Morning, noon and night, whenever the small body of fresh workmen had to pass to and from the works, they were accompanied by the two policemen specially engaged to protect them, whilst others hovered within call. North Inlet, the ill-feeling of its old inhabitants increasing day by day, had become dangerous. It was not that all the men would have done violence. Ketler, for instance, and others, well-disposed men by nature, sensible and quiet, would not have lifted a hand against those who had, in one sense of the word, displaced them. But they did this: they stood tamely by, knowing quite well that some of their comrades only waited their opportunity to kill, or disable--as might be--Richard North\'s new followers. North Inlet was not quite so full as it used to be: for some of the old inhabitants, weary and out of patience with hope deferred: hope they hardly knew of what, unless for the good time promised by the Trades\' union: had departed on the tramp, with their wives and little ones, seeking a corner of the earth where work sufficient to give them a crust of bread and a roof, might be found. Others had decamped without their wives and children: and were in consequence being sought by the parish. North Inlet, taken on the whole, was in a sore plight. The men and women, reduced by want and despair to apply for parish relief, found none accorded them. They had brought themselves to this condition; had refused work when work was to be had; and to come and ask to be supported in idleness by the parish was a procedure not to be tolerated or entertained; as one resolute guardian, sitting at the head of a table, fiercely told them. Not as much as a loaf of bread would be given them, added another. If it came to the pass that they were in danger of dying of hunger--as the applicants urged--why they must come into the house with their wives and families: and a humiliating shame that would be for able-bodied men, the guardian added: but they would receive no relief out-of-doors. So North Inlet, not choosing to go into that unpopular refuge for the destitute, kept out of it. And to terrible straits were they reduced!
Looking back upon their past life of plenty, and their present empty homes and famished faces, little wonder that this misguided body of men grew to find that something of the old Satan was in them yet. A great deal of it, too. Perhaps remorse held its full share with them. They had intended that it should be so entirely for the better when they threw up work; and it had turned out so surprisingly for the worse. They had meant to return to work on their own terms; earning more and toiling less: they had been led to believe that this result lay in their own hands, and was as safe and certain as that the sun shone overhead at noonday. Instead of that--here they were, in as deplorable a condition as human beings could well be; Time had been, not very long ago either, that the false step might have been redeemed; Richard North had offered them work again on the old terms. Ay, and he had once conceded a portion of their demands--as they remembered well. But that time and that offer had gone by for ever. Fresh men (few though they were) had taken their places, and they themselves were starving and helpless.
The feeling against these new men was bitter enough; it was far more bitter against the small number of old workmen who had gone back again. We are told that the heart of man is desperately wicked: our own experience shows us that it is desperately selfish. They saw the employed men doing the work which once was theirs; they saw them wearing good coats, eating good food. They themselves had neither one nor the other; and work they had rejected. It would not have seemed quite so hard had the work altogether left the place: but to see these others doing it and living in comfort was more than mortal temper could brook.
This was not all. The men unreasonably held to it that these others having taken work again, was the cause why they themselves were kept out of it. Richard North would ha\' come-to, they said, if these curs hadn\'t went sneaking back again to lick his hand. If all had held out, Dick North must ha\' given in. And this they repeated so constantly, in their ire, one to another, that at last they grew to believe it. It was quite wrong, and they were wholly mistaken: for had Richard North not begun again cautiously as he did, and on the old terms, he would not have recommenced at all: but the men refused to see this, and held to their idea, making it a greater grievance than the want of food. It is so convenient to have something substantial on which to throw blame: and unlimited power and permission to punch the obnoxious head would have afforded intense gratification. Oh, it was very hard to bear. To see this small knot of men re-established in work, and to know that it was their own work once, and might have been theirs still! Peeping through hedges, hiding within doorways, standing sulkily or derisively in the open ground, they would watch the men going to and fro, guarded by the two policemen. Many a bitter word, many a silent threat was levelled at the small band. Murder had been done from a state of mind not half as bad as they were cherishing.
"What be you looking at, with those evil frowns on your faces?"
A group of malcontents, gazing from a corner of North Inlet at the daily procession, found this question suddenly sounding on their ears. Mrs. Gass had stepped out of a dwelling close by, and put it to them. Their eyes were following the escorted men coming home to their twelve-o\'clock dinner, so that they had not observed her.
They turned to her, and dropped their threatening expression. A man named Poole, not too much respected in the most prosperous times, and one of the worst of the malcontents, answered boldly too.
"We was taking the measure o\' that small lot o\' convic\'s. Wishing we could brand \'em."
"Ah," said Mrs. Gass. "It strikes me some of you have been wishing it before to-day. I should like to give you a bit of advice, my men; and you, especially, Poole. Take care you don\'t become convicts yourselves."
"For two pins, I\'d do what \'ud make me one," was the rejoinder of Poole, who was in a more defiant mood than even he often dared exhibit. He was a large, thick-set man, with shaggy light hair and a brick-dust complexion. His clothes, originally fustian, had been worn and torn and patched until they now hardly held together.
"You are a nice jail-bird, Poole! I don\'t think you ever were much better than one," added Mrs. Gass. To which candid avowal Poole only replied by a growl.
"These hard times be enough to make jail-birds of all of us," interposed another, Foster; but speaking civilly. "Why don\'t the Government come down and interfere, and prevent our work being took out of our hands by these rascals?"
"You put the work out of your own hands," said Mrs. Gass. "As to interference, I should have thought you\'d had about enough of that, by this time. If you had not suffered them fine Trades\' unionists to interfere with you, my men, you\'d have been in full work now, happy and contented as the day\'s long."
"What we did, we did for the best."
"What you did, you did in defiance of common sense, and of the best counsels of your best friends," she said. "How many times did your master show you what the upshot would be if you persisted in throwing up your work?--how much breath did I waste upon you, as I\'m doing now, asking you all to avoid a strike--and after the strike had come, day after day begging you to end it?--could any picture be truer than mine when I said what you\'d bring yourselves to?--rags, and famine, and desolate homes. Could any plight be worse than this that you\'ve dropped into now?"
"No, it couldn\'t," answered Foster. "It\'s so bad that I say Government ought to interfere for us."
"If I was Government, I should interfere on one point--and that\'s with them agitating unionists," bravely spoke Mrs. Gass. "I should put them down a bit."
"This is a free country, ma\'am," struck in Ketler, who made one of the group.
"Well, I used to think it was, Ketler," she said; "but old ways seem to be turned upside down. What sort of freedom do you enjoy just now?--how much have you had of it since you bound yourselves sworn members of the Trades\' unions? You have wanted to work and they haven\'t let you: you\'d like to be clothed and fed as you used to be and to clothe and feed your folks at home, and they prevent your exercising the means by which you may do it. What freedom or liberty is there in that?--Come, Ketler, tell me, as a reasonable man."
"If the Trades\' unions could do as they wish, there\'d be work and comfort for all of us."
"I doubt that, Ketler."
"But they can\'t do it," added Ketler. "The masters be obstinate and won\'t let \'em."
"That\'s just it," said Mrs. Gass. "If the Trades\' unions held the world in their hands, and there were no such things as masters and capital, why then they might have their own way. But the masters have their own interests to look after, their business and capital to defend: and the two sides are totally opposed one to the other, and squabbling is all that comes of it, or that ever will come of it. You lose your work, the masters lose their trade, the unionists fight it out fiercer than ever--and, between it all, the commerce of the country is coming to an end. Now, my men, that is the bare truth; and you can\'t deny it if you talk till midnight."
"\'Twouldn\'t be no longer much of a free country, if the Government put down the Trades\' unions," spoke a man satirically; one Cattleton.
"But it ought to put down their arbitrary way of preventing others working that want to work," maintained Mrs. Gass. "The unionists be your worst enemies. I\'m speaking, as............