North and South
Thornton, with a fierce snort. “That is what they always strike for. If
my son’s work-people strike, I will only say they are a pack of
ungrateful hounds. But I have no doubt they will.”
“They are wanting higher wages, I suppose?” asked Mr. Hale.
“That is the face of the thing. But the truth is, they want to be
masters, and make the masters into slaves on their own ground. They are
always trying at it; they always have it in their minds; and every five
or six years, there comes a struggle between masters and men. They’ll
find themselves mistaken this time, I fancy,—a little out of their
reckoning. If they turn out, they mayn’t find it so easy to go in again.
I believe, the masters have a thing or two in their heads which will
teach the men not to strike again in a hurry, if they try it this time.”
“Does it make the town very rough?” asked Margaret.
“Of course it does. But surely you are not a coward, are you? Milton is
not the place for cowards. I have known the time when I have had to
thread my way through a crowd of white, angry men, all swearing they
would have Makinson’s blood as soon as he ventured to show his nose out
of his factory; and he, knowing nothing of it, some one had to go and
tell him, or he was a dead man; and it needed to be a woman,—so I went.
And when I got in, I could not get out. It was as much as my life was
worth. So I went up to the roof, where there were stones piled ready to
drop on the heads of the crowd, if they tried to force the factory
doors. And I would have lifted those heavy stones, and dropped them with
as good an aim as the best man there, but that I fainted with the heat I
had gone through. If you live in Milton, you must learn to have a brave
heart, Miss Hale.”
“I would do my best,” said Margaret rather pale. “I do not know whether
I am brave or not till I am tried; but I am afraid I should be a
coward.”
“South country people are often frightened by what our Darkshire men and
women only call living and struggling. But when you’ve been ten years
among a people who are always owing their betters a grudge, and only
waiting for an opportunity to pay it off, you’ll know whether you are a
coward or not, take my word for it.”
Mr. Thornton came that evening to Mr. Hale’s. He was shown up into the
drawing-room, where Mr. Hale was reading aloud to his wife and daughter.
“I am come partly to bring you a note from my mother, and partly to
apologise for not keeping to my time yesterday. The note contains the
address you asked for; Dr. Donaldson.”
“Thank you!” said Margaret, hastily, holding out her hand to take the
note, for she did not wish her mother to hear that they had been making
any inquiry about a doctor. She was pleased that Mr. Thornton seemed
immediately to understand her feeling; he gave her the note without
another word of explanation.
Mr. Hale began to talk about the strike. Mr. Thornton’s face assumed a
likeness to his mother’s worst expression, which immediately repelled
the watching Margaret.
“Yes; the fools will have a strike. Let them. It suits us well enough.
But we gave them a chance. They think trade is flourishing as it was
last year. We see the storm on the horizon and draw in our sails. But
because we don’t explain our reasons, they won’t believe we’re acting
reasonably. We must give them line and letter for the way we choose to
spend or save our money. Henderson tried a dodge with his men, out at
Ashley, and failed. He rather wanted a strike; it would have suited his
book well enough. So, when the men came to ask for the five per cent.
they are claiming, he told ’em he’d think about it, and give them his
answer on the pay day; knowing all the while what his answer would be,
of course, but thinking he’d strengthen their conceit of their own way.
However, they were too deep for him, and heard something about the bad
prospects of trade. So in they came on the Friday, and drew back their
claim, and now he’s obliged to go on working. But we Milton masters have
to-day sent in our decision. We won’t advance a penny. We tell them we
may have to lower wages; but can’t afford to raise. So here we stand,
waiting for their next attack.”
“And what will that be?” asked Mr. Hale.
“I conjecture a simultaneous strike. You will see Milton without smoke
in a few days, I imagine, Miss Hale.”
“But why,” asked she, “could you not explain what good reason you had
for expecting a bad trade? I don’t know whether I use the right words,
but you will understand what I mean.”
“Do you give your servants reasons for your expenditure, or your economy
in the use of your own money? We, the owners of capital, have a right to
choose what we will do with it.”
“A human right,” said Margaret, very low.
“I beg your pardon, I did not hear what you said.”
“I would rather not repeat it,” said she; “it related to a feeling which
I do not think you would share.”
“Won’t you try me?” pleaded he; his thoughts suddenly bent upon learning
what she had said. She was displeased with his pertinacity, but did not
choose to affix too much importance to her words.
“I said you had a human right. I meant that there seemed no reason but
religious ones, why you should not do what you like with your own.”
“I know we differ in our religious opinions; but don’t you give me
credit for having some, though not the same as yours?”
He was speaking in a subdued voice, as if to her alone. She did not wish
to be so exclusively addressed. She replied out in her usual tone:
“I do not think that I have any occasion to consider your special
religious opinions in the affair. All I meant to say is, that there is
no human law to prevent the employers from utterly wasting or throwing
away all their money, if they choose; but that there are passages in the
Bible which would rather imply—to me at least—that they neglected
their duties as stewards if they did so. However, I know so little about
strikes and rate of wages, and capital, and labour, that I had better
not talk to a political economist like you.”
“Nay, the more reason,” said he eagerly. “I shall only be too glad to
explain to you all that may seem anomalous or mysterious to a stranger;
especially at a time like this, when our doings are sure to be canvassed
by every scribbler who can hold a pen.”
“Thank you,” she answered, coldly. “Of course, I shall apply to my
father in the first instance for any information he can give me, if I
get puzzled with living here amongst this strange society.”
“You think it strange. Why?”
“I don’t know—I suppose because, on the very face of it, I see two
classes dependent on each other in every possible way, yet each
evidently regarding the interests of the other as opposed to their own:
I never lived in a place before where there were two sets of people
always running each other down.”
“Who have you heard running the masters down? I don’t ask who you have
heard abusing the men; for I see you persist in misunderstanding what I
said the other day. But who have you heard abusing the masters?”
Margaret reddened; then smiled as she said,
“I am not fond of being catechised. I refuse to answer your question.
Besides, it has nothing to do with the fact. You must take my word for
it, that I have heard some people, or, it may be, only some one of the
workpeople speak as though it were the interest of the employers to keep
them from acquiring money—that it would make them too independent if
they had a sum in the savings’ bank.”
“I dare say it was that man Higgins who told you all this,” said Mrs.
Hale. Mr. Thornton did not appear to hear what Margaret evidently did
not wish him to know. But he caught it nevertheless.
“I heard, moreover, that it was considered to the advantage of the
masters to have ignorant workmen—not hedge-lawyers, as Captain Lennox
used to call those men in his company who questioned and would know the
reason for every order.”
This latter part of her sentence she addressed rather to her father than
to Mr. Thornton. Who is Captain Lennox? asked Mr. Thornton of himself,
with a strange kind of displeasure, that prevented him for the moment
from replying to her! Her father took up the conversation.
“You never were fond of schools, Margaret, or you would have seen and
known before this how much is being done for education in Milton.”
“No!” she said, with sudden meekness. “I know I do not care enough about
schools. But the knowledge and the ignorance of which I was speaking did
not relate to reading and writing,—the teaching or information one can
give to a child. I am sure, that what was meant was ignorance of the
wisdom that shall guide men and women. I hardly know what that is. But
he—that is my informant—spoke as if the masters would like their hands
to be merely tall, large children—living in the present moment—with a
blind unreasoning kind of obedience.”
“In short, Miss Hale, it is very evident that your informant found a
pretty ready listener to all the slander he chose to utter against the
masters,” said Mr. Thornton, in an offended tone.
Margaret did not reply. She was displeased at the personal character Mr.
Thornton affixed to what she had said.
Mr. Hale spoke next:
“I must confess that, although I have not become so intimately
acquainted with any workmen as Margaret has, I am very much struck by
the antagonism between the employer and the employed, on the very
surface of things. I even gather this impression from what you yourself
have from time to time said.”
Mr. Thornton paused awhile before he spoke. Margaret had just left the
room, and he was vexed at the state of feeling between himself and her.
However, the little annoyance, by making him cooler and more thoughtful,
gave a greater dignity to what he said:
“My theory is, that my interests are identical with those of my
workpeople, and vice-versa. Miss Hale, I know, does not like to hear men
called ‘hands,’ so I won’t use that word, though it comes most readily
to my lips as the technical term, whose origin, whatever it was, dates
before my time. On some future day—in some millennium—in Utopia, this
unity may be brought into practice—just as I can fancy a republic the
most perfect form of government.”
“We will read Plato’s Republic as soon as we have finished Homer.”
“Well, in the Platonic year, it may fall out that we are all—men,
women, and children—fit for a republic; but give me a constitutional
monarchy in our present state of morals and intelligence. In our infancy
we require a wise despotism to govern us. Indeed, long past infancy,
children and young people are the happiest under the unfailing laws of a
discreet firm authority. I agree with Miss Hale so far as to consider
our people in the condition of children, while I deny that we, the
masters, have anything to do with the making or keeping them so. I
maintain that despotism is the best kind of government for them; so that
in the hours in which I come in contact with them I must necessarily be
an autocrat. I will use my best discretion—from no humbug or
philanthropic feeling, of which we have had rather too much in the
North—to make wise laws and come to just decisions in the conduct of my
business—laws and decisions which work for my own good in the first
instance—for theirs in the second; but I will neither be forced to give
my reasons, nor flinch from what I have once declared to be my
resolution. Let them turn out! I shall suffer as well as they: but in
the end they will find I have not bated nor altered one jot.”
Margaret had re-entered the room and was sitting at her work; but she
did not speak. Mr. Hale answered—
“I dare say I am talking in great ignorance; but from the little I know,
I should say that the masses were already passing rapidly into the