Edward smiled. He knew Albert Clough and Albert’s ways. But he was not the man to make admissions that might be useful to his adversary and of no use to himself.
“Why, Tomlinson,” he said, “if it comes to that I’ve over a thousand men coming every day of the week into my office, not exactly hectoring and blustering, but in a manner that is more effective, though quieter, than any hectoring and blustering, and these thousand men and more dictate to me every hour of my life, not what I shall pay my clerks, but, what is more comprehensive still, what I shall sell my goods for, in other words, what I shall charge for every act of my business life; I can’t give a piece of advice, I can’t open my mouth in the court, I can’t write a business letter, I can’t take a business journey, I can’t prepare a will, an agreement, or a deed, but these impertinent thousand odd men, meaning thereby my lords and gentlemen of the British Parliament, tell me exactly what I may charge and what I may not. And yet, you see, I contrive to live and look pleasant.”
“Oh! that’s special pleading, and you know it. There’s no parallel in the two cases.”
“Pardon me, the cases are exactly parallel. The State intervenes between me and my client because it knows it would be a sad day for the client if he were left to the tender mercies of the lawyer, or, as you would put it, to the law of supply and demand on which you employers claim to rest the rate of wages. Now the workman has nothing to help him against you but this very right of combination and the clumsy, often futile, boomerang-like device of a strike. A poor weapon, but better than none at all. And yet he is to be deprived even of that.”
“But you’re ruining us, man; you’re driving the trade out of the district and God only knows when and whether it will ever come back again.”
“Pardon me, Tomlinson. It is not I that am doing all this. It is rather you and your fellow employers, who have not only caused the present crisis, but are needlessly prolonging it. Sooner or later I suppose you’ll get your own way. I’ve no doubt that sooner or later the men—not the best of them, for they will have been snapped up by outside firms—will be brought to their knees. The victory will be yours—but what a victory! Do you think things will be any pleasanter in your mills when the men have been starved into submission, and go back to their work beaten, sullen, and resentful, feeling every day they live that they have been robbed and their masters are the thieves, for that’s what it comes to in plain English. If it isn’t so, why in the name of elemental justice and common sense don’t you agree to arbitrate the whole matter? The men are willing, always have been willing. I’ll go bail that if you’ll agree to that every mill shall be running in a week, aye, and less. It is you and your Association that stand in the way and not the men. If you are being done to death it is felo de se, suicide, pure and simple; if the town is being ruined, you and your colleagues are doing that deed most damnable.”
“By heavens! Beaumont, I’ll hear no more of this. I came to you as a friend and as a brother mason to bring you to reason in a friendly and brotherly way, and you as good as tell me I’m a robber and a murderer. Well, well, if I’m to be ruined, I’ll be ruined; but I’ll take precious good care there’s somebody tumbles before I tumble, and I shouldn’t be surprised if his name’s Edward Beaumont. I’m not chairman of a Banking Company for nothing. People who play at bowls must expect rubbers. Send me my account, if you’ve got one against me, and you can send all my papers to Ewart and Co. You’ll get your cheque, and I fancy it’ll be a long time before you see the colour of my money again.”
“Good morning, Mr. Tomlinson. There’s the door. You remember what I said about hectoring and bullying?”
For long after the irate manufacturer had bounced out of his office Beaumont sat ruminating in the chair he drew to the fire. In vain he had tried to concentrate his thoughts upon the documents upon his desk. His own concerns crowded out the concerns of others. He had been made painfully sensible of late that things were not going well with him. Mr. Tomlinson was not the only client who had demanded his account and the transference of his papers. His best and oldest clients were deserting him. His staff of clerks was a large and expensive one, and he had little or no work now for them to do, and yet he shrank from discharging so much as an office-boy. Why should they and their families suffer? At the club, too, men looked black at him; at his Lodge his brethren treated him coldly. He was uneasy, too, about Schofield’s mortgage. Edward was resolved, that at any cost to himself, no cloud should rest upon his father’s name. The expenses of his electioneering promised to be heavy. Money seemed to flow like water from his bank into Staffordshire, and his account was overdrawn to an unusual and disquieting extent. The courteous manager and he were on the best of terms, but Edward knew a manager, even a bank manager, is but a servant of the directors—and the directors were manufacturers or merchants to a man, and the chairman of the directors was none other than the gentleman who had just left him in such high dudgeon and breathing threats that could have but one meaning.
And top of all this the morning’s post had brought him a letter from Storth.