Part 17

These views were received with renewed expressions of approval, for to most of the excited men they seem quite unanswerable.

"That's the ticket; make 'em walk the plank. We're just as good as them," I heard some burly mechanic mutter.

The eager audience turned towards Angus, awaiting his reply, if haply reply could be provided. It has been my lot to hear many strong addresses, but I esteem this answering speech of Angus's among the strongest utterances I have heard.

"Mr. Slater wishes," he began, "to know by what right our employers make more money than we do. In answer, let me ask him by what right Bill Montgomery, the foreman in the moulding shop, gets more money every pay-day than Tom Coxford, who is one of his men. I suppose he will admit it is because Bill has more ability and more experience than Tom; he will also admit that the difference in their wages is a just difference, and indeed I have never heard any one find fault with it. Well, carry out that principle, and some one who has more skill than Montgomery will get more money than he gets. Then there will be some one above him again, and so on till you get to the head of the firm. If differing wages are just at all--and every one admits they are--then how can you deny their legitimate profits to the men whose industry and business ability have established the concern and guided it along to what it is to-day?

"Mr. Slater says that men are all equal. I don't agree with him. It is clear that God means some men to be rich and others to be less rich. If a man quarrels with the inequality among men, his quarrel is with God. God makes some men richer than others to begin with. When we see the highest riches, like those of brains and strength, unequally divided, we need not wonder to see the lesser riches somewhat unevenly distributed. God gives one man, or a woman like Jenny Lind, a voice that means a thousand dollars a night as often as they want to sing, and He gives another man a voice like an alarm-clock or a buzz-saw. He gives one man a mind that seems always to be full, and another man a mind, let him do his best, that is always as empty as a last year's nest. Surely I have more ground for envying the man who is born with more brains than I than the man who is born with more wealth than I. And yet God alone is responsible for the first-named inequality. We hear too much rubbish about this theory of all men being equal born.

"As for Bob Taylor's hint that we should employ violence to prevent men working for what wage they please, I have only this to say, that nobody but a lazy dog like him would suggest such a policy.

"We all know that when the whistle blows in the morning, Bob always tries how much of it he can hear before he goes in; and when it blows at night, he tries how much of it he can hear after he gets out. Bob is always slow at the end where he ought to be quick, and quick at the end where all honest men try at least to be decently slow; and then he talks to us about ducking some poor fellow who wants to make an honest living for his wife and children. I will say this much, too, that if the time ever comes when a free-born man cannot sell his labour in the market for what price he likes, then I will turn my back upon the old flag and leave its soil forever.

"Now, I am going to ask Mr. Slater a question or two about this dividing up business.

"Do you think, Mr. Slater, if a man has a million dollars, that he ought to divide up with the man who has very little, if that man happens to be working for him?"

"Most sartintly," replied Jack.

"Very well, if a man has ten thousand dollars, should he divide up with a poorer man who works for him?"

"Sure," answered Jack promptly.

"Well, suppose a man has a house and a little garden, and he has a man hired to help dig it or repair it, should he divide up with this poorer workman who has neither house nor garden?"

Jack hesitated, his brows knit in thought; then he answered slowly--

"Naw, I don't just think so."

"Why not?" said Angus.

"Well, 'twouldn't be fair; besides, I happen to have a little house and garden of my own."

Then all that crowd of men exploded in a burst of derisive laughter which set the seal of triumph on Angus's argument.

After the uproar had subsided, an intrepid Scotsman, only a few months in New Jedboro, volunteered to address the meeting.

"I canna jist answer the argyments o' Mr. Strachan, but I maun pit forrit my idea that oor wives and bairns haena the luxuries o' them as owns the works. I canna but mind that Robbie Burns said, 'A man's a man for a' that,' an' I thocht the present a fittin' occasion to mind ye o' the words, bein' as we're met the nicht to speak oot against slavery o' ilka kind."

"No man who knows me," replied Angus, "will say that I will either yield to slavery or assist it in any form. But the man who calls himself a slave because his employer has more money than he, is no friend to honest labour. We would all like wealth, but wealth is neither happiness nor liberty. After all, the men whom we envy have not so much more than we; they can only lie on one pillow at a time, can only eat one mouthful at a time, can only smoke one cigar at a time, and as for the kind of couch a man sits down upon, it matters little so that he has earned his rest by honest toil.

"My Scottish friend hardly realizes what he says. I know he has a wife and a sweet little lassie. There is Mr. Blake, the richest of our manufacturers, and he has neither the one nor the other. Now I ask my compatriot, would he trade his lot for that of Mr. Blake with all his money? He answers no. Then who is the richer man--Mr. Blake, or our fellow-workman from auld Scotland?

"Speaking of Scotland, let me say this one word. I lived there till I was a well-grown lad, as did scores of you, and I defy you to contradict me when I say that we are a hundred times better off here than we were among the sheep or behind the ploughs in the old land, neither of which we could hardly ever hope to call our own. Were we not there accounted almost as sheep for the slaughter? How much better were we than the kine we tended? Were not we even driven from the land we rented at a cruel price, that some haughty lord might make a deer-run of the place? What were we there but grovelling vassals, and what hope had we ever to be independent, or to own even a house in which to die?

"I do not need to tell you of the difference here, of how the most of us have our own little homes, and count our friends among the best people in New Jedboro; and three-fourths of the aldermen in our council, and the trustees of our schools, and the elders of our kirks, are from the ranks of honest labour.

"Let us thank God we have escaped from the class tyranny and the peasant bondage of the land beyond the seas."

A new and different light was now upon the rapt faces of the men--and the end of it all was that they turned the diamond-ringed gentlemen from their doors.

XIV

WITH The EMPLOYERS