“To be sure! and at her too, with her fine notions, and haughty tosses!”
“I only wonder why you talk so much about her, then,” said Fanny. “I’m sure, I’m tired enough of the subject.”
“Well!” said her brother, with a shade of bitterness. “Suppose we find some more agreeable subject. What do you say to a strike, by way of something pleasant to talk about?”
“Have the hands actually turned out?” asked Mrs. Thornton, with vivid interest.
“Hamper’s men are actually out. Mine are working out their week, through fear of being prosecuted for breach of contract. I’d have had every one of them up and punished for it, that left his work before his time was out.”
“The law expenses would have been more than the hands themselves were worth—a set of ungrateful naughts!” said his mother.
“To be sure. But I’d have shown them how to keep my word, and how I mean them to keep their’s. They know me by this time. Slickson’s men are off—pretty certain he won’t spend money in getting them punished. We’re in for a turnout, mother.”
“I hope there are not many orders in hand?”
“Of course there are. They know that well enough. But they don’t quite understand all, though they think they do.”
“What do you mean, John?”
Candles had been brought, and Fanny had taken up her interminable piece of worsted-work, over which she was yawning; throwing herself back in her chair, from time to time to gaze at vacancy, and think of nothing at her ease.
“Why,” said he, “the Americans are getting their yarns so into the general market, that our only chance is producing them at a lower rate. If we can’t, we may shut up shop at once, and hands and masters alike go on tramp. Yet these fools go back to the prices paid three years ago—nay, some of their leaders quote Dickinson’s price now—though they know as well as we do that, what with fines pressed out of their wages, as no honourable man would extort them, the real rate of wage paid at Dickinson’s is less than at ours. Upon my word, mother, I wish the old combination laws were in force. It is too bad to find out that fools—ignorant, wayward men like these—just by uniting their silly heads, are to rule over the fortunes of those who bring all the wisdom that knowledge and experience, and often painful thought and anxiety, can give. The next thing will be—indeed, we’ve all but come to it now—that we shall have to go and ask—stand hat in hand—and humbly ask the secretary of the Spinner’s Union to be so kind as to furnish us with labour at their own price. That’s what they want—they, who haven’t the sense to see that, if we don’t get a fair share of the profits to compensate us for our wear and tear here in England, we can move off to some other country; and that, what with home and foreign competition, we are none of us likely to make above a fair share, and may be thankful enough if we can get that, in an average number of years.”
“Can’t you get hands from Ireland? I wouldn’t keep these fellows a day. I’d teach them that I was master, and could employ what servants I liked.”
“Yes! to be sure, I can; and will, too, if they go on long. It will be trouble and expense, and I fear there will be some danger; but I will do it, rather than give in.”
“If there is to be all this extra expense, I’m sorry we’re giving a dinner just now.”
“So am I—not because of the expense, but because I shall have much to think about, and many unexpected calls on my time. But we must have had Mr. Horsfall, and he does not stay in Milton long. And as for the others, we owe them dinners, and it’s all one trouble.”
He kept on with his restless walk—not speaking any more, but drawing a deep breath from time to time, as if endeavouring to throw off some annoying thought. Fanny asked her mother numerous small questions, all having nothing to do with the subject, which a wiser person would have perceived was occupying her attention. Consequently, she received many short answers. She was not sorry when, at ten o’clock, the servants filed in to prayers. These her mother always read—first reading a chapter. They were now working steadily through the Old Testament. When prayers were ended, and his mother had wished him good night, with that long steady look of hers which conveyed no expression of the tenderness that was in her heart, but yet had the intensity of a blessing, Mr. Thornton continued his walk. All his business plans had received a check, a sudden pull-up, from this approaching turnout. The forethought of many anxious hours was thrown away, utterly wasted by their insane folly, which would injure themselves even more than him, though no one could set any limit to the mischief they were doing. And these were the men who thought themselves fitted to direct the masters in the disposal of their capital; Hamper had said, only this very day, that if he were ruined by the strike, he would start life again, comforted by the conviction that those who had brought it on were in a worse predicament than he himself—for he had head as well as hands, while they had only hands; and if they drove away their market, they could not follow it, nor turn to anything else. But this thought was no consolation to Mr. Thornton. It might be that revenge gave him no pleasure; it might be that he valued the position he had earned with the sweat of his brow, so much that he keenly felt its being endangered
