Here let us note an instance of intellectual anticipation of Trade Unionism. Well aware that their labour has yielded far more than the regulation Trade stroke, and earned more than the Eight Hours’ wage, they quietly await settling day—next morning—when they are paid by being stuffed not only with fish, but also with crumbs soaked in wine.[204]
Thus Oppian of another fish-drive,
“The Fishers pick the choicest of the Spoil, Supply their wishes and reward their Toil.”
In a story of similar fishing by Mucianus the Dolphins await neither summons by voice as above, or signal by torch (as in Ælian, II. 8) but “uncalled and of their own accord” present themselves ready for work.
Trades Unionism among the Dolphins is again not obscurely indicated, ipsis quoque inter se publica est societas. Furthermore, close corporations, not unlike mediæval Guilds or modern Unions, but wotting not of “blackleg” or even “dilutee,” surely prevailed, for suum quæque cymba e delphinis socium habet.[205]
Ælian’s dolphins foreshadow, it would seem, our modern principle of co-operation, when “they draw near demanding the due reward of their joint-undertaking.” But their organisation of labour differed from ours in two respects.
First, the willingness and the wage for night and day shift were identical. Second, since they were not blessed as we in the higher civilisation of the twentieth century are by the exalted, if not always successful conceptions of Conferences of Conciliation or Compulsory Arbitration, a strike, occasioned either by divergence from the strict terms of the bargain, or by gauche “handling” of the workers—whether for it the sanction of the Ballot or an order of the Shop Steward were a necessary preliminary my researches have not as yet disclosed—a strike, I repeat, could not be called off, but was irreparable, for οὐκέτι oἱ δελφῖνες ἀρηγόνες εἰσὶν ἐπ’ ἄγρην.[206]
By the Dolphins the economic weapon was evidently brought to greater perfection than by their human brethren. The crude “down tooling” of the Egyptian masons in the fourteenth century b.c., although accompanied by violence such as forcing main gates, etc., was (according to Maspero) quickly settled by the attacked Governor handing over the keys of the granaries, whence with bags—and bellies—full filled they meekly returned to work.
Of another ingratiating characteristic of the Dolphin, its attachment and services to boys, instances are numerous and well attested.[207] In truth we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, from the autoptic gospel of the Anti-Semite Apion[208] and of the wide-travelled Pausanias[209] to the gleanings of the industrious A. Gellius,[210] that I can draw attention to two stories only. These illustrate the relations existing between the Dolphin, and (a) the boy of Baiæ as set forth by Pliny (IX. 8), and (b) the boy of Iasos by Oppian (V. 468), Athenæus (XIII. 85), and Ælian (VI. 15).[211]
In the last two occurs the pretty tale of the fish waiting daily till school ended to take the beloved lad for swims and larks in the sea, but without the refinement found elsewhere of waiting every morning and afternoon to carry him to and from school! To the spectacle in Iasian waters of their play and of their races (“to bring the thorough-bred and the donkey together” à la Admiral Rous, the fish must have been crushingly handicapped!):