“To me it seems nothing less than a crime to throw yourself out of work. There’s the work ready to your hands, spoiling for want of being done—and yet you won’t do it!”
“I do but obey orders,” said Hoar: who seemed to be miserable enough, in spite of the incipient defiance.
“But is there any sense in it?” reasoned the Squire. “If you men could drop the work and still keep up your homes and, their bread-and-cheese, and their other comforts, I’d say nothing. But look at your poor suffering wives and children. I should be ashamed to be idle, when my idleness bore such consequences.”
The man answered nothing. Cole put in his word.
“There are times when I feel I should like to run away from my work, and go in for a few weeks’ or months’ idleness, Jacob Hoar; and drink my two or three glasses of port wine after dinner of a day, like a lord; and be altogether independent of my station and my patients, and of every other obligation under the sun. But I can’t. I know what it would do for me—bring me to the parish.”
“D’ye think we throw up the work for the sake o’ being idle?” returned Hoar. “D’ye suppose, sirs,”—with a burst of a sigh—“that this state o’ things is a pleasure to us? We are doing it for future benefit. We are told by them who act for us, and who must know, that great benefit will come of it if we be only firm; that our rights be in our own hands if we only persevere long enough in standing out for ’em. Us men has our rights, I suppose, as well as other folks.”
“Those who, as you term it, act for you, may be mistaken, Hoar,” said the Squire. “I’ll leave that point: and go on to a different question. Do you think that the future benefit (whatever that may be: it’s vague enough now) is worth the cost you are paying for it?”
No reply. A look crossed Hoar’s face that made me think he sometimes asked the same question of himself.
“It does appear to be a very senseless quarrel, Hoar,” went on the Squire. Cole had walked on. “One-sided too. There’s an old saying, ‘Cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face,’ and your strike seems just an illustration of it. You see, it is only you men that suffer. The rulers you speak of don’t suffer: while they are laying down rules for you, they are flourishing on the meat and corn of the land; the masters, in one sense, do not suffer, for they are not reduced to any extremity of any kind. But you, my poor fellows, you bear the brunt of it all. Look at your homes, how they are bared; look at your hungry children. What but hunger drove little Dick to crib that bun yesterday?”
Hoar took off his hat and passed his hand over his brow and his black hair. It seemed to be a favourite action of his when in any worry of thought.