Chapter VII

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.”