A Life's Secret: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

'Yes, famine,' was the quiet answer. 'Strikes never yet brought nothing but misery in the end. Let me urge upon you all not to be led away. My voice is but a feeble one; but I think the Lord is sometimes pleased to show out things clearly to the aged, almost as with a gift of prophecy; and I could only come and beseech you to keep upon the straight-forrard path. Don't have anything to do with a strike; keep it away from you at arm's length, as you would keep away the evil one.'

'What's the good of listening to him?' cried Slippery Sam, in anger. 'He is in his dotage.'

'Will you listen to me then?' spoke up Peter Quale; 'I am not in mine. I didn't intend to come here, as may be guessed; but when I found so many of you bending your steps this way to listen to Slippery Sam, I thought it time to change my mind, and come and tell you what I thought of strikes.'

'You!' rudely replied Slippery Sam. 'A fellow like you, always in full work, earning the biggest wages, is sure not to favour strikes. You can't be much better off than you are.'

'That admission of yours is worth something, Slippery Sam, if there's any here have got the sense to see it,' nodded Peter Quale. 'Good workmen, on full wages, don't favour strikes. I have rose up to what I am by sticking to my work patiently, and getting on step by step. It's open to every living man to get on as I have done, if he have got skill and pluck to work. But if I had done as you do, Sam, gone in for labour one day and for play two, and for drinking, and strikes, and rebellion, because money, which I was too lazy to work for didn't drop from the skies into my hands, then I should just have been where you be.'

'Is it right to keep a man grinding and sweating his life out for ten hours a-day?' retorted Sam. The masters would be as well off if we worked nine, and the surplus men would find employment.'

'It isn't much of your life that you sweat out, Sam Shuck,' rejoined Peter Quale, with a cough that especially provoked his antagonist. 'And, as to the masters being as well off, you had better ask them about that. Perhaps they'd tell you that to pay ten hours' wages for nine hours' work would be the hour's wage dead loss to their pockets.'

'Are you rascal enough to go in for the masters?' demanded Sam, in a fiery heat. 'Who'd do that, but a traitor?'

'I go in for myself, Sam,' equably responded Peter Quale. 'I know on which side my bread's buttered. No skilful workman, possessed of prudent thought and judgment, ever yet went blindfold into a strike. At least, not many such.'