In the old days of the steam trams, where there were only about a score of tram-conductors and eight miles of line in all the Five Towns, the profession of tram-conductor had still some individuality in it, and a conductor was something more than a number.  But since the British Electric Traction Company had invaded the Five Towns, and formed a subsidiary local company, and constructed dozens of miles of new line, and electrified everything, and raised prices, and abolished season tickets, and quickened services, and built hundreds of cars and engaged hundreds of conductors—­since then a tram-conductor had been naught but an unhuman automaton in a vast machine-like organization.  And passengers no longer had their favourite conductors.

Gossips did not precisely see Thomas Chadwick as an unhuman automaton for the punching of tickets and the ringing of bells and the ejaculation of street names.  He was never meant by nature to be part of a system.  Gossips hoped for the best.  That Chadwick, at his age and with his girth, had been able, in his extremity, to obtain a conductorship was proof that he could bring influences to bear in high quarters.  Moreover, he was made conductor of one of two cars that ran on a little branch line between Bursley and Moorthorne, so that to the village of Moorthorne he was still somebody, and the chances were just one to two that persons who travelled by car from or to Moorthorne did so under the majestic wing of Thomas Chadwick.  His manner of starting a car was unique and stupendous.  He might have been signalling “full speed ahead” from the bridge of an Atlantic liner.

II

Chadwick’s hours aboard his Atlantic liner were so long as to interfere seriously, not only with his leisure, but with his political activities.  And this irked him the more for the reason that at that period local politics in the Five Towns were extremely agitated and interesting.  People became politicians who had never been politicians before.  The question was, whether the Five Towns, being already one town in practice, should not become one town in theory—­indeed, the twelfth largest town in the United Kingdom!  And the district was divided into Federationists and anti-Federationists.  Chadwick was a convinced anti-Federationist.  Chadwick, with many others, pointed to the history of Bursley, “the mother of the Five Towns,” a history which spread over a thousand years and more; and he asked whether “old Bursley” was to lose her identity merely because Hanbridge had insolently outgrown her.  A poll was soon to be taken on the subject, and feelings were growing hotter every day, and rosettes of different colours flowered thicker and thicker in the streets, until nothing but a strong sense of politeness prevented members of the opposing parties from breaking each other’s noses in St Luke’s Square.

Now on a certain Tuesday afternoon in spring Tommy Chadwick’s car stood waiting, opposite the Conservative Club, to depart to Moorthorne.  And Tommy Chadwick stood in all his portliness on the platform.  The driver, a mere nobody, was of course at the front of the car.  The driver held the power, but he could not use it until Tommy Chadwick gave him permission; and somehow Tommy’s imperial attitude seemed to indicate this important fact.