"I doubt that, Ketler."
"But they can't do it," added Ketler. "The masters be obstinate and won't let 'em."
"That's just it," said Mrs. Gass. "If the Trades' Unions held the world in their hands, and there were no such things as masters and capital, why then they might have their own way. But the masters have their own interests to look after, their business and capital to defend: and the two sides are totally opposed one to the other, and squabbling is all that comes of it, or that ever will come of it. You lose your work, the masters lose their trade, the Unionists fight it out fiercer than ever--and, between it all, the commerce of the country is coming to an end. Now, my men, that is the bare truth; and you can't deny it if you talk till midnight."
"'Twouldn't be no longer much of a free country, if the Government put down the Trades' Unions," spoke a man satirically; one Cattleton.
"But it ought to put down their arbitrary way of preventing others working that want to work," maintained Mrs. Gass. "The Unionists be your worst enemies. I'm speaking, as you know I have been all along, of the heads among 'em who make laws for the rest; not of poor sheep like yourselves who have joined the society in innocence. If the heads like to live without work themselves, and can point out a way by which others can live without it, well and good; there's no law against that, nor oughtn't to be; but what I say Government ought to put down is this--their forcing you men to reject work when it's offered you. It's a sin and a shame that, through them, the country should be brought to imbecility, and you, its once free and brave workmen, to beggary."
"The thought has come over me at times that under the new state of things we are no better than slaves," confessed Ketler, his eyes wearing an excited look.
"Now you've just said it, Ketler," cried Mrs. Gass, triumphantly. "Slaves. That's exactly what you are; and I wish to my heart all the workmen in England could open their eyes to the truth of it. You took a vow to obey the dictates of the Trades' Union; it has bound you hand and foot, body and soul. If a job of work lay to your hand, you dare not take it up; no, not though you saw your little ones dying of famine before your eyes. It's the worst kind of slavery that ever fell on the land. Press-gangs used to be bad enough, but this beats 'em hollow."
There was no reply from any of the men. Mrs. Gass had been a good friend to their families even recently; and the old habits of respect to her, their mistress, still held sway. Perhaps some of them, too, silently assented to her reasoning.
"It's that that I'd have put down," she resumed. "Let every workman be free to act on his own judgment, to take work or to leave it. Not but what it's too late to say so: as far as I believe, the mischief has gone too far to be remedied."
"It be mighty fine for the masters to cry out and say the Trades' Unions is our enemies! Suppose we choose to call 'em our friends?" spoke Poole.