"You are a nice jail-bird, Poole! I don't think you ever were much better than one," added Mrs. Gass. To which candid avowal Poole only replied by a growl.
"These hard times be enough to make jail-birds of all of us," interposed another, Foster; but speaking civilly. "Why don't the Government come down and interfere, and prevent our work being took out of our hands by these rascals?"
"You put the work out of your own hands," said Mrs. Gass. "As to interference, I should have thought you'd had about enough of that, by this time. If you had not suffered them fine Trades' Unionists to interfere with you, my men, you'd have been in full work now, happy and contented as the day's long."
"What we did, we did for the best."
"What you did, you did in defiance of common sense, and of the best counsels of your best friends," she said. "How many times did your master show you what the upshot would be if you persisted in throwing up your work?--how much breath did I waste upon you, as I'm doing now, asking you all to avoid a strike--and after the strike had come, day after day begging you to end it?--could any picture be truer than mine when I said what you'd bring yourselves to?--rags, and famine, and desolate homes. Could any plight be worse than this that you've dropped into now?"
"No, it couldn't," answered Foster. "It's so bad that I say Government ought to interfere for us."
"If I was Government, I should interfere on one point--and that's with them agitating Unionists," bravely spoke Mrs. Gass. "I should put them down a bit."
"This is a free country, ma'am," struck in Ketler, who made one of the group.
"Well, I used to think it was, Ketler," she said; "but old ways seem to be turned upside down. What sort of freedom do you enjoy just now?--how much have you had of it since you bound yourselves sworn members of the Trades' Unions? You have wanted to work and they haven't let you: you'd like to be clothed and fed as you used to be and to clothe and feed your folks at home, and they prevent your exercising the means by which you may do it. What freedom or liberty is there in that?--Come, Ketler, tell me, as a reasonable man."
"If the Trades' Unions could do as they wish, there'd be work and comfort for all of us."