THE HACKLER
The warehouse of Bridetown Mill adjoined the churchyard wall and its
northern windows looked down upon the burying ground. The store came
first and then the foreman's home, a thatched dwelling bowered in red
and white roses, with the mill yard in front and a garden behind. From
these the works were separated by the river. Bride came by a mill race
to do her share, and a water wheel, conserving her strength, took it to
the machinery. For Benny Cogle's engine was reinforced by the river.
Then, speeding forward, Bride returned to her native bed, which wound
through the valley south of the works.
A bridge crossed the river from the yard and communicated with the
mills--a heterogeneous pile of dim, dun colours and irregular roofs
huddled together with silver-bright excrescences of corrugated iron. A
steady hum and drone as of some gigantic beehive ascended from the
mills, and their combined steam and water power produced a tremor of
earth and a steady roar in the air; while a faint dust storm often
flickered about the entrance ways.
The store-house reeked with that fat, heavy odour peculiar to hemp and
flax. It was a lofty building of wide doors and few windows. Here in the
gloom lay bales and stacks of raw material. Italy, Russia, India, had
sent their scutched hemp and tow to Bridetown. Some was in the rough;
the dressed line had already been hackled and waited in bundles of long
hemp composed of wisps, or 'stricks' like horses' tails. The silver and
amber of the material made flashes of brightness in the dark storerooms
and drew the light to their shining surfaces. Tall, brown posts
supported the rafters, and in the twilight that reigned here, a man
moved among the bales piled roof-high around him. He was gathering rough
tow from a broken bale of Russian hemp and had stripped the Archangel
matting from the mass.
Levi Baggs, the hackler, proceeded presently to weigh his material and
was taking it over the bridge to the hackling shop when he met John
Best, the foreman. They stopped to speak, and Levi set down the barrow
that bore his load.
"I see you with him, yesterday. Did you get any ideas out of the man?"
Baggs referred to the new master and John Best understood.
"In a manner of speaking, yes," he said. "Nothing definite, of course.
It's too soon to talk of changes, even if Mister Daniel means them.
He'll carry on as before for the present, and think twice and again
before he does anything different from his father."
"'Tis just Bridetown luck if he's the sort to keep at a dead parent's
apron-strings," grumbled the other. "Nowadays, what with education and
so on, the rising generation is generally ahead of the last and moves
according."
"You can move two ways--backward as well as forward," answered Best.
"Better he should go on as we've been going, than go back."
"He daren't go back--the times won't let him. The welfare of the workers
is the first demand on capital nowadays. If it weren't, labour would
very soon know the reason why."
Mr. Best regarded Levi without admiration.
"You are a grumbler born," he said, "and so fond of it that you squeal
before you're hurt, just for the pleasure of squealing. One thing I can
tell you, for Mister Daniel said it in so many words: he's the same in
politics as his father; and that's Liberal; and since the Liberals of
yesterday are the Radicals of to-morrow, we have every reason to
suppose he'll move with the times."
"We all know what that means," answered Mr. Baggs. "It means getting new
machinery and increasing the output of the works for the benefit of the
owners, not them that run the show. I don't set no store on a man being
a Radical nowadays. You can't trust nobody under a Socialist."
Mr. Best laughed.
"You wait till they've got the power, and you'll find that the whip will
fall just as heavy from their hands as the masters of to-day. Better to
get small money and be free, than get more and go a slave in state
clothes, on state food, in a state house, with a state slave-driver to
see you earn your state keep and take your state holidays when the state
wills, and work as much or as little as the state pleases. What you
chaps call 'liberty' you'll find is something quite different, Baggs,
for it means good-bye to privacy in the home and independence outside
it."
"That's a false and wicked idea of progress, John Best, and well you
know it," answered Levi. "You're one of the sort content to work on a
chain and bring up your children likewise; but you can't stand between
the human race and freedom--no more can Daniel Ironsyde, or any other
man."
"Well, meantime, till the world's put right by your friends, you get on
with your hackling, my old bird, else you'll have the spreaders
grumbling," answered Mr. Best. Then he went into his home and Levi
trundled the wheelbarrow to a building with a tar-pitched, penthouse
roof, which stuck out from the side of the mill, like a fungus on a tree
stem.
Within, before a long, low window, stood the hand dresser's tools--two
upturned boards set with a mass of steel pins. The larger board had tall
teeth disposed openly; upon the smaller, the teeth were shorter and as
dense as a hair brush. In front of them opened a grating and above ran
an endless band. Behind this grille was an exhaust, which sucked away
the dust and countless atoms of vegetable matter scattered by Levi's
activities, and the running band from above worked it. For the
authorities, he despised, considered the operations of Mr. Baggs and
ordained that they should be conducted under healthy conditions.
He took his seat now before the rougher's hackle, turned up his shirt
sleeves over a pair of sinewy arms and powerful wrists and set to work.
From the mass of hemp tow he drew hanks and beat the pins with them
industriously, wrenched the mass through the steel teeth again and again
and separated the short fibre from the long. Presently in his hand
emerged a wisp of bright fibre, and now flogging the finer hackling
board, he extracted still more short stalks and rubbish till the
finished strick came clean and shining as a lock of woman's hair. From
the hanks of long tow he seemed to bring out the tresses like magic. In
his swift hand each strick flashed out from the rough hank with great
rapidity, and every crafty, final touch on the teeth made it brighter.
Giving a last flick or two over the small pins, Mr. Baggs set down his
strick and soon a pile of these shining locks grew beside him, while the
exhaust sucked away the rubbish and fragments, and the mass of short
fibre which he had combed out, also accumulated for future treatment.
He worked with the swiftness and surety of a master craftsman, scourged
his tow and snorted sometimes as he struggled with it. He was exerting a
tremendous pressure, regulated and applied with skill, and he always
exulted in the thought that he, at least, of all the workers performed
hand labour far more perfectly than any machine. But still it was not
the least of his many grievances that Government showed too little
concern for his comfort. He was always demanding increased precautions
for purifying the air he breathed. From first to last, indeed, the hemp
and tow are shedding superfluities, and a layman is astonished to see
how the broad strips and ribbons running through the machines and torn
by innumerable systems of sharp teeth in transit, emerge at the last
gasp of attenuation to trickle down the spindles and turn into the glory
of yarn.
From Mr. Baggs, the long fibre and the short which he had combed out of
it, proceeded to the spinning mill; and now a girl came for the stricks
he had just created.
Their future under the new master was still on every tongue at Bridetown
Mill, and the women turned to the few men who worked among them for
information on this paramount subject.
"No, I ain't heard no more, Sarah," answered the hackler to Miss
Northover's question. "You may be sure that those it concerns most will
be the last to hear of any changes; and you may also be sure that the
changes, when made, will not favour us."
"You can't tell that," answered Sarah, gathering the stricks. "Old Mrs.
Chick, our spreader minder, says the young have always got bigger hearts
than the old, and she'd sooner trust them than--"
Mr. Baggs tore a hank through the comb with such vigour that its steel
teeth trembled and the dust flew.
"Tell Granny Chick not to be a bigger fool than God made her," he said.
"The young have got harder hearts than the old, and education, though it
may make the head bigger for all I know, makes the heart smaller. He'll
be hard--hard--and I lay a week's wages that he'll get out of his
responsibilities by shovelling 'em on his dead father."
"How can he?" asked Sarah.
"By letting things be as they are. By saying his father knew best."
"Young men never think that," answered she. "'Tis well known that no
young man ever thought his father knew better than himself."
"Then he'll pretend to for his own convenience."
"What about all that talk of changes for the better before Mister
Ironsyde died then?"
"Talk of dead men won't go far. We'll hear no more of that."
Sarah frowned and went her way. At the door, however, she turned.
"I might get to hear something about it next Sunday very like," she
said. "I'm going into Bridport to my Aunt Nelly at 'The Seven Stars';
and she's a great friend of Richard Gurd at 'The Tiger'; and 'tis there
Mister Raymond spends half his time, they say. So Mr. Gurd may have
learned a bit about it."
"No doubt he'll hear a lot of words, and as for Raymond Ironsyde, his
father knew him for a man with a bit of a heart in him and didn't trust
him accordingly. But you can take it from me--"
A bell rang and its note struck Mr. Baggs dumb. He ceased both to speak
and work, dropped his hank, turned down his shirt sleeves and put on his
coat. Sarah at the stroke of the bell also manifested no further
interest in Levi's forebodings but left him abruptly. For it was noon
and the dinner-hour had come.