A Life's Secret: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

'Never you mind who,' returned Sam, with a wink: 'among those that are hard at work for your interest. With their contracts for the season signed, and their works in full progress, say about next May, then would be the time for a strike to tell upon the masters. However, it has been thought better not to delay it. The future's but an uncertainty: the present is ours, and so must the strike be. Have you wives?' he pathetically continued; 'have you children? have you spirits of your own? Then you will all, with one accord, go in for the strike.'

'But what are our wives and children to do while the strike is on?' asked Robert Darby. 'You say yourself it might last six months, Shuck. Who would support them?'

'Who!' rejoined Sam, with an indignant air, as if the question were a superfluous one. 'Why the Trades' Unions, of course. That's all settled. The Unions are prepared to take care of all who are out on strike, standing up, like brave Britons, for their privileges, and keep 'em like fighting-cocks. Hooroar for that blessed boon, the Trades' Unions!'

'Hooroar for the Trades' Unions!' was shouted in chorus. 'Keep us like fighting-cocks, will they! Hooroar!'

'Much good you'll get from the Trades' Unions!' burst forth a dissentient voice. 'They are the greatest pests as ever was allowed in a free country.'

The opposition caused no little commotion. Standing by the door, having pushed his way through the surrounding women, who had not made themselves 'scarce,' was a man in a flannel jacket, a cap in his hand, and his head white with mortar. He was looking excited as he spoke.

'This is not regular,' said Sam Shuck, displaying authority. 'You have no business here: you don't belong to us.'

'Regular or irregular, I'll speak my mind,' was the answer. 'I have been at work for Jones the builder, down yonder. I have done my work steady and proper, and I have had my pay. A man comes up to me yesterday and says, "You must join the Trades' Union." "No," says I, "I shan't; I don't want nothing of the Trades' Union, and the Union don't want nothing of me." So they goes to my master. "If you keep on employing this man, your other men will strike," they says to him; and he, being in a small way, got intimidated, and sent me off to-day. And here I am, throwed out of work, and I have got a sick wife and nine young children to keep. Is that justice? or is it tyranny? Talk about emancipating the slaves! let us emancipate ourselves at home.'

'Why don't you join the Union?' cried Sam. 'All do, who are good men and true.'