found themselves with gaping stomachs, shivering limbs,
and hungry wives and children, in a place called their
own country, in which, nevertheless, every scrap of
ground and possible source of subsistence was tightly
locked up in the hands of others and guarded by armed
soldiers and policemen. In this helpless condition,
the poor devils were ready to beg for access to a
factory and to raw cotton on any conditions compatible
with life. My father offered them the use of
his factory, his machines, and his raw cotton on the
following conditions: They were to work long
and hard, early and late, to add fresh value to his
raw cotton by manufacturing it. Out of the value
thus created by them, they were to recoup him for
what he supplied them with: rent, shelter, gas,
water, machinery, raw cotton—everything,
and to pay him for his own services as superintendent,
manager, and salesman. So far he asked nothing
but just remuneration. But after this had been
paid, a balance due solely to their own labor remained.
‘Out of this,’ said my father, ’you
shall keep just enough to save you from starving,
and of the rest you shall make me a present to reward
me for my virtue in saving money. Such is the
bargain I propose. It is, in my opinion, fair
and calculated to encourage thrifty habits. If
it does not strike you in that light, you can get
a factory and raw cotton for yourselves; you shall
not use mine.’ In other words, they might
go to the devil and starve—Hobson’s
choice!—for all the other factories were
owned by men who offered no better terms. The
Manchesterians could not bear to starve or to see
their children starve, and so they accepted his terms
and went into the factory. The terms, you see,
did not admit of their beginning to save for themselves
as he had done. Well, they created great wealth
by their labor, and lived on very little, so that the
balance they gave for nothing to my father was large.
He bought more cotton, and more machinery, and more
factories with it; employed more men to make wealth
for him, and saw his fortune increase like a rolling
snowball. He prospered enormously, but the work
men were no better off than at first, and they dared
not rebel and demand more of the money they had made,
for there were always plenty of starving wretches
outside willing to take their places on the old terms.
Sometimes he met with a check, as, for instance, when,
in his eagerness to increase his store, he made the
men manufacture more cotton than the public needed;
or when he could not get enough of raw cotton, as
happened during the Civil War in America. Then
he adapted himself to circumstances by turning away
as many workmen as he could not find customers or
cotton for; and they, of course, starved or subsisted
on charity. During the war-time a big subscription
was got up for these poor wretches, and my father
subscribed one hundred pounds, in spite, he said,
of his own great losses. Then he bought new machines;
and, as women and children could work these as well