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land to look at wuds and report on the nature of the timber. Bribery, they think it is, but Andrew Amos is not to be bribit. Heā€™ll have his say about any Goavernment on earth, and tell them to their face what he thinks of them. Ay, and heā€™ll fight the case of the workingman against his oppressor, should it be the Goavernment or the fatted calves they caā€™ Labour Members. Yeā€™ll have heard tell oā€™ the shop stewards, Mr. Brand?ā€

I admitted I had, for I had been well coached by Blenkiron in the current history of industrial disputes.

ā€œWell, Iā€™m a shop steward. We represent the rank and file against office-bearers that have lost the confidence oā€™ the workingman. But Iā€™m no socialist, and I would have ye keep mind of that. Iā€™m yin oā€™ the old Border radicals, and Iā€™m not like to change. Iā€™m for individual liberty and equal rights and chances for all men. Iā€™ll no more bow down before a Dagon of a Goavernment official than before the Baal of a feckless Tweedside laird. Iā€™ve to keep my views to myselā€™, for thae young lads are all drucken-daft with their wee books about Cawpital and Collectivism and a wheen long senseless words I wouldna fyle my tongue with. Them and their socialism! Thereā€™s more gumption in a page of John Stuart Mill than in all that foreign trash. But, as I say, Iā€™ve got to keep a quiet sough, for the world is gettinā€™ socialism now like the measles. It all comes of a defective eddication.ā€

ā€œAnd what does a Border radical say about the war?ā€ I asked.

He took off his spectacles and cocked his shaggy brows at me. ā€œIā€™ll tell ye, Mr. Brand. All that was bad in all that Iā€™ve ever wrestled with since I cam to years oā€™ discretionā ā€”Tories and lairds and manufacturers and publicans and the Auld Kirkā ā€”all that was bad, I say, for there were orra bits of decency, yeā€™ll find in the Germans full measure pressed down and running over. When the war started, I considered the subject calmly for three days, and then I said: ā€˜Andra Amos, yeā€™ve found the enemy at last. The ones ye fought before were in a manner oā€™ speakinā€™ just misguided friends. Itā€™s either you or the Kaiser this time, my man!ā€™ā€Šā€

His eyes had lost their gravity and had taken on a sombre ferocity. ā€œAy, and Iā€™ve not wavered. I got a word early in the business as to the way I could serve my country best. Itā€™s not been an easy job, and thereā€™s plenty of honest folk the day will give me a bad name. They think Iā€™m stirrinā€™ up the men at home and desertinā€™ the cause oā€™ the lads at the front. Man, Iā€™m keepinā€™ them straight. If I didna fight their battles on a sound economic isshue, they would take the dorts and be at the mercy of the first blagyird that preached revolution. Me and my like are safety-valves, if ye follow me. And dinna you make ony mistake, Mr. Brand. The men that are agitating for a rise in wages are not for peace. Theyā€™re fighting for the lads overseas as much as for themselves. Thereā€™s not yin in a thousand that wouldna sweat himself blind to beat the Germans. The Goavernment has made mistakes, and maun be made to pay for them. If it were not so, the men would feel like a moose in a trap, for they would have no way to make their grievance felt. What for should the big man double his profits and the small man be ill set to get his ham and egg on Sabbath morninā€™? Thatā€™s the meaning oā€™ Labour unrest, as they call it, and itā€™s a good thing, says I, for if Labour didna get its leg over the traces now and then, the spunk oā€™ the land would be dead in it, and Hindenburg could squeeze it like a rotten aipple.ā€

I asked if he spoke for the bulk of the men.

ā€œFor ninety percent in ony ballot. I donā€™t say that thereā€™s not plenty of riffraffā ā€”the pint-and-a-dram gentry and the soft-heads that are aye reading bits of newspapers, and muddlinā€™ their wits with foreign whigmaleeries. But the average man on the Clyde, like the average man in ither places, hates just three things, and thatā€™s the Germans, the profiteers, as they call them, and the Irish. But he hates the Germans first.ā€

ā€œThe Irish!ā€ I exclaimed in astonishment.

ā€œAy, the Irish,ā€ cried the last of the old Border radicals. ā€œGlasgowā€™s stinkinā€™ nowadays with two things, money and Irish. I mind the day when I followed Mr. Gladstoneā€™s Home Rule policy, and used to threep about the noble, generous, warmhearted sister nation held in a foreign bondage. My Goad! Iā€™m not speakinā€™ about Ulster, which is a dour, ill-natured den, but our own folk all the same. But the men that will not do a handā€™s turn to help the war and take the chance of our necessities to set up a bawbee rebellion are hateful to Goad and man. We treated them like pet lambs and thatā€™s the thanks we get. Theyā€™re coming over here in thousands to tak the jobs of the lads that are doing their duty. I was speakinā€™ last week to a widow woman that keeps a wee dairy down the Dalmarnock Road. She has two sons, and both in the airmy, one in the Cameronians and one a prisoner in Germany. She was telling me that she could not keep goinā€™ any more, lacking the help of the boys, though she had worked her fingers to the bone. ā€˜Surely itā€™s a crool job, Mr. Amos,ā€™ she says, ā€˜that the Goavernment should tak baith my laddies, and Iā€™ll maybe never see them again, and let the Irish gang free and tak the bread frae our mouth. At the gasworks across the road they took on a hundred Irish last week, and every yin oā€™ them as young and well set

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