There was trouble amongst the Dallory workpeople. It had been looming in the distance for some time before it came. No works throughout the kingdom had been more successfully carried on than the North Works. The men were well paid; peace and satisfaction had always reigned between them and their employers. But when certain delegates, or emissaries, or whatever they may please to call themselves, arrived stealthily at Dallory from the Trades' unions, and took up stealthy abode in the place, and whispered stealthy whispers into the ears of the men, peace was at an end.
It matters not to trace the working of these insidious whispers, or how the poison spread. Others have done it far more effectively and to the purpose than I could do it. Sufficient to say that the Dallory workpeople caught the infection prevailing amongst other bodies of men--which the public, to its cost, has of late years known too much of--and they joined the ranks of the disaffected. First there had been doubt, and misgiving, and wavering; then agitation; then dissatisfaction; then parleying with their master, Richard North; then demands to be paid more and do less work. In vain Richard, with his strong sense, argued and reasoned: showing them, in all kindness, how mistaken was the course they were entering on, and what must come of it. They listened with respect, for he was liked and esteemed; but they would not give in. It had been privately told Richard that much argument and holding-out had been carried on with the Trades' union emissaries, some of whom were ever hovering over Dallory like birds of prey: the workmen wanting to insist on the sense of Richard North's views of things, the others speciously disproving it. But it came to nothing. The workmen yielded to their despotic rulers as submissively as others have done, and Richard's words were set at nought. They were like so many tame sheep blindly following their leader. The agitation, beginning about the time of Bessy North's marriage, continued for many months; it then came to an issue; and for several weeks now, the works had been shut up.
For the men had struck. North and Gass had large contracts on hand, and they could not be completed. Unless matters took a speedy turn, masters and men would alike be ruined. The ruin of the first involved that of the last.
Mrs. Gass took things more equably than Richard North. In one sense she had less need to take them otherwise. Her prosperity did not depend on the works. A large sum of hers was certainly invested in them; but a larger was in other and safe securities. If the works and their capital went to ruin, the only difference it would make to Mrs. Gass was, that she would have so much the less money to leave behind her when she died. In this sense therefore Mrs. Gass could take things calmly: but in regard to the men's conduct she was far more outspoken and severe than Richard.
Dallory presented a curious scene. In former days, during work time not an idle man was to be found: the village had looked almost deserted, excepting for the children playing about. Now the narrow thoroughfares were blocked with groups of men; talking seriously, or chaffing with each other, as might be; most of them smoking, and all looking utterly sick of the passing hours. Work does not tire a man--or woman either--half as much as idleness.
At first the holiday was an agreeable novelty; the six days were each a Sunday, as well as the seventh; and the men and women lived in clover. Not one family in twenty had been sufficiently provident to put by money for a rainy day, good though their wages had been; but the Trades' unions took care of their new protégés, and supplied them with funds. But as the weeks went on, and Richard North gave no sign of relenting--that is, of taking the men on again at their own terms--the funds did not come in so liberally. Husbands, not accustomed to being stinted; wives, not knowing how to make sixpence suffice for a shilling, might be excused if they felt a little put out; and they began to take things to the pawnbroker's. Mr. Ducket, the respectable functionary who presided over the interests of the three gilt balls at Dallory, rubbed his hands complacently as he took the articles in. Being gifted with a long sharp nose, he scented the good time coming.
One day, in passing the shop, Mrs. Gass saw three women in it. She walked in herself; and, without ceremony, demanded what they were pledging. The women slunk away, hiding their property under their aprons, and leaving their errand to be completed another time. That Mrs. Gass or their master, Richard North, should see them at this work, brought humiliation to their minds and shame to their cheeks. Richard North and Mrs. Gass had both told them (to their utter disbelief) that it would come to this: and to be detected in the actual fact of pledging, seemed very like defeat.
"So you've began, have you, Ducket?" commenced Mrs. Gass.
"Began what, ma'am?" asked Ducket; a little, middle-aged man with watery eyes and weak hair; always deferent in manner to the wealthy Mrs. Gass.
"Began what! Why, the pledging. I told 'em all they'd come to the pawnshop."
"It's them that have begun it, ma'am; not me."
"Where do you suppose it will end, Ducket?"
Ducket shook his head meekly, intimating that he couldn't suppose anything about it. He was naturally meek in disposition, and the brow-beating he habitually underwent in the course of business from his customers of the fairer sex had subdued his spirit.
"It'll just end in their pawning every earthly thing inside their homes, leaving them to the four naked walls," said Mrs. Gass. "And the next move 'll be into the work'us."
In the presence of Mrs. Gass, Ducket did not choose to show any sense of latent profit this wholesale pledging might bring to him. On the contrary, he affected to see nothing but gloom in the matter.
"A nice prospect for us rate-payers, ma'am, that 'ould be! Taxes be heavy enough, as it is, in Dallory parish, without having all these workmen and their families throw'd on us."
"If the taxes was of my mind, Ducket, they'd let the men starve, rather than help 'em. When able-bodied artisans have plenty of work to do, and won't do it, it's time they was taught a lesson. As sure as you and I are standing here, them misguided men will come to want a crust."
"Well, I'd not wish 'em as bad as that," said Ducket, who, apart from the hardness induced by his trade, was rather softhearted. "Perhaps Mr. Richard North 'll give in."
"Mr. Richard North give in!" echoed Mrs. Gass. "Don't upset your brains with perhapsing that, Ducket. Who ought to give in--looking at the rights and wrongs of the question--North and Gass, or the men? Tell me that."
"Well, I think the men are wrong," acknowledged the pawnbroker, smoothing down his white linen apron. "And foolish too."
Mrs. Gass nodded several times, a significant look on her pleasant face. She wore a top-knot of white feathers, and they bowed majestically with the movement.
"Maybe they'll live to see it, too. They will, unless their senses come back to 'em pretty quickly. Look here, Ducket: what I was about to say is this--don't be too free to take their traps in."
Ducket's face assumed a mournful cast, but Mrs. Gass was looking at him, evidently waiting for an answer.
"I don't see my way clear to refusing things when they are brought to me, Mrs. Gass, ma'am. The women 'ould only go off to Whitborough and pledge 'em there."
"Then they should go--for me."
"Yes, ma'am," rejoined the man, not knowing what else to say.
"I'm not particular squeamish, Ducket; trade's trade; and a pawnbroker must live as well as other people. I don't say but what the money he lends does sometimes a world of good to them that has no other help to turn to--and, maybe, through no fault of their own, poor things. But when it comes to dismantling homes by the score, and leaving families as destitute as ever they were when they came into this blessed world, that's different. And I wouldn't like to have it on my conscience, Ducket, though I was ten pawnbrokers."
Mrs. Gass quitted the shop with the last words, leaving Ducket to digest them. In passing North Inlet, she saw a group of the disaffected collected together, and turned out of her way to speak to them. Mrs. Gass was quite at home, so to say, with every one of the men at the works; more so than a lady of better birth and breeding could ever have been. She found fault with them, and commented on their failings as familiarly as though she had been one of themselves. Of the whole body of workpeople, not more than three or four had consistently raised their voices against the strike. These few would willingly have gone to work again, and thought it a terrible hardship that they could not do so; but of course the refusal of the majority to return practically closed the gates to all. Richard North could not keep his business going with only half-a-dozen pairs of hands in it.
"Well," began Mrs. Gass, "what's the time o' day with you men?"
The men parted at the address, and touched their caps. The "time o' day" meant, as they knew, anything but the literal question.
"How much longer do you intend to lead the lives of gentlefolk?"
"It's what we was a-talking on, ma'am--how much longer Mr. Richard North 'll keep the gates closed again' us," returned one whose name was Webb, speaking boldly but respectfully.
"Don't you put the saddle on the wrong horse, Webb; I told you that the other day. Mr. Richard North didn't close the gates again' you: you closed 'em again' yourselves by walking out. He'd open them to you tomorrow, and be glad to do it."
"Yes, ma'am, but on the old terms," debated the man, looking obstinately at Mrs. Gass.
"What have you to say again' the old terms?" demanded that lady of the men collectively. "Haven't they kept you and your families in comfort for years and years? Where was your grumblings then? I heard of none."
"But things is changed," said Webb.
"Not a bit of it," retorted Mrs. Gass. "It's you men that have changed; not the things. I'll put a question to yon, Webb--to all of you--and it won't do you any harm to answer it. If these Trade union men had never come amongst you with their persuasions and doctrines, should you, or should you not, have been at your work now in content and peace? Be honest, Webb, and reply."
"I suppose so," confessed Webb.
"You know so," corrected Mrs. Gass. "It is as Mr. Richard said the other day to me--the men are led away by a chimera, which means a false fancy, Webb; a sham. There's the place"--pointing in the direction of the works--"and there's your work, waiting for you to do it. Mr. Richard will give you the same wages that he has always given; you say you won't go to work unless he gives more: which he can't afford to do. And there it rests; you, and him, and the business, all at a standstill."
"And likely to be at a standstill, ma'am," returned Webb, but always respectfully.
"Very well; let's take it at that," said Mrs. Gass, with equanimity. "Let's take it that it lasts, this state of things. What's to come of it?"
Webb, an intelligent man and superior workman, looked out straight before him thoughtfully, as if searching a solution to the question. Mrs. Gass, finding he did not answer, resumed:
"If the Trades' unions can find you permanently in food and drink, and clothes and firing, well and good. Let 'em do it: there'd be no more to say. But if they can't?"
"They undertake to keep us as long as the masters hold out."
"And the money--where's it had from?"
"Subscribed. All the working bodies throughout the United Kingdom subscribe to support the Trades' unions, ma'am."
"I heard," said Mrs. Gass, "that you were not getting quite as liberal a keep from the Trades' unions as they gave you to begin upon."
"That's true," interrupted one named Foster, who very much resented the shortening of supplies.
Mrs. Gass gave a toss to her lace parasol. "I heard, too--I've seen, for the matter of that--that your wives had begun to spout their spare crockery," said she. "What'll you do when the allowance grows less and less till it comes to nothing, and all your things is at the pawnshop?"
One or two of them laughed slightly. Not at her figures of speech--the homely language was their own--but at the improbability of the picture she called up. It was a state of affairs impossible to arise, they answered, whilst they had the Trades' unions at their backs.
"Isn't it," said Mrs. Gass. "Those that live longest 'll see most. There's strikes agate all over the country. You know that, my men."
Of course the men knew it. But for the general example set by others, they might never have struck themselves.
"Very good," said Mrs. Gass. "Now look here. You can see out before you just as well as I can, you men; your senses are as sharp as mine. When nearly the whole country goes on the strike, where are the subscriptions to come from for the Trades' unions? Don't it stand to common reason that there'll be nobody to pay 'em? Who'll keep you then?"
It was the very thing wanted--that all the country should go on strike; for then the masters must give in, was the reply. And then the men stood their ground and looked at her.
Mrs. Gass shook her head; the feathers waved. She supposed it must be as Richard North had said--the men in their prejudice really could not foresee what might be looming in the future.
"It seems no good my talking," she resumed; "I've said it before. If you don't come to repent, my name's not Mary Gass. I'm far from wishing it; goodness knows; and I shall be heartily sorry for your wives and children when the misery comes upon 'em. Not for you; because you are bringing it deliberate on yourselves."
"We don't doubt your good wishes for us and our families, ma'am," spoke Webb. "But, if you'll excuse my saying it, you stand in the shoes of a master, and naturally look on from the masters' point of view. Your interests lie that way, ours this, and they're dead opposed to each other."
"Well, now, I'll just say something," cried Mrs. Gass. "As far as my own interest is concerned, I don't care one jot whether the works go on again, or whether they stand still for ever. I've as much money as will last me my time. If every pound locked up in the works is lost, it'll make no sort of difference to me, or my home, or my comforts--and you ought to know this yourselves. I shall have as much to leave behind me, too, as I care to leave. But, if you come to talking of interests, I tell you whose I do think of, more than I do of my own--and that's yours and Mr. Richard North's. I am as easy on the matter, on my own score, as a body can be; but I'm not so on yours or his."
It was spoken with simple earnestness. In fact Mrs. Gass was incapable of deceit or sophistry--and the men knew it. But they thought that, in spite of her honesty, she could only be prejudiced against the workmen; and consequently her words had no more weight with them than the idle wind.
"Well, I'm off," said Mrs. Gass. "I hope with all my heart that your senses will come to you. And I say it for your own sakes."
"They've not left us--that we knows on," grumbled a man in a suppressed, half-insolent tone, as if he were dissatisfied with things in general.
"I hear you, Jack Allen. If you men think you know your own business best, you must follow it," concluded Mrs. Gass. "The old saying runs, A wilful man must have his way. One thing I'd like you to understand: that when your wives and children shall be left without a potater to their mouths or a rag to their backs, you needn't come whining to me to help 'em. Don't you forget to bear that in mind, my men."
Waiting for her at home, Mrs. Gass found Richard North. That this was a very anxious time for him, might be detected by the thoughtful look his face habitually wore. It was all very well for Mrs. Gass, so amply provided for, to take existing troubles easily; Richard was less philosophical. And with reason. His own ruin--and the final closing of the works would be nothing less--might be survived. He had his profession, his early manhood, his energies to fall back upon; his capacity and character both stood pre-eminent: he had no fear of making a living for himself, even though it might be done in the service of some more fortunate firm, and not in his own. But there was his father. If the works were permanently closed, the income Mr. North enjoyed from them could no longer be paid to him. All Mr. North's resources, whether derived from them or from Richard's generosity, would vanish like the mists of a summer's morning.
"What's it you, Mr. Richard?" cried Mrs. Gass when she entered, and saw him standing near the window of her dining-room. "I wouldn't have stopped out if I'd known you were here. Some of the men have been hearing a bit of my mind," she added, sitting down behind her plants and untying her bonnet-strings. "It's come to pawning the women's best gowns now."
"Has it?" replied Richard North, rather abstractedly, as if buried in thought. "Of course it must come to that, sooner or later."
"Sooner or later it would come to pawning themselves, if hey could do it," spoke Mrs. Gass. "If this state of things is to last, they'll have nothing else left to pawn."
Richard wheeled round and took a chair in front of Mrs. Gass. He had come to make a proposition to her; one he did not quite approve of himself; and for that reason his manner was perhaps a little less ready than usual. Richard North had received from Mrs. Gass, at the time of her late husband's death, full power to act on his own responsibility, just as he had held it from Mr. Gass; but in all weighty matters he had made a point of consulting them: Mr. Gass whilst he lived, Mrs. Gass since then.
"It is a question that I have been asking myself a little too often for my own peace--how long this state of things will last, and what will be the end," said Richard in answer to her last words, his low tone almost painfully earnest. "The longer it goes on, the worse it will be; for the men and for ourselves."
"That's precisely what I tell 'em," acquiesced Mrs. Gass, tilting her bonnet and fanning her face with her handkerchief. "But I might just as well speak to so many postesses."
"Yes; talking will not avail. I have talked to them; and find it only waste of words. If they listen to my arguments and feel inclined to be impressed with them, the influences of the Trades' union undo it all again. I think we must try something else."
"And what's that, Mr. Richard?"
"Give way a little."
"Give way!" repeated Mrs. Gass, pushing her chair back some inches in her surprise. "What! give 'em what they want?"
"Certainly not. That is what we could not do. I said give way a little."
"Mr. Richard, I never would."
"What I thought of proposing is this: To divide the additional wages they are standing out for. That is, offer them half. If they would not return to work on those terms, I should have no hope of them."
"And my opinion is, they'd not. Mr. Richard, sir, it's them Trade union people that upholds 'em in their obstinacy. They'll make 'em hold out for the whole demands or none. What do the leaders of the union care? It don't touch their pockets, or their comforts. So long as their own nests are feathered, the working man's may get as bare as boards. Don't you fancy the rulers 'll let our men give way half. It's only by keeping up agitation that agitators live."
"I should like to put it to the test. I have come here to ask you to agree to my doing it."
"And what about shortening the time that they want?" questioned Mrs. Gass.
"I should not give way there. It is impracticable. They must return on the usual time: but of the additional wages demanded I would offer half. Will you assent to this?"
"It will be with an uncommon bad grace," was Mrs. Gass's answer.
"I see nothing else to be done," said Richard North. "If only as a matter of conscience I should like to propose it. When it ends in a general ruin--which seems only too certain, for we cannot close our eyes to what is being enacted all over the country in almost all trades--I shall have the consolation of knowing that it is the men's own fault, not mine. Perhaps they will accept this offer. I hope so, though it will leave us little profit. If we can only make both ends meet, just to keep us going during these unsettled times, we must be satisfied. I am sure I shall be doing right, Mrs. Gass, to make this proposal."
"Mr. Richard, sir, you know that I've always trusted to your judgment, and shall do so to the end: anything you thought well to do, I should never dissuade you from. You shall make this offer if you please: but I know you'll be opening out a loophole for the men. Give 'em an inch, and they'll want an ell."
"If they come back it will be a great thing," argued Richard. "The sight of the works standing still; the knowledge that all it involves is standing still also, almost paralyzes me."
"Don't go and take it to heart at the beginning now," affectionately advised Mrs. Gass. "There's not much damage done yet."
Richard bent forward, painfully earnest. "It is of my father that I think. What will become of him if all our resources are stopped?"
"I'll take care of him till better times come round," said Mrs. Gass, heartily. "And of you, too, Mr. Richard; if you won't be too proud to let me, sir."
Richard laughed; a slight, genial laugh; partly in amusement, partly in gratitude. "I hope the better times will come at once," he said, preparing to leave. "At least, sufficiently good times to allow business to go on as usual. If the men refuse this offer of mine, they are made of more ungrateful stuff than I should give them credit for."
"They will refuse it," said Mrs. Gass, emphatically. "As is my belief. Not them, Mr. Richard, but the Trades' unions for 'em. Once get under the thumb of that despotic body, and a workman daredn't say his soul is his own."
And Mrs. Gass's opinion proved to be correct. Richard North called his men together, and laid the concession before them; pressing them to accept it in their mutual interests. The men requested a day for consideration, and then gave their answer: rejection. Unless the whole of their demands were complied with, they unequivocally refused to return to work.
"It will be worse for them than for me in the long run," said Richard North.
And many a thoughtful mind believed that he spoke in a spirit of prophecy.