"Natural depravity and innate selfishness."
And now began the real work. The mills were cleaned of the year's accumulation of dust and cobwebs and general untidiness. Winston went at the machinery with hearty good-will, and put it in order. Circulars were sent out to the old patrons and to new houses, and workmen, workwomen, and children straggled in to see what was going on. Were Hope Mills to be really opened? and was Mr. Darcy to be master? True, a good many of the best men had gone off to try their luck elsewhere, but there were plenty left for a start. Only, there was a mystery these people could not understand. Something about wages, and something about money; and Jack patiently explained the matter, until, as he told Maverick, he felt like a cheap-John auctioneer, dispensing wares.
"The best thing will be to have a meeting," declared Maverick. "See here, Darcy: I'll hire Brock's Hall myself; and we will have a lecture, or a conference-meeting. Subject, 'Work and Wages.' I'll have some posters out too. Every one will know what we mean, that we are honest men and true; and you will be spared this everlasting palaver. Then we will have some rules, or by-laws, or something, for the workmen. Talk to Mr. Winston about it. He would make a capital speaker, with his glib tongue."
Darcy thought it an excellent plan, and they set about it immediately.
"But you'll have to post me," confessed Winston. "The only co-operation I ever was in was a building-association, and our treasurer ran off with our funds."
Maverick promised to "coach" him. Indeed, it was the doctor who gathered up statistics, and put them in a compact and telling form.
They had a large audience,—men and women. "Robert Winston, Esq.," was the orator of the evening. He was a fluent speaker, and had a good deal of humor. He began about the early Anglo-Saxon guilds, and the banding together of craftsmen when towns grew large and prosperous, and labor was performed in the workshops, instead of at home; of the importance of the woollen-manufacture in the days of Elizabeth, not only in England, but on the Continent, when kings did not disdain to borrow money of these corporations; of their final overthrow, and the causes leading to it; of the growth of trades-unions, and the views of conflicting writers on the subject. The workman's necessities so often compelled him to accept what he felt to be inadequate returns, because he could not wait,—it was work or starvation with him,—so that in dull times he was not only at the mercy of the employer, but every other starving workman. On the other hand, so few workmen ever informed themselves concerning the employer's perplexities and dangers, they had no broad and vital interest in the business until they all became leagued together, as in co-operation. Then they shared one another's burdens and prosperity. It was not the one great fortune, but the many comfortable incomes. It was the fruit of the noblest thought and the truest philanthropy. As a producer it had done its best work in France; and he went briefly over the work of the masons at Paris, and the Association Remquet, which, after carrying on printing business for ten years, divided among its members an average of over ten thousand francs; the cloth-factory at Vienna, with its flour-mill, bakery, grocery, coal-yard, and farm; the different societies in England, that were promising, to say the least. All this had been done by the thrift and economy of individual members, who educated themselves by doing business, and so were enabled to dispense with the profits of middle-men, and the greedy clutch of speculators.
After Winston had finished, Dr. Maverick went briefly over their plans for Hope Mills in a very simple and direct manner.
"Winston was capital!" said Jack afterward. "When we are hard up we can send him off on a lecturing-tour. But wasn't it rather over the heads of our people?"
"It was for others beside the workmen. You know, Darcy, some men are so used to swindling and misrepresentation, that they invariably accuse every plan of another, of the same motive. You will have a good deal of this back talk before your five years are ended; and I want Yerbury to know that this is an old, old scheme. I might have quoted the children of Israel, as aunt Jean did, and shocked the religious portion of the community. But, after all, isn't the greatest truth, the Golden Rule, co-operation in all forms?" and he glanced up triumphantly.