A Life's Secret: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Up rose Robert Darby. 'I'd just say a word, if I can get my meaning out, but I'm not cute with the tongue. It seems to me, mates, that it would be a great boon if we could obtain the granting of the nine hours' movement; and perhaps in the end it would not affect the masters, for they'd get it out of the public. I'd agitate for this in a peaceful way, in the shape of reason and argument, and do my best in that way to get it. But I'd not like, as Peter Quale says, to plunge blindfold into a strike.'

'I look at it in this light, Darby,' said Peter Quale, 'and it seems to me it's the only light as 'll answer to look at it in. Things in this world are estimated by comparison. There ain't nothing large nor small in itself. I may say, this chair's big: well, so it is, if you match it by that there bit of a stool in the chimbley corner; but it's very small if you put it by the side of a omnibus, or of one of the sheds in our yard. Now, if you compare our wages with those of workmen in most other trades, they are large. Look at a farm labourer, poor fellow, with his ten shillings (more or less) a-week, hardly keeping body and soul together. Look at what a man earns in the malting districts in the country; fifteen shillings and his beer, is reckoned good wages. Look at a policeman, with his pound a-week. Look at a postman. Look at——'

'Look at ourselves,' intemperately interrupted Jim Dunn. 'What's other folks to us? We work hard, and we ought to be paid according.'

'So I think we are,' said Peter Quale. 'Thirty-three shillings is not bad wages, and it is only a delusion to say it is. Neither is ten hours a-day an unfair or oppressive time to work. I'd be as glad as anybody to have the hour took off, if it could be done pleasantly; but I am not going to put myself out of work and into trouble to stand out for it. It's a thing that I am convinced the masters never will give; and if Pollock's men strike for it, they'll do it against their own interests——'

Hisses, and murmurs of disapprobation from various parts of the room, interrupted Peter Quale.

'You'd better wait and understand, afore you begin to hiss,' phlegmatically recommended Peter Quale, when the noise had subsided. 'I say it will be against their interests to strike, because, I think, if they stop on strike for twelve months, they'll be no nearer getting their end. I may be wrong, but that's my opinion. There's always two sides to a question—our own, and the opposite one; and the great fault in most folks is, that they look only at their own side, and it causes them to see things in a partial view. I have looked as fair as I can at our own side, trying to put away my bias for it; and I have put myself in thought on the master's side, asking myself, what would I do, were I one of them. Thus I have tried to judge between them and us, and the conclusion I have drawed is, that they won't give in.'

'The masters have been brought to grant demands more unreasonable than this,' rejoined Sam Shuck. 'If you know anything about back strikes, you must know that, Quale.'

'And that's one of the reasons why I argue they won't grant this,' said Peter. 'If they go on granting and granting, they may get asking themselves where the demands 'll stop.'

'Let us go back to 1833,' spoke up old White again, and the man's age and venerable aspect caused him to be listened to with respect. 'I was then working in Manchester, and belonged to the Trades' Union; a powerful Union as ever was formed. In our strength, we thought we should like a thing or two altered, and we made a formal demand upon the master builders, requiring them to discontinue the erection of buildings on sub-contracts. The masters fell in with it. You'll understand, friends,' he broke off to say, 'that, looking at things now, and looking at 'em then, is just as if I saw 'em in two opposite aspects. Next, we gave out a set of various rules for the masters, and required them to abide by such—about the making of the wages equal; the number of apprentices they should take; the machinery they should or should not use, and other things. Well, the masters gave us that also, and it put us all cock-a-hoop, and we went on to dictate to 'em more and more. If they—the masters—broke any of our rules, we levied fines on 'em, and made 'em pay up; we ordered them before us at our meetings, found fault with 'em, commanded 'em to obey us, to take on such men as we pointed out, and to turn off others; in short, forced 'em to do as we chose. People might have thought that we was the masters and they the operatives. Pretty well, that, wasn't it?'

The room nodded acquiescence. Slippery Sam snapped his fingers in delight.