"seems to be a comparatively sincere and honest grumbler. He has
realised that this is an unjust world, and he wants to put it right by
Act of Parliament. Consequently he goes about advocating certain
special and particular forms of legislation which, if they came into
being, would benefit about one member of the community in a hundred
and be grossly unfair to the other ninety-nine. He has not yet
discovered for himself that the aim of all legislation must be to
benefit the type and not the individual. That is the rock upon which
all your friends split, Mr Winch. You are always trying to legislate
for special cases, and it can't be _done_. I quite agree with you that
the conditions of labour in parts of this country are deplorable. We
all want to put them right. But there are two things we cannot do. We
can't cure them in a hurry, and we can't cure them by swallowing quack
medicines. What we have to do is to set to work on systematic lines,
and go on working, with patience and a sense of proportion, until our
whole social fabric develops into a sounder and more healthy
condition. That requires time, and time requires patience, and
patience requires common-sense, and common-sense is a thing which is
lamentably scarce in this world, Mr Winch. We are marching on to a
better state of things every year; but every bit of unsound,
panic-stricken, vote-catching legislation--Right-to-Work Bills,
Unemployment Acts, and so on--throws us back a step, because its
tendency is to remove the symptom instead of curing the disease. Now,
symptoms are very valuable assets. They give us reliable and necessary
information, which is more than can be said of most intelligence
departments. If ever you have such a vulgar thing as a pain in your
stomach, Mr Winch, that is a kindly hint from Nature that there is
something wrong with the works. If you drink two of whisky hot the
pain may cease, but it does not follow that the real cause of the
trouble has been removed. In effect you have merely put back the
danger-signal to safety without removing the danger. That is just what
all this despicable, hand-to-mouth, time-serving legislation that you
and your friends are trying to force upon a popularity-hunting
Government is doing for the country to-day."
The speaker paused. The deputation wore a distinctly chastened
appearance. Mr Aymer was engaged upon a third sheet of notes. Sir
Nigel Thompson was working out a chemical formula on the back of an
envelope.
"Let us get back to the point, sir," said Amos Entwistle doggedly. "I
agree with a great deal of what you say----"
"Shame!" interpolated Mr Killick suddenly.
"But we came here to ask for the reinstatement of these two men, and
not to discuss social problems."
"Granted all the time," said Juggernaut cheerfully. "I admit that I
have not made Messrs Conlin and Murton my Alpha and Omega in these
remarks of mine; but that is because I deliberately went back to first
principles instead of cutting into the middle of things. Now for your
request! You want an answer? Here it is. The two men cannot be
reinstated under any circumstances whatsoever. I confess I am rather
sorry for Conlin: he is in a different class from Murton. But he is
tarred with the same brush, and he must go."
"Take care, Sir John," broke in Mr Winch, in the declamatory bray
which he reserved for extreme crises. "Don't push us too hard! What if
a strike was to be proclaimed at Marbledown Colliery? You wouldn't
like that, Mr Montague! You have a bad enough name in the district as
it is. You grind your 'eel----"
"Mr Winch," said Juggernaut in a voice of thunder, "I must ask you to
address yourself to me. This matter has been taken out of Mr
Montague's hands by the combined action of the Owners' Association; so
if you have any strictures to offer they must be laid upon me as
representing the Association collectively. As for striking--well, you
struck before, you know. I don't think any of us have forgotten that
winter--masters or men!"
"We nearly beat you then," said Killick hotly.
"That," retorted Mr Montague, suddenly breaking into the debate, "was
because some sentimental fool sent food and necessaries to your
wives."
"It's the women and children who pay for strikes, you know, Mr Winch,"
said Mr Crisp, speaking for the first time--"not you men. You can do
without beer and baccy at a pinch, but your families must have
groceries and fire. If they had not been kept going by that unknown
benefactor the strike would have collapsed as soon as the Union funds
gave out."
"Perhaps they will be kept going again," said Amos Entwistle quietly.
"They won't," said Juggernaut emphatically. "You can take my word for
that, Mr Entwistle. I have seen to it. And I may add that if you
consider it advisable to proclaim a sectional strike, the owners on
their part might find it necessary to declare a lock-out at all the
collieries in the district. If men can combine, so can masters."
There was a staggered silence. Even the Board were hardly prepared for
this. Juggernaut had so dominated the situation since his arrival that
one or two--Mr Montague in particular--were beginning to wonder rather
peevishly why they had been admitted to the meeting. But Mr Crisp
leaned back and took snuff contentedly. He appreciated strong
measures, though he was averse to initiating them.
Still, the temper of the meeting was rising. Killick broke out
furiously. It was a burning shame, a monstrous iniquity, he declared,
that men who had never done an honest day's work in their lives should
be enabled, simply because they had money in their pockets, to force
humiliating conditions on a majority who had no alternative but to
submit or starve. He spoke with all the conviction that absolute
sincerity carries; but the effect of his philippic was not enhanced by
the marginal comments of his colleague, Mr Brash, who kept up a
running fire of _sotto voce_ references to bloody-minded tyrants,
champagne, ballet-girls, and other equally relevant topics with a
persistence and enthusiasm which would have proved embarrassing to a
more self-conscious and less frenzied rhetorician than Mr Killick.
When both solo and _obligato_ had subsided, Juggernaut spoke again.
"It is one of the most common delusions of men of your way of
thinking, Mr Killick, to imagine that the only kind of work worthy of
the name is manual labour. Personally, I have tried both. For two
years after I came down from the University I worked for experience's
sake in a pit not far from here. I went down with my shift daily and
worked full time; but I assure you that those two years were far from
being the most laborious of my life."
"Your case was different, sir," said Amos Entwistle, with a practical
man's quick perception of his opponent's weak points. "You were doing
it for pleasure, to acquire experience--not to earn your bread. You
could look forward to something better later on."
"And so can every man!" replied Juggernaut. "Each one of us is able
if he likes to work his way up, and up, and up; and the lower he
starts, the greater is his range of opportunity. The man at the bottom
has the whole ladder to climb, instead of a few paltry rungs, as is
the case of a man born near the top. Let him think of that, and be
thankful!"
The chairman's sombre eyes glowed. His tone of raillery was gone: he
was in sober earnest now. To him poverty and riches were nothing; he
could have lived happily on a pound a-week: the salt of life lay in
the overcoming of its difficulties.
But Amos Entwistle was a man of tough fibre--by far the strongest man,
next to the chairman, in that assemblage.
"You can't deny, sir," he persisted doggedly, "that it is very
difficult for a poor man to rise. His employers don't help him much.
They are best satisfied with a man who keeps his proper station, as
they call it."
"Tyrants!" interpolated Mr Winch hastily.
"Star Chamber!" added Mr Brash, _a propos de bottes_.
"Tyrants? Star Chamber?" Juggernaut surveyed the interrupter
quizzically. "Here is a question for you, Mr Brash. Which is the
worse--the tyranny of the harsh employer who gathers where he has not
strawed, or the tyranny of a Trades Union which a man is forced to
join, and which compels the best worker to slow down his pace to that
of the worst, and frequently compels him to come out on strike over
some question upon which he is perfectly satisfied? I won't attempt to
place them in order of merit, but I should feel inclined to
bracket----"
"Trades Unions," interrupted Mr Winch, who was beginning to feel
himself unduly excluded from the present symposium, "are the first
steps towards the complete emancipation of Labour"--he smacked his
lips as over a savoury bakemeat--"from the degrading shackles of
Capital. Every man his own master!"
Juggernaut nodded his head slowly.
"Ye-es," he said. "That sounds admirable. But what does it _mean_
exactly? As far as I can see, it means that every one who is at
present a labourer is ultimately going to become a capitalist. In that
case it rather looks as if there would be a shortage of hands if there
was work to be done. Your Utopia, Mr Winch, appears to me to resemble
the Grand Army of Hayti, which consists of five hundred privates and
eleven hundred Generals. No, no; you must bear in mind this fact, that
ever since the world began mankind has been divided up into masters
and men, and will continue to be so divided until the end of time.
What we--you and I--have to do is to adjust the relations between the
two in such a fashion as to make the conditions fair for both. I
don't say that employers aren't frequently most high-handed and
tyrannical, but I also say that _employes_ are extraordinarily touchy
and thin-skinned. I think it chiefly arises from a sort of distorted
notion that there is something degrading and undignified in obeying an
order. Why, man, obedience and discipline are the very life-blood of
every institution worthy of the name. They are no class affair either.
I have seen the captain of a company stand at attention without
winking for ten minutes, and receive a damning from his colonel that
no non-commissioned officer in the service would have dreamed of
administering to a private of the line. Master and man each hold
equally honourable positions; and what you must drum into the minds of
your associates, gentlemen--I'm speaking to the Board as much as to
the deputation--is the fact that the interests of both are
_identical_, instead of being as far apart as the poles, which appears
to be your present impression. Neither can exist without the other. So
far you have imbibed only half of that truth. You reiterate with
distressing frequency, Mr Winch, the fact that Capital cannot exist
without Labour. Perfectly true. Now try to absorb into your system the
fact--equally important to a hair's-breadth--that Labour cannot exist
without Capital. Each depends upon the other for existence, and what
we have to do is to balance and balance and balance, employing a
sense of proportion, proportion, _proportion_!"
Juggernaut's fist descended with a crash upon the table, and for a
minute he was silent--free-wheeling, so to speak, over the pulverised
remains of Mr Winch. Presently he continued, with one of his rare
smiles--
"A Frenchman once said that an Englishman begins by making a speech
and ends by preaching a sermon. I am afraid I have justified the gibe,
but it's a good thing to thrash these matters out. I don't deny that
the average employer is in the habit of giving his _employes_ their
bare pound of flesh in the way of wages and no more. But I think the
_employe_ has himself to blame for that. If you invoke the assistance
of the law against your neighbour, that neighbour will give you
precisely as much as the law compels him to give. Well, that is what
organised Labour has done. It has its Trades Union, its Workmen's
Compensation and Employers' Liability, and so on; and lately it has
gouged out of a myopic Government a scheme of Old Age Pensions, to be
eligible for which a man must on no account have exercised any kind of
thrift throughout his working life. If he has, he is disqualified. All
this legislation enables you to get the half-nelson on your employer.
Under the circumstances you can hardly expect him to throw in
benevolence as well. You can't have your cake and eat it. The old
personal relations between master and man are dead--dead as Queen
Anne--and with them has died the master's sense of moral
responsibility for the welfare of those dependent on him."
"Time, too! Degradation! Feudal system!" observed the ever-ready Mr
Killick.
"Well, perhaps; but the Feudal System had its points, Mr Killick. It
fostered one or two homely and healthy virtues like benevolence and
loyalty and pride of race; and I don't think a man-at-arms ever lost
his self-respect or felt degraded because he lived in time of peace
under the protection of the Lord of the Manor whom he followed in time
of war. Yes, I for one rather regret the passing of the old order.
Listen, and I will tell you a story. Forty years ago Cherry Hill Pit
was flooded--flooded for nearly three months during a bitter hard
winter. Sir Nigel Thompson's father, the late baronet----"
Sir Nigel, who was puzzling out some specially complicated formula,
suddenly looked up. He had an idea that his name had been mentioned;
but as every one present appeared to be listening most intently to the
chairman, he resumed his engrossing occupation with a sigh of relief.
"--paid full wages during the whole of that time; and as coal was
naturally unobtainable in the village, he imported sufficient to
supply the needs of the whole community. Not a house in the village
lacked its kitchen fire or its Sunday dinner during all those weeks.
That was before the days of the Employers' Liability, gentlemen! If a
similar disaster were to occur to-day, I doubt if Sir Nigel here would
feel morally bound to do anything for such an independent and
self-sufficient community. The present state of things may safeguard
you against the ungenerous employer, but it eliminates the milk of
human kindness from our mutual transactions, and that is always a
matter for regret. That is all, gentlemen. You have our last word in
this matter. These two men must go. If you would like to withdraw to
the next room for a few minutes and consider whether you have anything
further to say, we shall be glad to wait your convenience here."
The deputation rose and filed solemnly from the room, and the Board
were left alone.
Presently Mr Aymer observed timidly--
"Mr Chairman, don't you think we might let Conlin stay, and content
ourselves with dismissing Murton?"
"Afraid not," said Juggernaut. "It's a bit hard on Conlin, but we have
to consider the greatest good of the greatest number. He's a
plague-spot, and if we don't eradicate him he'll spread. Do you agree,
Kirkley?"
"Bad luck on the poor devil, but I think you are right," assented his
lordship.
"Crisp?"
Mr Crisp nodded.
"Nigel?"
Sir Nigel Thompson looked up from his seventh envelope with a
contented sigh.
"I have it at last," he said. "It's a perfectly simple solution,
really, but the obvious often escapes one's notice owing to its very
proximity. The eye is looking further afield. Eh--what? My decision? I
agree implicitly with you, Jack--that is, gentlemen, I support the
chairman in his view of the case."
And this vigilant counsellor collected his envelopes and stuffed them
into his pocket. The chairman continued--
"Montague?"
"Before I answer that question," began Mr Montague, "I should like to
protetht--protest, I mean--against the arbitrary manner in which you
have conducted this meeting, Mr Chairman. You have taken the case out
of our hands in a manner which I consider most unwarrantable; and,
speaking as the actual employer of the two men----"
Juggernaut swung rather deliberately round in his chair.
"Mr Montague," he said, "you got yourself into a hole, and you
called--no, _howled_--for a meeting of directors to come and pull you
out. These agitators settled down in your district because they knew
that it was the most fertile district to work in. You are considered,
rightly, the worst employer of labour here. You are greedy,
unscrupulous, and tyrannical. It is men like you who discredit Capital
in the eyes of Labour, and make conciliatory dealing between master
and man almost an impossibility. We have bolstered you up through a
very difficult crisis, sitting here and putting those poor fellows,
five of whom are infinitely more honest than you are, quite
undeservedly in the wrong, and imperilling our immortal souls by
whitewashing such employers as you. Accept the situation and be
thankful!"
It is said that hard words break no bones. Still, if you happen to be
a member of a race which has endured hard words (to say nothing of
broken bones) for twenty centuries, and when the hard words on this
particular occasion are delivered by a large man with angry blue eyes
and a tongue like a whip-lash, you may be forgiven for losing your
nerve a little. Mr Montague lost his. He flapped his ringed hands
feebly, mumbled incoherently, and was understood to withdraw his
objections unconditionally.
"Mr Amos Entwistle," announced a clerk at the door.
Entwistle junior re-entered the room.
"I am commissioned to inform you, Mr Chairman," he said, "that we
acquiesce in your decision; but under protest. I should like to add,
gentlemen," he continued, less formally but none the less earnestly,
"that the Committee are very much dissatisfied with the result of the
interview. I am afraid you haven't heard the last of this trouble.
Good-day, and thank you, gentlemen!"
"What does it all mean? Strike--eh?" inquired Lord Kirkley, as he and
Juggernaut descended the stairs together five minutes later.
"Perhaps. If so, we'll fight."
"Righto--I'm on! I say, it was pretty smart of you finding out where
those private supplies of theirs came from last time. We shall be able
to put the lid on that sort of think in future--what?"
Juggernaut nodded, but said no more.
Mr Crisp, Sir Nigel Thompson, and Mr Aymer walked across to the
latter's offices for luncheon. Mr Montague had gone home to lunch by
himself. He usually did so.
"The chairman arrived at the meeting in the nick of time," said the
lawyer. "Kirkley would have been no match for Winch."
"The chairman was very inflexible," sighed Mr Aymer, with all a weak
man's passion for compromise. "He has a way of brushing aside
obstacles which can only be described as Napoleonic. Is he always
within his rights from a legal point of view?"
"From a legal point of view, practically never," said the lawyer
simply. "From a common-sense point of view, practically always."
"He is a hard man--as hard as flint," mused Mr Aymer. "I wonder if he
has a soft side to him _anywhere_. I wonder, for instance, how he
would treat a woman."
"I wonder," said Mr Crisp.
CHAPTER FOUR.
THE DEVIL A MONK WOULD BE.
The first member of the Rectory household whose eyes opened on Sunday
morning was the Rector himself, who promptly arose and repaired to the
church, there to conduct the early morning service. The second was a
certain Mr Dawks, who has not previously been mentioned in this
narrative. He was a dog. The term may include almost anything, which
is perhaps fortunate for Mr Dawks; otherwise it might have been
necessary to class him under some more elastic heading. Of his
ancestry nothing was known, though many conjectures could have been
made, and most of them would have been correct. He had been found
lying half-dead in a country lane by Daphne six years ago, and though
mistaken at the time for a derelict monkey jettisoned from some
migratory hurdy-gurdy, had subsequently proved to be a mongrel puppy
of a few months old. Regular meals and ripening years had developed
him into a sort of general epitome of all the dogs that ever existed.
He possessed points which, exhibited individually, would have gained
many marks at Cruft's Dog-Show. His tail would have increased the
market value of a Chow fourfold; his shoulders and forelegs would have
done credit to a prize bull-terrier; his ears would have inflated the
self-esteem of the silkiest spaniel in existence; and his lower jaw
would have been regarded as an asset by an alligator. His manners were
without reproach, but were derived rather from mental vacuity than
nobility of character; for with the deportment of an hidalgo he
combined the intelligence of a permanent official.
His name, as already mentioned, was Mr Dawks, but he responded with
equal amiability to "Angel Child" or "Beautiful One" (Daphne);
"Flea-Club" (Ally); "Puss, puss!" (Nicky); and "Tank-Engine" (Stiffy),
to whose mechanical mind bandy legs and laboured breathing suggested a
short wheel-base and leaky outside-cylinders.
Mr Dawks, having arisen from his nightly resting-place outside Daphne
Vereker's bedroom door, strolled downstairs to the study. The Rector
was frequently to be found there early in the morning, and were he not
too deeply absorbed in some dusty volume, there might be biscuits. But
the room was empty. Mr Dawks laboriously remounted the staircase and
scratched delicately at his mistress's bedroom door.
He was admitted, and found Daphne, in dressing-gown and slippers,
preparing for her Sunday morning round, in which she doubled the parts
of what is known in the North of England as a "knocker-up" and
mistress of the wardrobe; for the week's clean garments were always
distributed on these occasions. The pair set forth together.
After a tap at her father's door, answered by a melodious
"Good-morning, daughter!" which showed that the Rector had returned
from his ministrations, Daphne proceeded to the regions above. Here
upon the landing she encountered her youngest sister, who ought
properly to have been dressing in the bedroom which she shared with
Cilly. Instead, she was sitting resignedly outside the door upon a
bundle composed of her Sabbath garments. As she was obviously posing
for the excitation of sympathy, Daphne ignored her and passed into the
bedroom, where the window-blind was flapping in the breeze and Cilly
lay in a condition of almost total eclipse (if we except a long tawny
pig-tail) under the bed-clothes.
"Cilly," inquired Daphne, "what's Nicky doing outside?"
"I kicked her out," replied a muffled voice.
"Why?"
"Well"--Cilly poked her head, tortoise-fashion, from under
its covering--"she cheeked me--about"--the head retired
again--"something."
"Bobby Gill, I suppose," remarked Daphne calmly.
Cilly's countenance reappeared, rosily flushed with healthy sleep and
maiden modesty.
"Yes."
"Well, you must take her in again," said Daphne. "She's only playing
up for a cold, sitting out there, and it will be a score for her if
she can sniff the house down to-morrow."
"All right," said Cilly resignedly. "I suppose I can pay her out some
other way."
"I wouldn't, if I were you," advised the elder sister. "She'll only
wait till she gets you and Bobby together, and then say something
_awful_. It's your own fault, dear. You do ask for it, you know."
Cilly, whose flirtations were more numerous than discreet, sighed
deeply, and rolled a pair of large and dreamy eyes upon her sister.
"Daph, don't you _ever_ fall in love with men? Well--boys, if you
like!" she continued, parrying an unspoken comment. "I know I do
overdo it a bit; but you--well, you never do it at all. Don't you love
to feel them edging up to you, and getting pink in the face, and
trying to think of things to say to you, and offering to take
you----"
"No," said Daphne decidedly; "they bore me. Barring Dad and Mr Dawks
and the boys, I have no use for males. Besides, I'm always too busy to
bother with them: they waste so much of your time. Now, my child, if
you want any breakfast you had better get up. I must go and see the
boys."
She departed, and with a passing admonition to Nicky to abandon her
eleemosynary vigil and be sure to wash her neck, continued on her way,
still accompanied by the faithful Dawks, to the chamber occupied by
her two youngest brothers.
Here peace reigned. Stiffy, one of whose chief joys in life was the
study of the British Railway System, from Automatic Couplings to
Newspaper Specials, was sitting up in bed with an old _Bradshaw_,
laboriously ascertaining by how many routes and with how few changes
the ordinary railway maniac might travel from Merthyr-Tydvil to
Stockton-on-Tees. At the other end of the room the ever-occupied
Anthony, with his night-shirt for a surplice and a stocking for a
stole, was standing by an open grave (the hearthrug) rehearsing the
opening passages of the Service for the Burial of the Dead,--an
exercise to which, in common with various other ecclesiastical
offices, he was much addicted.
Daphne, having kissed Stiffy and gravely given her verdict upon a
knotty point which was exercising that scrupulous youth's mind,
namely, whether it was permissible by the rules of the game to include
in his schedule of connections a train which ran on Thursdays Only,
handed him his weekly dole of clean linen and turned to the youngest
member of the family.
"Good-morning, Tony dear," she said cheerfully.
The celebrant, who, true artist that he was, disliked unnecessary
abruptness in his transitions, stopped short in the Ninetieth Psalm.
"Dearly Beloved Brethren," he gabbled in an apologetic undertone, "I
am called for a moment from the side of this the last resting-place of
our lamented sister"--apparently it was a lady friend he was
interring--"by other business; but I shall be back in a minute." Then,
unwinding the stocking from about his neck--
"Daphne, those new vests are beastly scratchy. Must I wear them?"