“Yes, Daisy,” admitted Trood; “but we must be fair to this Kellock, though I’m far from supporting what he says. The ills are as he stated them; the remedies are not as he stated ’em. He argues that the workman’s work should no more be his whole life than work is his master’s whole life. Because Capital buys a man’s working hours, it doesn’t buy his life and liberties. Outside his work, he’s as much right to enjoy being alive as his employer. A machine looks very different from the owner’s point of view and the worker’s. The owner’s the master of the machine; the worker is its slave; and it’s on the worker the machine puts the strain, not on the owner. So we have got to consider our working hours in relation to our lives as a whole, and balance work against life, and consider how our labour affects our existence. A six hour day at a machine may be a far greater tax on a man or woman than an eight hour day at the desk, or the plough. You’ve got to think of the nervous energy, which ain’t unlimited.”
“That’s so,” admitted Barefoot. “Life’s the only adventure we can hope for, and I grant you there ought to be more to it. ’Tis all this here speeding up, I mistrust. The masters see the result of ‘speeding up,’ and think it’s all to the good according; but it’s we feel the result, and I can tell you I’m never more cranky and bad-tempered and foul-mouthed than after one of them rushes. The strain is only pounds, shillings and pence to the masters; but it’s flesh and blood and nerves to us; because it’s us have got to fight the machines, not them.”
“A very true word, Henry. Kellock’s out for security, and whether you’re a socialist or whether you’re not, you can’t deny security is the due of every human creature. Until the highest and lowest alike are born into security, there’s something wrong with the order of things.”
“Yet the greater number of the nation have no more security than a bird in a bush. Let us but lose our health, and where are we?” asked Barefoot.
“And if a machine is going to make us lose our health,” argued Spry, “then to hell with the machine.”
“We want shorter hours and better money,” explained Ernest Trood, “and that can only be won if the masters also get better money. And for such a result we must look to machines.”
Then Daisy Finch asked a question.
“Who were those stern-looking men in black ties listening to the lecture?” she inquired.
“From Plymouth, I believe,” answered her sweetheart. “They meant business, and they applauded Kellock at the finish.”
“They see a likely tool to help their plots,” said Mr. Trood. “I hope he’ll get his stroke back and drop this Jack-o’-lantern job. There’s quite enough at it without him.”