He was eyed at first with suspicion. The suspicion soon changed to curiosity. The Labour man never spoke. The managers expected a torrent of loud criticism, and here was immovable silence. For the first five months Crooks never opened his mouth at the Board meetings.
"What's your game?" asked a friendly member in an aside one afternoon.
"I'm learning the business," was the quiet reply. "This is an old established Board with notions of its own, and it's not going to be dictated to by new-comers. But you wait, my friend, and you'll find before long I'll be getting my own way in everything here."
So it proved. During the two or three years that he was Chairman of the Children's Committee and of a special committee that reorganised the hours and wages of the Board's large staff, he never lost a single recommendation he brought before the Board.
"How is it, Mr. Crooks, that whatever you ask this Board for you always get?" he was once asked by Sir Edwin Galsworthy, for many years the Board's Chairman.
Crooks returned the sally that it was because he was always right. His real secret was—convert the whole of your committee. A majority vote in committee never satisfied him. Nothing short of the support of every single member would suffice. Many times in committee has he adjourned the discussion rather than snatch a bare majority.
"Let's take it home with us," he would say jocularly from the chair. "Perhaps after a week's thought you'll all come back converted to my view. If not, then you must come better prepared to convince me that I am wrong than you are now."
The difficult and delicate work of reorganising the Labour conditions of the Board's workmen and attendants was at last brought to a triumph. He came out of the chair with the goodwill of the whole staff and of the entire Board of Managers. His colleagues included large employers of labour, eminent medical men, and retired army and navy officers. All agreed that he had settled for them Labour difficulties which had created nothing but confusion and perplexity before.
Working on his invariable rule that it pays best in every department of work to observe fair conditions, he scored a signal success on the very body where before his coming Labour members were regarded as revolutionaries. As at Blackwall Tunnel, he gained his points without losing the trust or friendship of the employers of labour.
The task put his administrative ability to a test which only able statesmen can stand. The rare faculty he has of obtaining the maximum of reform out of existing agencies carried him safely over every shoal.