D. F. E. Sykes

“ How save the little hoarded wealth; how bear the infirm mother, who by inglenook declined daily to her grave cheered by the babbling prattle of her daughter’s bairns; how save the bairns themselves! And even as Tom rode the cries behind him swelled in volume till they fell upon his ears as a hoarse roar, broken by shrill and piercing shriek, and if his ears betrayed him not, above the din of human voice he heard the growl of gathered waters loosed. No use to look behind, the darkening skies veiled the sight. Thank God! Here is Wilberlee. Well Tom knew the entrance to the yard. ”

“ Take the case of a man, a designer, say, in a mill, or a lawyer, or a doctor. He devotes money, time, and the hard sweating of his brains to becoming master of his calling. Whilst he is studying he is earning just nothing at all, in fact less than nothing. When he is qualified for it he rightly expects to be better paid than a man who knows how to handle a spade or pickaxe when his life of toil begins, and knows just as much and no more when his life ends in the workhouse or the grave.”
“You say ‘rightly expects,’ why rightly?” asked Tom. ”

“ But now the last wild rose of the summer has blushed in the hedgerows, and the bracken of the moors is greying to sickly death; the brooks and rivulets fall from the heights in fuller stream and muttering a gloomier song and the long nights are at hand when men-folk of a social mind seek the creature comforts and the good-fellowship of taproom and bar. And this was the season which Ben and Tom deemed fitting for the launching of still another experiment. ”

“ Ben was a hand-loom weaver, and, of a week-day, by earliest day, til sunset in the spring and summer-tide, you could have heard the clack of his loom overhead as the nimble shuttle with its trail of weft sped across the warp. But to-day Ben has gone to stretch his legs on the moors, and it is Lucy’s mother who bids Dorothy welcome and relieves her of her parcels.
A long oaken settle runs under the deep window of the “house” or living room. ”

“ The inner air was hot to sultriness, laden with the breath of a score or so of workers and with the rancid smell of machine oil. The spinner had gone to his dinner, and it was seldom he missed “calling” on his way back to the mill. It was a toss-up whether he would return in a good or a bad temper. If in a good one he would probably spend a half-hour or so in the weaving-shed among the grown-up girls who worked there, making jests and taking the coarse liberties they dared not resent if they would keep their looms. ”

“ Distribute your profit among all the workers in the concern, yourself and Ben included, for I suppose your stomach will insist on its elemental right to be filled; but distribute to each a share of the profits proportioned to his wage. For taking it that a man’s wage is a rough and ready measure of a man’s share in building up the wealth, so, too, would it be a rough and ready method of determine your share in the profits. And now most potent, grave, and reverend seigneur, thy hand-maiden hath spoken, and lud-ha’-mercy, ’tis sick to death I am of long faces and your miserable economics. ”

“ Old William Tinker had left two sons, both of whom had been brought up to the business, and to both, as partners, the business had been left. Jabez, the elder, I shall have much to say. Richard, the younger, might not have been a Tinker at all. He did not “favour” the Tinkers, who were traditionally tall lean, wiry, big-boned men, somewhat sallow of complexion, with dark straight hair, scant of speech, inflexible of will, their word their law, neither grasping nor prodigal, and as strict at chapel as the counting-house. But Dick Tinker, Dick o’ Will’s o’th Wilberlee, had been a “non-such.” ”

“ Poor Lucy lies upon the couch, her cheeks so hollow, her skin so transparent, her brown soft eyes so unnaturally large and her look of patient suffering, and of the resignation of abandoned hope so heart-rending when it is stamped on the face of youth. But the large eyes brighten as Dorothy comes to the couch, and her thin hand, so white and bloodless, rests in loving, lingering caress upon Dorothy’s glossy tresses as she stoops over the invalid and leaves a kiss upon the pallid lips. ”

“ Every hand at Co-op Mill began in a very brief time to shake off the enervating consciousness of the subservience of a hired labourer. He would not only not idle himself, he would tolerate no idling in a fellow labourer. There are tricks in every trade, or every trade is solely maligned. There are ways of shirking work, of making time pass in merely seeming labour that one would think one as irksome in the long run to the operative as they are undoubtedly unjust to the employer. There was none of that at Co-op Mill. ”

“ There is the exhilaration of the strains of the brass band—which in all probability will be comfortably drunk before the day is out; there is the fluttering of the silken banners in the summer breeze, and, above all, there is the consciousness of being the beheld of all beholders. The boys look either bored or ashamed of themselves and wish they were nearer the buns and nuts, for which they are gloomily conscious they will have to pay by submitting to the humiliating exactions of kiss-in-the-ring. ”

“ The difficulty will be to persuade men not merely that they will be better off themselves, but that they must be content to take part of their wage in seeing a worse workman than themselves better off too. Labour is just as selfish as capital. But in our mill no matter what a man’s allotted task, so long as he does his work faithfully, he shall share and share alike. ”

“ Every one of us that can do a full man’s work is to have an equal share in the profit, always provided he does the work he is capable of. There will be shorter hours and less work for the youngsters. But the share of all will depend on the profits we make, and no one is to have a greater share than another.”
“But that seems ridiculous, Tom. If you are to turn manufacturer like my uncle, why, you must be a manufacturer. You will have to go to market as he does, and meet and bargain with your customers, to dress like them, to mix with them as an equal. ”

“ We’re all to be partners together. We’ll know neither master nor man at our mill. We’re going to try an experiment in grim earnest, and oh! Miss Dorothy, for heaven’s sake, don’t shake your head and look so glum about it. I feel sure we can succeed. We will succeed. I am young and there is no hardship, no sacrifice, no work for which I am not prepared. ”

“ Now your navvy or artisan gets his payment from the first day he touches the mattock or throws a shuttle.”
“There seems some justice in what say, Miss Dorothy; but I thought you were going to show me the way to your attainable Utopia.”
“So I am. I should imagine that the current rate of wages is very much the measure of a man’s comparative worth in this life-absorbing soul-cramping pursuit of wealth you call business. When these are paid and other outlays deducted, there remains, or doesn’t remain sometimes, what the capitalist calls his profit?”
Tom nodded. ”

“ Is it not meet that old men in the time to come should dream dreams, and the young men see visions. Had Ben Garside, good, staunch, true man that I know him to be, had not he dreamed dreams and seen visions could he have had it in his heart to strive and suffer as I know he did, not for himself but for the oppressed ones of his class. ”

“ Never was Nehemiah more eloquent, never had he so wrapt and intent a listener.
“She’s just the woman for a lawyer’s wife,” thought Nehemiah, as he talked. “I’ll practise my speeches on her.”
“But, after all, it’s no use wearying you with all these details, Miss Tinker. We shall never reach a final trial. Your uncle isn’t the man to take a beating, and if we’re trounced in one Court we shall go to another. Pinder can’t stand the racket. I call it downright dishonest of him taking the savings of those deluded Co-opers, as they call them, and spending it on Sykes. ”

“ The people in most immediate danger had been told so often that something was wrong with Bilberry embankment, and for so long had the gloomy predictions of the local Cassandras come to nought, that Tom spoke to deaf ears. None heeded him. Even Ben accorded him only the attention of politeness. The people lower down the Valley based their indifference to his suggestions of possible peril upon the indifference of those nearer the reservoir. If the people who lived cheek by jowl as it were with the big dam could afford to laugh at Tom’s dismal forebodings, why should they put themselves about. ”

“ It was like a ‘new birth,’ as the chapel-folk might say. But it has done its work now, and I should like once more to be plain ‘Tom’ to you.”
“Well, plain Tom then be it, if that will please you; but we really must be going, or we shall miss Lucy. Hark! many of the people must have left the ground already. I can hear them talking as they go past the mill. Bring along the basket, Tom, and don’t spill more than you can help.”
“I don’t think I should take the flowers to Lucy in the field. People would say you favoured Lucy more than other folk’s children.” ”

“ Dorothy bent her head in a somewhat hesitating assent. “I suppose so,” she said.
“And we know something of what working folk have to put up with, how hard they have to work, and how little they often get in return.”
“Come to that,” said Dorothy, “I dare say a masters’ lot isn’t quite a bed of roses. You’ll find that out soon enough for yourselves I’m afraid.”
“Granted,” said Tom, ”but fat sorrow’s better than lean; but I don’t mean to be a master.”
Dorothy rose. “It is later than I thought. Betty must have come in by this, or Peggy. And the field’s well-nigh deserted. ”

“ It was of so common occurrence as to be almost regarded as a matter of course, not calling for comment, that a child nine or ten years of age should stand to its work sixteen or seventeen hours at a stretch, cramming its meal of water-porridge down its throat in the fluff-laden air of the weaving shed or spinning room, afraid to break off work even to eat a hurried and unsavoury meal. ”

“ Now, in his nineteenth year, he is nearing the six feet of manhood, and his frame is well knit and strong. Simple fare has agreed with him, anyway, simple, fare and simple, cleanly ways. He is the delight of Hannah Garside’s eyes, and of eyes, too, younger and brighter than hers, though the winsome mill-hands of the valley declare that Tom Pinder is as dateless as a stone. “It’s time wasted on him,” they say, “he thinks o’ nowt but his books an’ his wark, an’ maybe o’ that poor ill-shaped Lucy Garsed.” ”

“ She would love him so; she would be his very slave; no house should be like theirs. Never did the heart of Andromeda leap to meet the coming Perseus, as Martha’s heart went out to this prince, come, if come indeed he were, to break the chains that bound her to the cruel rock of barren life. ”

“ And, now, Tom, to business. This you see is my will. A man doesn’t die any sooner you know for making his will. When I lost Priscilla, a rare woman, Tom, but over tender for this World, a matchless Woman,—I made a new will. ”

“ Take an old man’s word for it, Tom Pinder, business and philanthropy don’t mix. Make your money in trade and give what you don’t want yourself in charity, if you like; but business must be run on business lines. It’s some of Ben Garside’s hatching, I expect; but then Ben was always crackbrained.”
“I am sure I don’ know how to thank you, sir,” began Tom.
“Oh! I don’t want your thanks. I was looking out for myself as much as you. Nothing for nothing—that’s business you’ll find. The question is, are you content to stop on at Wilberlee or ‘gang your ain gate,’ as the Scotch say. ”

“ Ben’s limbs are stiffer by many a year since that historic tramp, but he straightens them and erect with flashing eye, as he dwells upon the heroic patience, the grim resolve of those who trod the long, long miles, and tells how weary men stayed with their arms the feeble, halting steps of bent and grey-headed sires, and worn and foot-sore women carried in their arms drooping children, not their own ”

“ He must be a very callous individual indeed who does not delight in the sight of the scholars as they marshal under the folds of the School flag, blazoned with the name of the chapel and borne in a somewhat staggering fashion by sturdy teachers who find consolation for their tribulations in the honour of being standard-bearers. Even a slattern mother and a drunken father will make a shift at sacrifice to turn the “childer” out decent for the “Whissun treat.” It is indeed the time of year when the yearly Sunday suit is chosen. ”