“And now, lad, turn your eyes once more upon the old church and towards the fields you know so well. Remember in that valley you were born and bred, and in that valley are those that love you well and who have knit you to their hearts. Yonderwards, in the other valley, is your future home; what trials, what labours there await you, who shall say? but as David said to his son, say I to you:
“’Be thou strong and shew thyself a man, and keep the charge of the Lord Thy God, to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, and His commandments, and His judgments and His testimonies that thou mayest prosper in all that thou doest, and whithersoever thou turnest thyself.’ And now, come, lad, ’tis a brave step from here to Holmfirth and the way will be long for me when I come back without thee.”
CHAPTER VI.
Tom Pinder was “apprenticed”—so the phrase ran—to Jabez Tinker with all the form and circumstance and not a little of the verbal exuberance of the law. The manufacturer bound himself to the overseers of Saddleworth who stood to the foundling in loco parentis, to teach his apprentice the art and calling of a clothier—so manufacturers were then styled, when men were less fond of high-sounding terms and preferred plain English to foreign-fangled names. He also undertook, under his hand and seal, to feed the said Tom and provide him one new suit of clothing each year until he should attain the age of twenty-one years. The overseers, on their part, engaged that the “said Tom should faithfully serve the said Jabez Tinker and his wife and family, his and their lawful orders should do, his secrets should keep, and his goods protect,” likewise that the said Tom, so long as his indenture should endure, taverns should not frequent, bowls nor dice should play, fornication should not commit, and marriage should not contract. As the delicate subject of wages was not so much as hinted at in this formidable document, it seemed pretty certain that the ingenuous apprentice would not be exposed to much temptation either from tavern or dice-box; and Mr. Black, after reading, no less than three times, the articles of this solemn covenant could not withhold his admiration of the zealous care the law manifested for the morals of the young. He should think better, he averred, of lawyers ever after, and was inclined to believe they must be a much maligned body of men. If there had only been some mention of the catechism, he said, the deed might have been framed by a Bishop. Mr. Redfearn to whom he thus unbosomed himself said nothing, but there were volumes in the wink he conveyed to the stolid Aleck.
“I could ha’ thoiled th’ absence o’ ony mention o’ th’ catechism if there’d been some mention o’ wage,” was his only spoken comment.
“But think of the immense advantage of learning the whole art and commerce of a clothier under such a teacher as Mr. Tinker,” urged Mr. Black.
Mr. Redfearn apparently did think, and what he thought was again conveyed to Aleck by a surreptitious wink.
Tom was not long in proving for himself the advantages of being an apprentice. They consisted, so far as he could make out, of being harder worked and more harshly treated than a paid hand, and as for instruction or initiation into the mysteries of the clothier’s craft, he was left to learn so much as his own eyes could teach him and his gumption acquire. It was fortunate for him that Ben Garside, with whom he lodged, lived at no great distance from the mill, for he had to be at his work by daybreak in the summer months, and long before the first uplifting of night’s black curtain in the cold winter morns. Many who worked in the same mill, young boys and girls not yet in their teens, had to trudge in all weathers from distant homes on the raw hill sides, often by lanes and footpaths deep in mud or slush, often by the light of the many stars, sometimes by the pale glimmer of the lanthorn, sometimes in Egyptian darkness, feeling their way by the touch of walls or hedges or trees, drenched by rain or sleet, pelted by hail, sinking into deep ruts or forging through the drifted snow, lightly clad, the warmest garment of the girls the shawl about their head and ears, their faces pinched and blue with cold, their fingers aching with the shrewd wintry pinch, starting from home without breakfast and hurrying with empty stomachs to their dreary work, ill-clad, ill-shod, worse-fed, and still worse paid. The hours of labour were long. Wilberlee Mill was, though not exclusively, mainly a water-mill, the motive power being led from the mill-dam by a head-goit to the great waterwheel, and from the wheel-race restored by the tail-goit, little diminished, to the river’s course, to serve the turn of mill owners lower down the stream. Often in dry seasons the supply of water was scant enough and hence it came that when the dam was flush of water the manufacturer reversed the process of making hay while the sun shone by making pieces while the rain fell. There was little or no restriction in the age at which a child might be sent to work, or the hours for which it might be kept there. It was of so common occurrence as to be almost regarded as a matter of course, not calling for comment, that a child nine or ten years of age should stand to its work sixteen or seventeen hours at a stretch, cramming its meal of water-porridge down its throat in the fluff-laden air of the weaving shed or spinning room, afraid to break off work even to eat a hurried and unsavoury meal. Sometimes the children were locked in the mill all night, and many would fall asleep as they stood, or drop exhausted by their machines only to be roused by a kick from the slubber’s clogs, a blow from a roller, or a resounding smack from the slubber’s strap.
Tom had been set to billy-piecing, but it was found that his fingers were too big and his joints too set for such work, so, to his great delight, he ceased to rub the skin off his knuckles till they bled again, and was transferred to the “scouring-hoil” and in time had charge of a willey, or as it was sometimes called a “devil,” or “fearnowt,” an iron monster into whose maw he threw the scoured wool just fresh from the “drying-hoil,” to be torn and “teased” by the hundred fangs of the insatiable mouth, digest as it were, in its mechanic stomach, and thence cast out in a light and airy fluff ready to be scribbled, slubbed and in time spun into warp and weft.
But though, for a time, Tom escaped the most arduous and confining and debilitating part of an operative’s daily lot, his lines were hard enough. He looked back upon his workhouse life with a sickening yearning, and when he remembered the regular and abundant meals of the House, his gorge rose at the ever-recurring surfeit of water-porridge to breakfast, water-porridge to dinner, water-porridge to supper, and water-porridge between meals.