“Bow-wow wow-wow!” barked all the other dogs in chorus. “What! Put ourselves on half time for unemployed dogs! Why, we don’t make a living as it is on full time. Thou art no friend of ours. Want us to reduce our wages, do you? Out with him!” And they worried him and cast him out.
And it was so that they did agree; and each dog did bind on his right hind leg a White Label and they called themselves the Great United Order of White-Legged Handle Turners, and called themselves “White Legs” for short.
By this time the big bloats around the Tank, having perceived that the Mill was going very slowly on account of the grinders’ attention being taken up with the Agreement, sent up to them a terrible conundrum wanting to know why the half-a-dozen Satans they didn’t grind, and what in half-a-dozen Everlasting Profundos they meant by robbing their employers by such laziness.
But when it was told them that the grinders had been taking a recess to hold a mysterious confab, and that all the Handle Turners had white badges on their right hind legs, they called down several of the dogs and demanded of them what this new thing should mean? And one of the dogs meekly answered that they had formed an Association of White Legs, and that the purpose of the said Association was to petition the big fleas at the Tank to raise their allowance of blood to the old standard of the good licks at the liberally smeared spoon, when they first began to turn the Handle.
And the big fleas said that was all right, and it did them great credit to wish to better their condition, and that provided they confined their efforts to mutual help, and to making their members more honest, industrious and well behaved, and to improving their minds in their leisure hours, and didn’t go to demanding more blood, but left the raising of their allowance entirely to the good judgment and good-heartedness of their employers, and didn’t go to violating the inalienable rights of their employers to shove away from the Handle any objectionable dog, or the inalienable rights of the unlabelled dogs to take their places at the Handle and to make free contracts as free-born dogs should, and didn’t conspire to incite to breaches of the Blood and Bones Grinding Laws, but confined themselves to peaceful methods and the use of moral suasion, why, they would have their hearty good wishes for their prosperity, and everything would be lovely.
So the dogs returned to their fellows and reported the gracious reception they had met with, and all the White Legs rejoiced and went back to their grinding with a will and with new hopes in their hearts. But though the dogs turned for many days, they found things go on just as usual; they turned and ground and fainted and were thrown into the hopper, but their allowance was not raised, although they sent down many humble petitions to the fleas to raise it.
CHAPTER VIII.
Barren Hopes.—The Handle Tied up.—Defeat of the White Legs by the Black Legs and the Pink Eyed Dogs.—Invention of the Will of the Dogs Expresser.—The Invention Graciously Accepted by the Fleas.—Sanguine Hopes.