Hope Mills by Amanda Minnie Douglas (digital ebook reader .txt) 📖

that spoiled your bread, and poor butter, and teas that were colored and doctored; and this was cheap living.

There was a stormy wrangle. Meetings were held, and speakers figured out the actual cost of living. Less than the present rates meant loss, privation, and want in the end. So a strike was determined upon.

Jack Darcy, being foreman of one department, stood, as it were, between the upper and nether millstone, at present just escaping both. He thought it hard that the men should have this second reduction so soon, and it did seem to him reasonable that profits ought to yield a little, that there ought to be a sympathy between them. Personally, he should be comfortable enough; but if he had a wife and three or four children, a helpless, bedridden mother, or a drunken father, or a do-nothing brother, hanging upon him, what then?

He advised a little moderation and patience. It might be better to take the wages now, and wait until spring--

"They doant give up any thing, as we sees," broke in an elderly English weaver. "The great house is full of every thing, and coal eno' burning in the greenhouses to ripen a few bunches of grapes out of God's own season, as would keep many of us warm. Who puts our coal down a dollar in the ton, or takes it off of house-rent when wages come down? I'll work as cheap as the next one if ye'll gi' me a cheap house to live in and cheap beef and bread. I doant care for money in the savin's bank, or a house that they tax all out o' sight. When I'm old I'll go to the poorhouse, I will; but I'm danged if I like starvin' before then, and they a-ridin' over us in their carriages. I left 'em over yonder"--with a nod of the head--"for that."

"What do you think of it?" asked a thin, hungry-looking man, fingering his Cardigan nervously. "See here! If I could have one more prosperous year, I'd be through the woods, have the house I've worked so hard for settled upon my old woman, and would be out of the reach of misfortune. But this thing hits me hard, it does."

"I don't believe striking will succeed just now," said Jack candidly. "And it's a bad time. Two or three weeks lost time will more than cover the odds in wages."

"I don't want to lose time. I'd rather keep straight on."

"It's the principle of the thing," broke in another. "I'd lose six months before I'd give in an inch. I'd have struck the other time."

There was a call for the overseers, and Jack left the group. Eastman was talking to several of the men in his office. A fine, portly figure he had, indicating rich living and good wines; a man still on the sunny side of forty, stout, rather florid, a full dark beard and hair, but with eyes that were light and furtive; eyes that could stare you out of countenance, and yet not meet yours ordinarily, with a frank, outward look. He always went handsomely dressed, and wore diamond shirt-studs, an expensive seal-ring, a substantial watch-chain with two or three costly charms. He had not a flashy look, but the sign and seal of gentlemanliness was wanting in that intensely selfish face.

He had heard of the disaffection. There was not much to say except that the new scale of prices would go into effect next Monday morning. He never asked a man to work for any less wages than he, the workman, considered his services worth. Here was the work, and the wages Hope Mills could afford to pay. They could take it, or leave it. There were plenty of men at Coldbridge, thrown out by the failure of Kendrick & Co., who would be glad to come. He could fill any vacant place.

But the ball grew and grew by handling. There were union-meetings and violent harangues, much of them truth, too, but badly and unwisely used. And the result was that the men demanded the old wages, were peremptorily refused, and struck. The great engine subsided, and a Sunday stillness reigned. Down at Hull's Iron Works the same proceedings were going on, but the saloons seemed to profit by it.

Jack hung around the mill for a while, then went down stairs. The chilliness in the air made him draw his coat together by one button, and slip his hands into his pockets. He sauntered through several streets, nodding to one and another, or exchanging a few words. Once again his advice was asked.

"I think you had better come to work to-morrow," he said. "Don't muddle your brains with beer or bad whiskey: that will not make the way any clearer."

"A good enough lad!" was the surly comment, "but why grudge a man a sup of beer when he can't have wine like the big folks?"

Jack had hardly planned for the enforced idleness. He did not want to go home and read, he could not call on Sylvie thus early in the morning, neither did he feel in the humor for argument with any of the men. So he stopped at the door of a small office, and turned the knob rather hesitatingly.

"Hillo, Darcy, is that you? Come in, come in! Sullen gray day, isn't it? Off on a strike, eh?"

Jack laughed,--the sound with no real music in it, the sort of lip-service merely.

"Come in, old fellow; don't be afraid. I've neither pistol nor bludgeon, and I'll promise to treat you civilly."

The man's accents were clear and curt, with a certain ring of out-door freshness,--a capital voice to travel with up mountain-sides and through forests. The face, too, indicated a kind of joyous strength; for the blue eyes were merry and baffling, the laughing lips a brilliant scarlet, the nose neither Grecian nor aquiline, but slightly _retrousse_; a bronze moustache with long curling ends that were undeniably red, and hair a little darker, slightly curling as well. A broad-shouldered man with the deep breathing of intense vitality; healthy nerves that could enjoy laziness to the full, as well as a brisk walk across the country.

A glance at the interior showed the place to be a doctor's office. On one side a long case with glass doors above and drawers underneath, filled with bottles and books and papers, perhaps in not the most systematic order; at the farther end a fire in an open-front stove; a luxurious Turkish lounge covered with russet leather, and a bright wool blanket thrown carelessly over it; several capacious armchairs; and in one, with his legs stretched out on another, sat Dr. Philip Maverick, eight and twenty or thirty years old, perhaps.

"How nice and cosey you are! I really did not know what to do with myself. Yes, we are all on a strike, I am sorry to say."

"Bad time," and Maverick shook his head. "What's the prospect? Have a cigar."

"The prospect is that the weakest goes to the wall, of course," answered Jack. "Maverick, I am dreadfully muddled on this point. I have thought of it all the week. It _is_ hard on the men. I know the general advice is to economize more closely, but how can you do it just at the beginning of winter? One cannot move to a cheaper tenement, fire and lights cost more, and provision is a little dearer. Low living in winter does not conduce to a healthy state in the spring. Then, on the other hand, if they are going to make such sales as they did last month, they cannot pay the wages, and realize what they consider a fair profit. But why shouldn't the Lawrences and the Eastmans and many others give up something, as well?"

Jack turned an anxious face to his listener.

"All you manufacturers have been crazy the last few years," he said, delicately shaking the ashes from his cigar. "The country was such an extensive purchaser through the war, that your dreams became Utopian. Then everybody came home with some money and no clothes, and the people were large consumers. Now everybody has been clothed, and the stores are full, and here is a glutted market. Over-production, my dear fellow."

"Then I do believe it would be better to leave off for a while. Still that would not suit as well. Half a loaf is better than no bread, to a hungry man. But, after all," said Jack, knitting his brows, "I don't altogether believe in the cry of over-production. The boys of war times are men now. They are pushing in everywhere for work. They want food, shelter, raiment. There are a great many more people in this town than there were five years ago. Even if we only depended on the natural increase of population"--

"But, you see, people are forever crowding into cities," interposed Dr. Maverick.

"I have a fancy they do not come much faster than they are called," returned Jack dryly. "See what we have been doing around here. The small outlying farms have been bought up by speculators, cut up, destroyed for farming purposes. Their owners with families of children had to go somewhere. 'Come to the mills and factories,' was shouted in their ears, and they came. Now they are here, depending on their labor for bread, and Eastman will bring fifty or a hundred more from Coldbridge; and in the spring, if there is any difficulty, some more will come. The old ones cannot go back to their farms if they would. Their fertile gardens lie cut up into waste squares, their fruit-trees have been despoiled: they must starve here, or tramp to some other crowded town, and perhaps starve there. Will your farmer take in half a dozen hands at a moment's notice? Can they put themselves down in any country place, and go to work?"

Maverick studied Jack intently, and then gave a low whistle.

"Upon my word, Darcy, you _have_ been going over the subject. Take the stump. And of course you go against capital?"

"No, I don't," returned Jack shortly. "Only it does seem to me that there ought to be some place where capital and labor could strike hands. It appears to me, both have been to blame. We cannot condemn men for crowding into cities, when there has been a steady call for them. We do blame them for not laying up a little money against a rainy day; but many of them have. Look at the cottages that have been sold to workingmen. Look at the bank savings. To-day, perhaps, as many poor men could pay their whole indebtedness, according to the ratio, as the rich. But we fly at the laboring classes, when it is only human nature cropping out. Your millionnaire puts his money into whatever he thinks will bring him the greatest return; your poor man puts his capital, his capacity, health, and strength, where it will earn him the most money."

"Well, I don't see but they are both right enough," said Maverick. "And unless you are running over into communistic ideas"--

"I am not," was the decisive reply. "Some one much wiser than I said, ages ago, 'He among you that will not work, let him not eat:' yet," with a humorous laugh, "if the rule were strictly enforced, there would more than one go hungry, I'm thinking. The great consolation would be that the right man would suffer, not the innocent and guiltless."

"I really do not see what you are driving at, Darcy," and the other studied him curiously.

"Well, I told you in the beginning I was