If any man prides himself on being the master and controller of his own
destiny, if he plumes himself on his own achievements, saying in his
heart: “My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this
wealth,” or this title, or this what you will, let him chasten his
self-esteem by reviewing his own career, and observing how, not once nor
twice but many times, it hath been over-ruled, shaped, fashioned,
deflected, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill, by happenings in
which he has had neither part nor parcel, in which it seemed little
likely he would and could have no concern, yet which for him and all his
future were as big with fate as if they had been specially designed by
Providence for no other purpose than to humble or exalt him, to make or
to mar him. Thus, whilst at this period we may safely conceive of Edward
Beaumont as reflecting with some complacency on the enjoyment of a
lucrative practice, anticipating the delights of a keen contest for a
seat in Parliament, with visions belike of at least a junior lordship,
and sweet imaginings of bridal veils and orange wreaths; it is none the
less true that the doings of some half-dozen not over cultured
millhands, whose very names were unknown to him, were fated to leave on
his life a mark eternity itself would perchance not suffice to efface.
It is a wild night, and the wild and blustering month of March, 1883,
and the New Street of Huddersfield is swept by a gale that comes
tearing, roaring, wuthering down the Come Valley right from Standedge
top; a wind laden with pelting rain that dashes into your face, blinds
your eyes, and makes as though to rend the very garments from your back,
whirl them sky high, and sport with them among the scurrying, glowering
clouds. It is a night on which, to quote the quaint equivoque, it is
good to have no home to go to, to be instead snugly seated in your own
ingle-nook, by a roaring fire, with slippered feet on a thick, list rug,
a pipe in your mouth, a book in your hand, the dog at your feet blinking
his honest eyes at you, the cat purring peacefully its hymn of bliss,
and the _placens uxor_, the sonsie wife, as she rocks in her chair
opposite you, breathes a sigh of profound thankfulness that the day’s
work is well-nigh done, that the bairns, God bless them, are snugly
tucked in bed, and for ten peaceful hours will cease from troubling, and
the weary mother may be at rest. It is a night on which the mind,
reposeful after a day’s toil well done, and a day’s wage well won,
would fain enjoy a peace undisturbed by thoughts of the morrow’s
harrassings.
But in Huddersfield and in all the wildly beautiful district around, nor
for master nor man, was there any hope that night of that ideal,
beatific peace. The strike, the great Weavers’ Strike, as it came to
be known, was well under weigh, and both masters and men had settled
down with the grim resolve of the northern character to see which side
could starve the other into submission. For, after all, with all the
talk and all the writing about good trade and bad trade, about high
profits and losses, about scales and rates of wages, after all the
conferences and deputations and talk of arbitration and Boards of
Conciliation, to a trial of brute strength, of sheer endurance, of
staying power, not to a determination of which side was right and which
was wrong, must the contest surely come.
It was a very pretty quarrel, as quarrels go, a quarrel to make the
cynic hug himself in glee, a quarrel to make angels weep. The masters
had agreed upon a new scale of wages to be adopted and enforced in every
mill in the district, a scale that would determine not only the plus and
minus of the employers’ balance-sheets, but that perhaps negligible
affair, the plus or minus of thousands of humble homes for miles around.
The masters declared, _ore rotundo_, with swelling voices and in good
round phrase that the new scale of wages was not a reduction, but a
readjustment; the weavers swore by all their gods that any readjustment
the scale would effect would be a transference of so many weekly
shillings from the earnings of each craftsman to the pockets of his
master.
A question, surely, this, to be settled in three minutes by a penny
ready reckoner, where and when Reason has sway. But in Huddersfield and
in the villages converging therein Reason had unfurled her glittering
wings and had fled affrighted from the scene of strife, to return only
when Passion, and Hatred, and Ignorance, and all evil imaginings and
utterings had wrought their fill of ill.
A pretty quarrel, in very sooth, a quarrel that should have shown the
veriest idiot of a workingman of how little worth are political
professions, nay, indeed, of how little worth are religious
protestations when that sorest of sore points, the pocket, is touched.
The weavers of Huddersfield and of the valleys hard by had, for years
that stretched back almost beyond count, flocked in their thousands to
shout at the hustings in the Square, or, in later days, to shout in
their noble Town Hall for banker or manufacturer or merchant who came to
them with glib, smooth speech, asseverating with tear-laden eyes that
all they asked, to make them happy, was to spend and be spent in the
workers’ cause. And now the lists are ranged for a grim conflict
between Labour and Capital, and where are ye now oh, friends of the
people? Where now is the Liberal merchant, where now the Radical
manufacturer, where now your reforming councillors and aldermen who have
risen to their paltry place and gimcrack power on the popular vote,
where now the editors of facile pen who have been so fluent in their
vows of fidelity to the people’s cause? All, all alike—Whig and
Tory, Conservative, Liberal, and Radical stand in solid phalanx,
confronting an abandoned, impassioned mob, conscious only of its wrongs
and its betrayal. The men know the masters’ scale means robbery, but
how shall they, unlettered, unskilled, with hands that can ply a shuttle
but unused to pen, with brains to think and know and feel, with tongues
little used to ordered speech, how shall they plead their cause?
Two men are seated this stormy March night in a retired room of the
Albion public-house on the Buxton Road. The room is small,
ill-ventilated, stuffy, its air laden with tobacco reek and the fumes of
stale ale. They are Albert Clough, the Weavers’ Secretary, and Allen
Rae, two men as different in character and temperament as the poles are
wide asunder, but united in a common belief in the worker’s right to a
fairer and a sweeter heritage.
Both were weavers, and both, therefore, were well aware of the effect
likely to be produced by the masters’ proposed scale upon the earnings
of themselves and their fellow-workmen. But there was little other
resemblance between the two men. Rae was a man of no small natural
ability, his forehead denoted intellectuality, his firm, close-set lips
determination and self-control. Anyone accustomed to judge character by
external indications would have no difficulty in pronouncing Rae to be
of an essentially practical turn of mind; of no great ideals or
enthusiasms; a safe guide rather than an impassioned leader. Clough, on
the other hand, was as readily assessed, or, as his acquaintances would
have phrased it, “sized up,” as a man of impulses, apt to allow his
judgment to be warped by his passions and his prejudices. And of
passions and prejudices he had his full share. He had read much, and the
literature to which he was partial consisted, for the most part, of
those books that exposed the iniquities of those in high places, men
born and nurtured in the lap of luxury. He, at all events, never
questioned the divine _dictum_ as to the possibility of a rich man
entering the kingdom of heaven. His whole attitude to the capitalist
class, as embodied for him in the Masters’ Union, was determined by a
consuming sense of the rank injustice of things, the gross iniquity that
he and his fellows should be cursed rather than born into the world,
foredoomed to moil and toil for a pittance to lead a hard life of
endless work, with long hours and paltry pay, to live a dun, colourless
existence, a life of carking care and ceaseless struggle, with the
prospect at its close, of the Workhouse, unless he should be so happy as
to drop at his loom; while other men, many of whom, he was very sure,
were neither so clever, nor so well instructed as himself, were by the
accident of birth or from positions their own hands and brains had not
won, sheltered from the storms of life, had never known and would never
know the pangs of hunger nor the hideous monotony of a life of
mechanical toil in another’s service. There was not much talk of
Socialism in those days; Socialism was vaguely supposed to be a milder
orm of Nihilism, having something to do with dynamite and secret
societies. Had there been any Socialists in Huddersfield, Clough would
have been in their midst; but his Socialism would have been based not so
much upon a divine compassion for others as upon a fierce pity for
himself.
“Have you read that leading article o’ Joe Woodhead in to-neet’s
Rag?” it was thus impolitely he referred to the “Huddersfield Daily
Examiner.”
Rae nodded.
“An’ this is th’ paper th’ working-men ha’ been fooils enough
to call th’ friend o’ freedom. By gow, Allen, it ma’es me think
what fooils we ’n bin.”
“I don’t quite see what else we could expect,” said Rae, quietly.
“Yo’ musn’t forget that behind the editorial ‘we’ there is
always a very human personality. Th’ editor o’ th’ ‘Examiner’s’ only
human, and it’s only natural he’ll look at the present crisis in th’
trade of Huddersfield from a very different standpoint to you an’ me.
Yo’ see, he started in life as a manufacturer hissen, an’ only drifted
into journalism. He’s one of the middle-class hissen. He were born into
it, he wedded into it, an’ aw should think all his friends are of it.
Look how thick he is wi’ ‘Midget’ o’ Marsden, ’at they say’s done so
much to make th’ ‘Examiner’ go in the Colne Valley. Yo’ can’t say but
what both Mr. Woodhead an’ Mr. Robinson—that’s ‘Midget,’ you know—are
good Liberals. They’re sound on questions of Church an’ State. But
this strike isn’t a question of Church an’ State; it’s a question
o’ £ s. d.”
“It’s more nor that, Allen. It’s a question o’ th’ right o’
combination; th’ right o’ th’ men to have a say in fixin’ th’
rate o’ wages they’re willin’ to work for.”
“Well, it comes to £ s. d. in the end. The masters want to put their
finished goods on the market at as little cost to themselves as they
possibly can; the men want to get as much for producing the finished
article as they possibly can. The only question is, can they starve us
into accepting their price for our labour.”
“There’s one man they’ll never starve into swallowing this new
scale. There’s another man off to America first.”
“That’s all very well for you, Albert, and may be for me, too. In
fact, when this fight’s over, end choose which way it may, it’s more
nor likely that’s th’ only course open for either on us. I don’t
fancy there’ll be a loom for either you or me long in this town or
hereabouts. We’re marked men, however others may fare. But we can’t
all clear out to th’ States, an’ none o’ us can stand clammin’
long. We haven’t really felt th’ pinch yet. We’ve only had a month
of it, and it’s just been a holiday for all o’ us. An’ th’
anxiety’s been on th’ masters’ side up to now, having to turn away
orders because they couldn’t accept ’em running th’ risk o’
losing good customers it’s cost em happen years o’ fishing an’ a
mint o’ money to cooper. That’ll hit us in the long run, but it hits
them first. And, meantime, we’ve been all right. The strike pay’s
been there to th’ minnit, an’ it’s just been a novel an’
delightful sensation to lie i’ bed as long as you like, to stroll
about th’ streets, or sit by th’ fireside, or hang about th’ pubs,
as too many of us do, an’ then to draw our strike pay without th’
trouble of addling it. But this can’t go on for ever. Th’ question
is, how long will it last, Albert, how long will it last?”
“Well, as far as I’m concerned it’ll last as long as the Union has
a meg to its back.”
“That won’t be long, as things are shaping. Yo’ see, if we’d
only a third of the men out and two-third’s working for th’
‘out’s’ to draw on we should be up another street. But th’
masters….”
“Curse ’em!” ejaculated Clough.
“Th’ masters soon saw that, an’ now yo’ may say were’re all
out, an’ we’re like that German chap’s monkey you’ll have read
on, sat afore th’ fire hilariously boiling its own tail for
breakfast.”
“You’re nobbut a Job’s comforter, Allen. Don’t yo’ believe in
th’ triumph o’ right over might, o’ principle over pelf?”
“I believe in facts, Albert, an’ facts stubborn things. Of course,
there’s no hurry yet. As I said, th’ pinch hasn’t come yet. Wait
till th’ co-op.’s an’ th’ small grocers ha’ put their foot
down, an’ won’t let as much as a pound o’ oatmeal go out o’
th’ shop till it’s paid for; wait till th’ landlord begins to
fetch th’ sticks for th’ rent; wait till the distress warrants are
out for the borough rate an’ th’ poor rate; wait till th’
pop-shops are full an’ the houses are welly empty; wait till th’
strike fund’s don an’ th’ children are cryin’ for bread—what
then Albert, what then?”
“There’s wealth enough all round for th’ taking, wealth we’n
more right to nor them ’at’s gotten it.”
“That means the treadmill. No thank you, lad.”
“Oh! what’s th’ use o’ lookin’ forrard so far? Th’ masters
’ll weaken before th’ worst comes to th’ worst. I’m all for a
policy o’ bluff; th’ weaker we get th’ bigger we mun talk.”
“That’s all right. But we must look forward to a time when it’ll
do us good to have th’ public on our side, an’ th’ only way to get
them is to show th’ people we’re right an’ th’ masters wrong. I
don’t think myself that th’ people o’ England are going to see our
Union stamped out if we’ve reason on our side—an’ I’m as sure
o’ that as that’s a pint o’ ale you’ve got in front o’ you.”
“But it isn’t,” said Albert, “it wor, but awve supped it long
sin. But how are we to get th’ public on our side? It’s easy
talking. You see for yoursen th’ ‘Examiner’s’ none likely to
take our side, an’ you may be certain sure th’ ‘Chronicle’ and
th’ ‘Weekly News’ ’ll be worse. If we hold meetings there’ll
be nobbut weavers theer, and that’s preachin’ to the converted w’
a vengeance. There’s only th’ pen left when th’ sword an’ th’
tongue are teed. An’ if it comes to writin’ there’s none o’ us
fit to howd a candle to th’ masters, to say wowt o’ th’ allies
they may have i’ th’ Press.”
“I’ve been wondering,” said Rae, slowly, “if Mr. Edward Beaumont
….”
“The very man,” cried Clough, rising so excitedly that he upset his
pewter; “th’ very man, or I’m sore mista’en. By gow, aw nivver
thowt o’ him. If we can nobbut mak’ him see th’ same way as we
see.”
“If,”, assented Rae. “But there’s no harm i’ trying.”
And thus it came about that long letters signed “Edward Beaumont”
began to appear in one of the local papers, bearing upon the one topic
that engrossed the thoughts and speech of nearly every man and woman in
Huddersfield, and in the valleys converging on that town, be those men
and women of what class, of what degree they might. For the Weavers’
Strike, as it was called, though strike it was not, if by a strike is
meant a refusal to work for the wages current at its commencement, had
assumed proportions so portentous that there was in all that great and
populous district scarce a household that was not seriously affected by
it. The combatants drawn up in conflict, of course; but not they alone.
And yet they alone, and the children of their loins, were numbered by
their thousands. But upon the textile industry of that great area
depended dozens of auxiliary trades, and every trade, wholesale and
retail, was hit and hit hard. All gloomed under this heavy pall
except, at first, the publican, and he, for a few glad weeks, felt that
the normal condition of every industry should be one of strike or
lock-out; felt it so intensely that in the exuberance of his
disinterested sympathy he placed upon his beer-stained tables hot
luncheons of fried tripe with onions, and savoury dishes of liver and
bacon. And as the men consumed these delicacies and quaffed their
measures of “Timmy,” by which fond name the brew of a local firm was
widely and appreciatively known, of what should they read, and of Edward
Beaumont. It is to be feared that these contributions to the dialectics
of the great contest were more relished by the workers than by their
employers. The letters took it for granted in the outset that the
masters were sincere in their protestations that nothing was further
from their thoughts, in insisting on the acceptance of the new scale,
than the reduction of current wages. The writer declined to believe,
with the men, that the masters’ insistence on this point was but a
Machiavellian device for a considerable lowering of rates. The masters
were, of course, honourable men, all honourable men, and they must know
how the scale of their own devising would work out. But if the men were
so obtuse that they could not see that a raising rather than a lowering
at all events and certainly no lowering, would result; why not put the
whole question to the arbitrament of one or two competent men conversant
with the intricacies of the textile trade, men able to unravel the
somewhat tangled and bewildering skein of the new scale—and let them
say, aye or nay, would it be, as the weavers so passionately persisted,
a grievous weekly diminution, not of their earnings, not of their work
and output, but of the guerdon of their toil. Never in the whole history
of industrial conflicts, the writer exclaimed, had there before been
known a case of employers being driven to lock-out their men to dragoon
them into accepting higher wages, or of men striking in resentment of
the benefits their benevolent despots were bent upon thrusting into
their unwilling hands.
And when the blue-smocked ones read these words they gaffawed over their
cups; but the masters scowled and damned the writer as a meddling
busy-body. The president of the Employers’ Association—the employers
naturally, did not have a union, merely an Association, such virtue is
there in a name, despite the poet’s dictum—Who chanced to be, not
only a large manufacturer, but also a prominent Liberal, worshipful
master of Beaumont’s Masonic Lodge, and a very desirable client to
boot, called upon that gentleman at his office, and proceeded to give
him a piece of his mind in language whose plainness left nothing to be
desired.
“Look here, brother Beaumont, I should have thought by this time
you’d learned which side your bread’s buttered on, and who spreads
the butter. You know I’m a Liberal, as good a Liberal as you are
yourself, if it comes to that; you know when there’s a fight to be
fought my cheque’s always been ready, and not a little cheque at that;
and you’re vastly mistaken if you think you’ve got a monopoly of
zeal for the working-class. But what the deuce, man alive, do you want
poking your finger into this pie for? Why, in the name of common sense,
can’t you leave us and our men to fight this battle out between us?”
“Do you think it’s a fair fight, brother Tomlinson?”
“Fair. Why not?”
“Well, I’ll tell you why not, if my opinion’s worth anything. On
your side you’ve got all the money, all the staying power, and all, or
nearly all, the educated skill to put your case plausibly before the
public. Now, what have these poor devils of weavers got? A few pounds of
reserve in the Co-op. and the Savings Bank, a few sticks of furniture,
and hands for which they can find no work to do, and so unused to
wielding the pen to state their own claim that, with the best case in
the world, if they had it, you’d have no difficulty in making it
appear the worst. They’ve been to me, I admit it, everyone by this
time knows they have. I’ve tried in every way I could to get at the
merits of the dispute, and, to tell you frankly, I don’t believe, for
a single minute, this is a question of wages at all!”
“Oh, indeed, and what is it?”
“I believe, in my heart of hearts, it’s neither more nor less than a
deliberate attempt to smash and pulverise the Weavers’ Union. That,
neither more nor less; and I think it’s a criminal shame that men like
yourself, who call themselves Liberals and the friends of Labour, should
be engaged in what is at bottom simply a conspiracy against Labour’s
most precious and hard-won right—the right of combination.”
“Oh, stow that talk! it’s good enough for electioneering and the
Town Hall platform. This is business, solid business, and business
hasn’t room for bunkum. How would _you_ like Albert Clough coming
swaggering and hectoring into your office, and telling you you didn’t
pay your clerks a proper wage?”
“I shouldn’t like anybody coming swaggering and hectoring into my
office. I shouldn’t like Albert Clough and, perhaps you won’t mind
my saying, I shouldn’t like Albert Cough’s employer.”
Mr. Tomlinson waived away the suggestion impatiently and continued:—
“Not merely saying you didn’t pay enough wage, demanding, when you
told him you paid as much as you could see your way to pay, demanding in
a truculent voice to see your ledgers and overhaul your pass-book, and
wanting to know why you kept a carriage if you couldn’t afford better
wages. D—n the man, he’ll be wanting to know what I have for dinner
next, and what my wife gives for her bonnets and her gloves.”
Edward smiled. He knew Albert Clough and Albert’s ways. But he was not
the man to make admissions that might be useful to his adversary and of
no use to himself.
“Why, Tomlinson,” he said, “if it comes to that I’ve over a
thousand men coming every day of the week into my office, not exactly
hectoring and blustering, but in a manner that is more effective, though
quieter, than any hectoring and blustering, and these thousand men and
more dictate to me every hour of my life, not what I shall pay my
clerks, but, what is more comprehensive still, what I shall sell my
goods for, in other words, what I shall charge for every act of my
business life; I can’t give a piece of advice, I can’t open my
mouth in the court, I can’t write a business letter, I can’t take a
business journey, I can’t prepare a will, an agreement, or a deed, but
these impertinent thousand odd men, meaning thereby my lords and
gentlemen of the British Parliament, tell me exactly what I may charge
and what I may not. And yet, you see, I contrive to live and look
pleasant.”
“Oh! that’s special pleading, and you know it. There’s no parallel
in the two cases.”
“Pardon me, the cases are exactly parallel. The State intervenes
between me and my client because it knows it would be a sad day for the
client if he were left to the tender mercies of the lawyer, or, as you
would put it, to the law of supply and demand on which you employers
claim to rest the rate of wages. Now the workman has nothing to help him
against you but this very right of combination and the clumsy, often
futile, boomerang-like device of a strike. A poor weapon, but better
than none at all. And yet he is to be deprived even of that.”
“But you’re ruining us, man; you’re driving the trade out of the
district and God only knows when and whether it will ever come back
again.”
“Pardon me, Tomlinson. It is not I that am doing all this. It is
rather you and your fellow employers, who have not only caused the
present crisis, but are needlessly prolonging it. Sooner or later I
suppose you’ll get your own way. I’ve no doubt that sooner or later
the men—not the best of them, for they will have been snapped up by
outside firms—will be brought to their knees. The victory will be
yours—but what a victory! Do you think things will be any pleasanter
in your mills when the men have been starved into submission, and go
back to their work beaten, sullen, and resentful, feeling every day they
live that they have been robbed and their masters are the thieves, for
that’s what it comes to in plain English. If it isn’t so, why in the
name of elemental justice and common sense don’t you agree to
arbitrate the whole matter? The men are willing, always have been
willing. I’ll go bail that if you’ll agree to that every mill shall
be running in a week, aye, and less. It is you and your Association that
stand in the way and not the men. If you are being done to death it is
_felo de se_, suicide, pure and simple; if the town is being ruined, you
and your colleagues are doing that deed most damnable.”
“By heavens! Beaumont, I’ll hear no more of this. I came to you as a
friend and as a brother mason to bring you to reason in a friendly and
brotherly way, and you as good as tell me I’m a robber and a murderer.
Well, well, if I’m to be ruined, I’ll be ruined; but I’ll take
precious good care there’s somebody tumbles before I tumble, and I
shouldn’t be surprised if his name’s Edward Beaumont. I’m not
chairman of a Banking Company for nothing. People who play at bowls must
expect rubbers. Send me my account, if you’ve got one against me, and
you can send all my papers to Ewart and Co. You’ll get your cheque,
and I fancy it’ll be a long time before you see the colour of my money
again.”
“Good morning, Mr. Tomlinson. There’s the door. You remember what I
said about hectoring and bullying?”
For long after the irate manufacturer had bounced out of his office
Beaumont sat ruminating in the chair he drew to the fire. In vain he had
tried to concentrate his thoughts upon the documents upon his desk. His
own concerns crowded out the concerns of others. He had been made
painfully sensible of late that things were not going well with him. Mr.
Tomlinson was not the only client who had demanded his account and the
transference of his papers. His best and oldest clients were deserting
him. His staff of clerks was a large and expensive one, and he had
little or no work now for them to do, and yet he shrank from discharging
so much as an office-boy. Why should they and their families suffer? At
the club, too, men looked black at him; at his Lodge his brethren
treated him coldly. He was uneasy, too, about Schofield’s mortgage.
Edward was resolved, that at any cost to himself, no cloud should rest
upon his father’s name. The expenses of his electioneering promised to
be heavy. Money seemed to flow like water from his bank into
Staffordshire, and his account was overdrawn to an unusual and
disquieting extent. The courteous manager and he were on the best of
terms, but Edward knew a manager, even a bank manager, is but a servant
of the directors—and the directors were manufacturers or merchants to
a man, and the chairman of the directors was none other than the
gentleman who had just left him in such high dudgeon and breathing
threats that could have but one meaning.
And top of all this the morning’s post had brought him a letter from
Storth.
“DEAR BEAUMONT,—I have been thinking things over a lot since I
started for my holidays, and I’ve come to the conclusion to try to
stand on my own bottom, like any other tub. I know by the terms of
our agreement you are entitled to six months’ notice of dissolution,
but I’ve no doubt you’ll waive that, for it would be pleasant for
neither you nor me for me to continue in the office, as it were, with
one foot in it and the other out. What say you? My plans for the
future are very vague. Hope things are going on smoothly at your end.
Wretched weather here.
Yours,
S. S.”
“Pretty cool,” reflected Edward, as he re-perused this missive.
“Anyway, I’m not going to beg him to stop on to please me. He can
cut the painter now if he likes, and I’ll write and say so. It’s a
nuisance that I must be in Stafford to-morrow night, and I wish more
than I can say I’d never gone into that electioneering campaign.
However, I’m in it and it can’t be helped. In for a penny, in for a
pound. I feel very much like having put out my leg further than I can
stride, and it’s time for the proverbial silver lining to the
cloud.”