Part 81

The workmen had good reason to believe this; for Benjamin had kept his eyes and ears open from the time he entered the printing house, and he had learned just what the men thought about beer, why they drank it, how much work they did, and how much they could lift. Without saying a word about it, he took special pains to turn off a large amount of work, and to lift more than his fellow-workmen. For example, he would carry two forms of type, one in each hand, up and down stairs, while the other workmen carried but one with both hands. Therefore, Watts (the name of the workman) knew that every thing Benjamin claimed about strength was true.

"Are all Americans like you?" inquired the workman.

"No; too many of them are like you, I am sorry to say; they drink beer and other intoxicants, that disqualify them for business. If more of them would drink water, as I do, they would be far better off physically and pecuniarily."

"Some of our best doctors claim that there is much nutriment in beer," he suggested.

"And every one of them knows that there is more nutriment in a pennyworth of bread than there is in a whole gallon of beer. Therefore, if you eat the bread and drink the water, you get more strength."

The printer acknowledged that there was something in that.

"You see," continued Benjamin, "that all the nutriment there is in the barley is destroyed to convert it into beer. Your beer is very dirty water made bitter with malt, out of which nearly every particle of nutriment has been squeezed. There is as much nourishment in dishwater as there is in that stuff."

"Here, Jake, where are you?" called out another workman. "Bring on the beer."

Jake was the ale-boy, whose business it was to supply the men with beer from the ale-house.

"Another nuisance required by your beer business," exclaimed Benjamin. "Better by far pay a boy double price to bring water from the well, instead of bringing that stuff to absorb your money and sodden your brain."

"A Water-American, indeed!" said Mr. Watts, who heard much of the conversation. "But will you not allow some comfort to hard-working men?"

"Certainly; that is what I am after. There is more comfort in one glass of pure water than there is in a whole barrel of beer. Here is Watts, paying out four or five shillings every week for beer, when water would cost him nothing, and he would have that amount to spend for genuine comforts. Besides, beer unfits him to get real comfort out of any thing, even out of his home."

"You are about right on that," replied Watts; "beer does make a class of men most miserable. But must I discard it because some men use it to their injury?"

"Of course you must," Benjamin answered quickly and triumphantly. "There is where duty and right come in. The strong must bear the infirmities of the weak, or they won't amount to much in the world."

"Many of them won't amount to much any way, beer or no beer," responded Watts.

"Any of them will amount to more with water than they will with beer," retorted Benjamin, who felt competent to support his side of the question. He went on:

"Look here: I am supplied with a large porringer of hot-water gruel, sprinkled with pepper, crumbled with bread, and a bit of butter in it, for just the price of a pint of beer, three half-pence. Now, honestly, is not this much better for me, or for yourself, than the same amount of filthy beer?"

"Possibly; it is a new view of the case to me," was all that Mr. Watts could say, evidently conceding that Benjamin was about right.

Benjamin exchanged the press-room for the composing-room, after a few weeks.

"A treat now, Ben; that is the condition of admission here," said the men.

"I guess not; I fulfilled that condition in the press-room," answered Benjamin. "Once will do in this establishment."

"But you will," retorted a fellow-worker, enforced by a dozen voices. "The rule is irrevocable."

"We will see about that," replied Benjamin, with coolness, but determination.

"Yes, we will see," chimed in a resolute voice.

"And after all your seeing and blustering I shall not do it," added Benjamin, in a tone that indicated he meant what he said.

"Ben is right," interrupted Mr. Watts, who had listened to the colloquy; "he has met that condition once in the press-room, and he will not be required to repeat it. I forbid his doing it."

"It is a very foolish custom any way," said Benjamin, "and the sooner it is abandoned in England or anywhere else the better."

After all he did not carry his point. His own words about the affair were as follows: