"Na, I canna' tak' that, Andrew," replied Robert, looking up into the broad, kindly, honest face of the man. "My mither wouldna' let me."
"Would she no'?" replied Andrew. "But you are the heid o' the hoose, Robin, sae just tak' it hame, an' lay it down on the dresser-head. We are doin' gey weel the noo, an' forby, ye're workin' for it. Noo run awa' hame wi't, an' dinna say ocht to yir mither, but just put it doon on the dresser-head." And so the partnership began which was to last for many years.
About this time there happened one of those tremendous upheavals, long remembered in the industrial world, the great Scottish Miners' Strike of 1894. The trade union movement was growing and fighting, and every tendency pointed to the fact that a clash of forces was inevitable. The previous year had seen the English miners beaten after a protracted struggle. They had come out for an increase in wages, and whilst it was recognized that they had been beaten and forced to go back to work suffering wholesale reductions, yet a newer perspective was beginning to appear to the miners of Scotland.
"We'll never be able to beat the maisters," said Tam Donaldson, when the cloud first appeared upon the industrial horizon. "The English strike gied us a lesson we shouldna forget."
"How's that?" enquired Peter Pegg, as he sat down on his hunkers one night at the end of the row, while they discussed the prospects of the coming fight.
"Weel, ye saw how the Englishmen fought unitedly, an' yet they were beaten, an' had to gang back on a reduction. We'll very likely be the same, for the maisters are a' weel organized. What we should do is to ha'e England an' Scotland coming out together, an' let the pits stan' then till the grass was growin' owre the whorles. That would be my way o' it, and I think it would soon bring the country to see what was in the wind."
"That's richt, Tam. It would soon bring the hale country to its senses; for nae matter what oor fight is, we are aye in the wrang wi' some folk; so the shock o' the hale country comin' out would mak' them tak' notice, an' would work the cure."
So they talked of newer plans, while Smillie toiled like a giant to educate and organize the miners. He had taken hold of them as crude material, and was slowly shaping them into something like unity. A few more years and he would win; but the forces against him knew it, too, and so followed the great fight which lasted for seventeen weeks.
Singularly enough, while there was undoubtedly much privation, there was not very much real misery, as the strike had started early in a warm, dry summer.
Communal kitchens were at once established throughout the country. Everybody did his best, and the womenfolk especially toiled early and late. A committee was appointed in each village to gather in materials. Beef at a reasonable price was supplied by a local butcher. A horse and cart were borrowed, which went round the district gathering a cabbage or two here; a few carrots or turnips there, parsley at another, and so on, returning at night invariably laden with vegetables for the next day's dinner. Sometimes a farmer would give a sheep, and the local cooperative society provided the bread at half the cost of production. Those farmers who were hostile gave nothing, but it would have paid them better had they concealed their hostility, for sometimes, even in a single night, large portions of a field of potatoes would disappear as by magic.