long have you been the slaves
Of these conniving knaves
Now’s your relief.
Swear you no longer will,
Neither in shop nor mill,
Tremble for pen or quill,
Or ticket-of-leave!
Strike while the iron’s hot,
And let it not be forgot
’Tis sweet liberty.
Stand like true Britons, then,
Show you are Englishmen,
Make your shouts ring again,
“We will be free!”
This is only one of the many effusions I manufactured at the request of the Strike Committee. I wrote pamphlet after pamphlet (some sixteen pages in length) denouncing the unfair system which the masters had put into operation. The strikers went into the outside districts, as far as Bradford and on to Leeds, collecting towards the strike funds. They took with them supplies of my pamphlets and verses, which, so the men told me, won them much sympathy, and, what was infinitely more desirable—much money. But this system of collection to the strike funds was much abused, as has been the case in the present coal strike—men went out begging, ostensibly for the general strike fund, but in reality for their own private funds. Individuals managed to possess themselves of strike “literature,” and with its aid found themselves able to rake in the shekels more abundantly than they had been doing by their ordinary work; and so the strike proved a sort of harvest to them. The strikers received much support, I must say, from the publicans. In particular, one Owen Cash the landlord of the “Devonshire Tap,” provided free dinners as well as suppers. Then “Bob” Walton and a pork butcher in Upper Green each gave a whole pig; and there were many other gifts in kind for the out o’ work workers. Of course there were those among the strikers ever ready to take a mean advantage of a kind action. A good many of the shopkeepers allowed goods on credit; but many of the people to whom they extended this privilege failed to show up again after the strike was settled. When this settlement was arrived at, it was at the expense of the masters. At this juncture the Strike Committee was not altogether without funds, for they had a surplus of something like £40. There were various suggestions made as to the disposal of this money, one of them being that it should be handed to Bill o’ th’ Hoylus End for his services in the “strike literature department.” This suggestion was embodied in a motion, but the proposer got no seconder, and thus there remained wanting a bridge over the chasm existing between the money and myself; but the bridge is still wanting!