"Naw, I don't just think so."
"Why not?" said Angus.
"Well, 'twouldn't be fair; besides, I happen to have a little house and
garden of my own."
Then all that crowd of men exploded in a burst of derisive laughter
which set the seal of triumph on Angus's argument.
After the uproar had subsided, an intrepid Scotsman, only a few months
in New Jedboro, volunteered to address the meeting.
"I canna jist answer the argyments o' Mr. Strachan, but I maun pit
forrit my idea that oor wives and bairns haena the luxuries o' them as
owns the works. I canna but mind that Robbie Burns said, 'A man's a man
for a' that,' an' I thocht the present a fittin' occasion to mind ye o'
the words, bein' as we're met the nicht to speak oot against slavery o'
ilka kind."
"No man who knows me," replied Angus, "will say that I will either yield
to slavery or assist it in any form. But the man who calls himself a
slave because his employer has more money than he, is no friend to
honest labour. We would all like wealth, but wealth is neither happiness
nor liberty. After all, the men whom we envy have not so much more than
we; they can only lie on one pillow at a time, can only eat one mouthful
at a time, can only smoke one cigar at a time, and as for the kind of
couch a man sits down upon, it matters little so that he has earned his
rest by honest toil.
"My Scottish friend hardly realizes what he says. I know he has a wife
and a sweet little lassie. There is Mr. Blake, the richest of our
manufacturers, and he has neither the one nor the other. Now I ask my
compatriot, would he trade his lot for that of Mr. Blake with all his
money? He answers no. Then who is the richer man--Mr. Blake, or our
fellow-workman from auld Scotland?
"Speaking of Scotland, let me say this one word. I lived there till I
was a well-grown lad, as did scores of you, and I defy you to contradict
me when I say that we are a hundred times better off here than we were
among the sheep or behind the ploughs in the old land, neither of which
we could hardly ever hope to call our own. Were we not there accounted
almost as sheep for the slaughter? How much better were we than the kine
we tended? Were not we even driven from the land we rented at a cruel
price, that some haughty lord might make a deer-run of the place? What
were we there but grovelling vassals, and what hope had we ever to be
independent, or to own even a house in which to die?
"I do not need to tell you of the difference here, of how the most of us
have our own little homes, and count our friends among the best people
in New Jedboro; and three-fourths of the aldermen in our council, and
the trustees of our schools, and the elders of our kirks, are from the
ranks of honest labour.
"Let us thank God we have escaped from the class tyranny and the peasant
bondage of the land beyond the seas."
A new and different light was now upon the rapt faces of the men--and
the end of it all was that they turned the diamond-ringed gentlemen from
their doors.