“What do I think of it? It is sheer idealistic nonsense.”
“It is a noble idea, laddie, and no to be sneered at, but A doot it needs a better world for it than we hae at the present.”
“I am afraid that is true,” said the minister. “But meantime a foreman is a man who gives orders and directs work, and, generally speaking, he must remain with a directorate in any business. There may be exceptions. You must acknowledge that, McNish.”
“I'll acknowledge nothing of the sort,” replied McNish, and entered into a long argument which convinced no one.
“Now we come to the next, number five: 'a voice in the management,' it means. Come now, McNish, this is rather much. Do you want Mr. Maitland's job here, or is there anyone in your shop who would be anything but an embarrassment trying running the Maitland Mills, and you know quite well that the men want nothing of the sort. It may be as Mrs. McNish said, 'a good negotiating point,' but it has no place in practical politics here in Blackwater. How would you like, for instance, to take orders from Simmons?”
The old lady chuckled delightedly. “He has you there, laddie, he has you there!”
But this McNish would not acknowledge, and proceeded to argue at great length on purely theoretical grounds for joint control of industries, till his mother quite lost patience with him.
“Hoots, laddie, haud yer hoofs on mither earth. Would ye want yon radical bodies to take chairge o' ony business in which ye had a baubee? Ye're talkin' havers.”
“Now, let us look at the last,” said Mr. Matheson. “It is practically a demand for the closed shop. Now, McNish, I ask you, man to man, what is the use of putting that in there? It is not even a negotiating point.”
At that McNish fired up. “It is no negotiating point,” he declared. “I stand for that. It is vital to the very existence of unionised labour. Everyone knows that. Unionism cannot maintain itself in existence without the closed shop. It is the ideal toward which all unionised labour works.”