drudgery of bygone days—­to the ‘forties’ of last century, when your fathers went to work at the curfew bell and earned eighteen-pence a week as apprentices, and two shillings a week and a penny for themselves after they had learned their business.  A good spinner in those days might earn five shillings a week, Levi—­and that out of doors in fair weather.  In foul, he, or she, wouldn’t do so well.  If you had told your fathers seventy years ago that all the spinning walks would be done away with and the population better off notwithstanding, they would never have believed it.”

“That’s the way to look at the subject, Levi,” declared John Best.  “Think what the men of the past would have said to our luck—­and our education.”

“Machinery brought the spinning indoors,” continued Ernest.  “I can remember forty spinning walks in St. Michael’s Lane alone.  And with small wages and long hours, remember the price of things, Levi; remember the fearful price of bare necessities.  Clothes were so dear that many a labourer went to church in his smock frock all his life.  Many never donned broadcloth from their cradle to their grave.  And tea five shillings a pound, Levi Baggs!  They used to buy it by the ounce and brew it over and over again.  Think of the little children, too, and how they were made to work.  Think of them and feel your heart ache.”

“My heart aches for myself,” answered the hackler, “because I very well remember what my own childhood was.  And I’m not saying the times don’t better.  I’m saying we must keep at ’em, or they’ll soon slip back again into the old, bad ways.  Capital’s always pulling against labour and would get back its evil mastery to-morrow if it could.  So we need to keep awake, to see we don’t lose what we’ve won, but add to it.  Now here’s a man that’s a servant by instinct, and it’s in his blood to knuckle under.”

He pointed to Best.

“I’m for no man more than another,” answered John.  “I stand not for man or woman in particular.  I’m for the Mill first and last and always.  I think of what is best for the Mill and put it above the welfare of the individual, whatever he represents—­capital or labour.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.  The people are the Mill and only the people,” declared Baggs.  “The rest is iron and steel and flax and hemp and steam—­dead things all.  We are the Mill, not the stuff in it, or the man that happens to be the new master.”

“Mr. Raymond has expressed admirable sentiments in my hearing,” declared Ernest Churchouse.  “For so young a man, he has a considerable grasp of the situation and progressive ideas.  You might be in worse hands.”

“Might we?  How worse?  What can be worse than a man that lies to women and seduces an innocent girl under promise of marriage?  What can be worse than a coward and traitor, who does a thing like that, and when he finds he’s strong enough to escape the consequences, escapes them?”