It was fair and pleasant sailing for the first two or three years. He got a journeyman's full wages the first week he was out of his apprenticeship. It seemed as though he were to have an unbroken run of good fortune. The bright hopes soon collapsed.
Good craftsmanship and trade unionism, blended as they were in Crooks, made him rebel against certain conditions of his work. Finally he refused to use inferior timber on a job, and objected to excessive overtime. Although the youngest among them, he addressed the workmen on the subject. A few days afterwards he was dismissed.
He took his notice lightly enough, confident that as master of his trade he could soon secure work again.
It was not to be. Every shop and yard in London was closed to him. Word had gone round that he was an agitator.
Try as he did, he could not break through the barrier that had been raised against him. Wherever he applied, whether in Rotherhithe, Battersea, Hackney, or Clerkenwell, he was known as the young fellow who would not work with shoddy material and talked other men into the same view.
The experience was the same at every place of call.
"What's your name?"
"Crooks."
"Of Poplar?"
"That's me."