"Why shouldn't masters and men meet in a kindly spirit, each acknowledging the rights of the other, to discuss the question? For each side has its rights, and each side has its difficulties; and there's no such thing as smooth sailing for masters any more than for men. I can't and don't see, for my part, why capital and labour need be at daggers drawn; seeing that each is needful for the life of the other, and seeing too that we're a Christian country."
"There'd ought to be some way of getting at the truth of things, in this land, short of fighting. A strike means loss to masters and to men; and many a strike, it's found later, need never have taken place at all."
"I'd have you all think for the future whether arbitration isn't sometimes a thing possible. Couldn't able and honourable men be found, who'd look into the state of the matter, and tell us in honest truth whether a rise is our just due—men who could be trusted by employers and workmen alike? Wouldn't sometimes a calm and temperate demand for a rise, backed by a real knowledge of the justice of it, be as likely to bring about what's wanted as all the anger and bitterness of a strike?"
"Well—that's for another time. You've got to decide now for the present. An offer has come, meeting you half-way. Seems to me, we ought to go the other half to meet 'em. As friend Stuckey says, that's a tolerable fair ending to a struggle, each side yielding half."
"Any way, I'm meaning to be at work again next week. I'd have been sooner, if it wasn't for a lame arm. I hope to see all of you at work too."
[CHAPTER XIV.]
HOW IT ALL ENDED.
WHILE the men's meeting went on, Martha and the children still sat in the dim firelight. Millie and Bobbie were asleep, leaning against their mother's knee; and Martha, in a kind of half-dream, had forgotten the passing of time. It was beyond the little ones' hour for bed, and she had not noted the fact.