We must return to John Barton. Poor John! He never got over his
disappointing journey to London. The deep mortification he then
experienced (with, perhaps, as little selfishness for its cause as
mortification ever had) was of no temporary nature; indeed, few of his
feelings were.
Then came a long period of bodily privation; of daily hunger after food;
and though he tried to persuade himself he could bear want himself with
stoical indifference, and did care about it as little as most men, yet
the body took its revenge for its uneasy feelings. The mind became soured
and morose, and lost much of its equipoise. It was no longer elastic, as
in the days of youth, or in times of comparative happiness; it ceased to
hope. And it is hard to live on when one can no longer hope.
The same state of feeling which John Barton entertained, if belonging
to one who had had leisure to think of such things, and physicians to
give names to them, would have been called monomania, so haunting, so
incessant were the thoughts that pressed upon him. I have somewhere
read a forcibly described punishment among the Italians, worthy of a
Borgia. The supposed or real criminal was shut up in a room, supplied
with every convenience and luxury; and at first mourned little over his
imprisonment. But day by day he became aware that the space between the
walls of his apartment was narrowing, and then he understood the end.
Those painted walls would come into hideous nearness, and at last crush
the life out of him.
And so day by day, nearer and nearer, came the diseased thoughts of John
Barton. They excluded the light of heaven, the cheering sounds of earth.
They were preparing his death.
It is true much of their morbid power might be ascribed to the use of
opium. But before you blame too harshly this use, or rather abuse, try
a hopeless life, with daily cravings of the body for food. Try, not
alone being without hope yourself, but seeing all around you reduced to
the same despair, arising from the same circumstances; all around you
telling (though they use no words or language), by their looks and feeble
actions, that they are suffering and sinking under the pressure of want.
Would you not be glad to forget life, and its burdens? And opium gives
forgetfulness for a time.
It is true they who thus purchase it pay dearly for their oblivion;
but can you expect the uneducated to count the cost of their whistle?
Poor wretches! They pay a heavy price. Days of oppressive weariness and
languor, whose realities have the feeble sickliness of dreams; nights,
whose dreams are fierce realities of agony; sinking health, tottering
frames, incipient madness, and worse, the _consciousness_ of incipient
madness: this is the price of their whistle. But have you taught them the
science of consequences?
John Barton’s overpowering thought, which was to work out his fate on
earth, was—rich and poor. Why are they so separate, so distinct, when God
has made them all? It is not His will that their interests are so far
apart. Whose doing is it?
And so on into the problems and mysteries of life, until, bewildered and
lost, unhappy and suffering, the only feeling that remained clear and
undisturbed in the tumult of his heart was hatred to the one class, and
keen sympathy with the other.
But what availed his sympathy? No education had given him wisdom; and
without wisdom, even love, with all its effects, too often works but
harm. He acted to the best of his judgment, but it was a widely erring
judgment.
The actions of the uneducated seem to me typified in those of
Frankenstein, that monster of many human qualities, ungifted with a soul,
a knowledge of the difference between good and evil.
The people rise up to life; they irritate us, they terrify us, and we
become their enemies. Then, in the sorrowful moment of our triumphant
power, their eyes gaze on us with mute reproach. Why have we made them
what they are; a powerful monster, yet without the inner means for peace
and happiness?
John Barton became a Chartist, a Communist, all that is commonly called
wild and visionary. Ay! but being visionary is something. It shows a
soul, a being not altogether sensual; a creature who looks forward for
others, if not for himself.
And with all his weakness he had a sort of practical power, which made
him useful to the bodies of men to whom he belonged. He had a ready kind
of rough Lancashire eloquence, arising out of the fullness of his heart,
which was very stirring to men similarly circumstanced, who liked to hear
their feelings put into words. He had a pretty clear head at times for
method and arrangement, a necessary talent to large combinations of men.
And what perhaps more than all made him relied upon and valued, was the
consciousness which everyone who came in contact with him felt, that he
was actuated by no selfish motives; that his class, his order, was what
he stood by, not the rights of his own paltry self. For even in great and
noble men, as soon as self comes into prominent existence, it becomes a
mean and paltry thing.
A little time before this there had come one of those occasions for
deliberation among the employed, which deeply interested John Barton, and
the discussions concerning which had caused his frequent absence from
home of late.
I am not sure if I can express myself in the technical terms of either
masters or workmen, but I will try simply to state the case on which the
latter deliberated.
An order for coarse goods came in from a new foreign market. It was a
large order, giving employment to all the mills engaged in that species
of manufacture; but it was necessary to execute it speedily, and at as
low prices as possible, as the masters had reason to believe that a
duplicate order had been sent to one of the Continental manufacturing
towns, where there were no restrictions on food, no taxes on building or
machinery, and where consequently they dreaded that the goods could be
made at a much lower price than they could afford them for; and that, by
so acting and charging, the rival manufacturers would obtain undivided
possession of the market. It was clearly their interest to buy cotton as
cheaply, and to beat down wages as low as possible. And in the long run
the interests of the workmen would have been thereby benefited. Distrust
each other as they may, the employers and the employed must rise or fall
together. There may be some difference as to chronology, none as to fact.
But the masters did not choose to make all these circumstances known.
They stood upon being the masters, and that they had a right to order
work at their own prices, and they believed that in the present
depression of trade, and unemployment of hands, there would be no great
difficulty in getting it done.
Now let us turn to the workmen’s view of the question. The masters (of
the tottering foundation of whose prosperity they were ignorant) seemed
doing well, and, like gentlemen, “lived at home in ease,” while they were
starving, gasping on from day to day; and there was a foreign order to be
executed, the extent of which, large as it was, was greatly exaggerated;
and it was to be done speedily. Why were the masters offering such low
wages under these circumstances? Shame upon them! It was taking advantage
of their workpeople being almost starved; but they would starve entirely
rather than come into such terms. It was bad enough to be poor, while by
the labour of their thin hands, the sweat of their brows, the masters
were made rich; but they would not be utterly ground down to dust. No!
they would fold their hands and sit idle, and smile at the masters, whom
even in death they could baffle. With Spartan endurance they determined
to let the employers know their power, by refusing to work.
So class distrusted class, and their want of mutual confidence wrought
sorrow to both. The masters would not be bullied, and compelled to reveal
why they felt it wisest and best to offer only such low wages; they would
not be made to tell that they were even sacrificing capital to obtain a
decisive victory over the Continental manufacturers. And the workmen sat
silent and stern, with folded hands, refusing to work for such pay. There
was a strike in Manchester.
Of course, it was succeeded by the usual consequences. Many other Trades
Unions, connected with different branches of business, supported with
money, countenance, and encouragement of every kind, the stand which
the Manchester power-loom weavers were making against their masters.
Delegates from Glasgow, from Nottingham, and other towns were sent to
Manchester, to keep up the spirit of resistance; a committee was formed,
and all the requisite officers elected—chairman, treasurer, honorary
secretary; among them was John Barton.
The masters, meanwhile, took their measures. They placarded the walls
with advertisements for power-loom weavers. The workmen replied by a
placard in still larger letters, stating their grievances. The masters
met daily in town, to mourn over the time (so fast slipping away) for
the fulfilment of the foreign orders; and to strengthen each other in
their resolution not to yield. If they gave up now, they might give up
always. It would never do. And amongst the most energetic of the masters,
the Carsons, father and son, took their places. It is well known that
there is no religionist so zealous as a convert; no masters so stern,
and regardless of the interests of their workpeople, as those who have
risen from such a station themselves. This would account for the elder
Mr. Carson’s determination not to be bullied into yielding; not even to
be bullied into giving reasons for acting as the masters did. It was the
employer’s will, and that should be enough for the employed. Harry Carson
did not trouble himself much about the grounds for his conduct. He liked
the excitement of the affair. He liked the attitude of resistance. He was
brave, and he liked the idea of personal danger, with which some of the
more cautious tried to intimidate the violent among the masters.
Meanwhile the power-loom weavers living in the more remote parts of
Lancashire, and the neighbouring counties, heard of the masters’
advertisements for workmen; and in their solitary dwellings grew weary
of starvation, and resolved to come to Manchester. Foot-sore, way-worn,
half-starved-looking men they were, as they tried to steal into town
in the early dawn, before people were astir, or in the dusk of the
evening. And now began the real wrong-doing of the Trades Unions. As
to their decision to work or not at such a particular rate of wages,
that was either wise or unwise; an error of judgment, at the worst. But
they had no right to tyrannise over others, and tie them down to their
own Procrustean bed. Abhorring what they considered oppression in their
masters, why did they oppress others? Because, when men get excited, they
know not what they do. Judge, then, with something of the mercy of the
Holy One, whom we all love.
In spite of policemen, set to watch over the safety of the poor country
weavers—in spite of magistrates and prisons and severe punishments—the
poor depressed men tramping in from Burnley, Padiham, and other places,
to work at the condemned “Starvation Prices,” were waylaid, and beaten,
and left by the roadside almost for dead. The police broke up every
lounging knot of men: they separated quietly to reunite half a mile out
of town.
Of course the feeling between the masters and workmen did not improve
under these circumstances.
Combination is an awful power. It is like the equally mighty agency
of steam; capable of almost unlimited good or evil. But to obtain a
blessing on its labours, it must work under the direction of a high and
intelligent will, not being misled by passion or excitement. The will of
the operatives had not been guided to the calmness of wisdom.
So much for generalities.
The Trial for Murder causes Mary Barton to Confess her Love for the
Prisoner at the Bar