A Life's Secret: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

'It is as I said,' cried Sam. 'There's poor, mean-spirited creatures among you, as won't risk the loss of a day's pay for the common good, or put out a hand to help the less fortunate. I'd rather be buried alive, five feet under the earth, than I'd show cat so selfish.'

'What is the interest of one of us is the interest of all,' observed Stevens. 'And a strike, if we went into it, would either benefit us all in the end, or make us all suffer. It is sheer nonsense to attempt to make out that one man's interest is different from another's; our interests are the same. I'd vote for striking to-morrow, if I were sure we should come out of it with whole skins, and get what we struck for: but I must see that a bit clearer first.'

'How can we get it, unless we try for it?' demanded Sam. 'If the masters find we're all determined, they'll give in to us. I appeal to you all'—raising his hands over the room—'whether the masters can do without us?'

'That has got to be seen,' said Peter Quale, significantly. 'One thing is plain: we could not do without them.'

'Nor they without us—nor they without us,' struck in voices from various parts of the barn.

'Then why shilly-shally about the question of a strike?' asked Sam of the barn, in a glib tone of reason. 'If a universal strike were on, the masters would pretty soon make terms that would end it. Why, a six months' strike would drive half of them into the Gazette——'

'But it might drive us into the workhouse at the same time,' interrupted John Baxendale.

'Let me finish,' went on Sam; 'it's not perlite to take up a man in the middle of a sentence. I say that a six months' strike would send many of the masters to the bankruptcy court. Well now, there has been a question debated among us'—Sam lowered his voice—'whether it would not be policy to let things go on quietly, as they are, till next spring——'

'A question among who?' interposed Peter Quale, regardless of the reproof just administered to John Baxendale.