Читать книгу A Safety Match - Ian Hay - Страница 11

There was a dead silence, unbroken until Juggernaut entered the room.

"Good-morning, gentlemen," he said briskly. "I am glad to see that the deputation has only just arrived."

He turned to the clerk who had shown him in.

"Andrews," he said, "bring chairs for these gentlemen, and then we can get to business."

Chairs were brought, and the deputation, which had been balancing itself on alternate legs for nearly half an hour, sat down with an enhanced sense of comfort and importance to what they realised at once was to be the interview proper.

Juggernaut took the seat at the middle of the table vacated by Lord Kirkley, and inquired—

"Has any one spoken yet?"

Progress was reported by Mr Crisp.

"I wonder if I might trouble the deputation again," said the chairman. "Not you, Mr Winch, thank you!" as that Demosthenes cleared his throat in a threatening manner. "In the first place, you don't represent the men in any sense. In fact, considering that you are engaged in no employment in this district, I think it would have been much wiser on the part of those responsible for this deputation to have left you out altogether. You are not even a properly accredited Trades Union official."

"Gentlemen of the Board," began Mr Winch portentously, "I appeal——"

"Don't trouble, really, Mr Winch," broke in Juggernaut with inflexible cheerfulness. "You see, I know exactly what you are going to say. I have heard it so often in other places where you have been kind enough to come forward and champion the cause—of—of—the oppressed millions of this country. That's right, isn't it?"

A muffled sound proceeded from the interior of Mr Wilkie—his first contribution to the debate—and the chairman proceeded.

"I wonder if Mr Entwistle junior would kindly give us the facts."

Amos Entwistle, rising from his seat, re-stated the case of the two men. They were competent and industrious workmen, he maintained, and so long as they gave satisfaction in their situations their private lives and leisure occupations were entirely their own concern. Possibly their views on the relations of Labour and Capital were extreme, but the speaker begged respectfully to point out that there were extremists on both sides; and since many employers might and did regard the men they paid as dirt beneath their feet, it seemed only natural that a section of the men should regard their employers as bullies and tyrants. Mr Entwistle followed up this undoubted home-thrust with a request for a categorical list of the offences alleged against the two men, and solemnly but respectfully warned the Board against risking a serious upheaval by endeavouring to stifle legitimate criticism of its actions. With apologies for plain-speaking he resumed his seat, and Mr Aymer tore up a sheet of paper upon which he had commenced operations on the arrival of the chairman.

"Would any other gentleman like to say anything?" inquired Juggernaut. "Mr Brash? Mr Wilkie?"

No, the gentlemen addressed had nothing to say. Their forte was plainly that of chorus.

"Very well," said Juggernaut. "In the first place, I am going to accede to Mr Entwistle's perfectly just request that a definite reason should be given for the dismissal of these men. I agree with him that it is a foolish thing to stifle legitimate criticism. Unfortunately, I don't agree with him that the criticisms of Messrs Conlin and Murton are legitimate. I have been making inquiries into the antecedents of these two. Murton is a paid agitator. He is not a local man. He came here less than a year ago, and has been making deliberate mischief ever since. He has money to spend: he backs his arguments with beer. I shouldn't be surprised if he drew his salary from the organisation which retains your services, Mr Winch."

Mr Winch's small eyes began to protrude. He did not relish this line of argument. In dealing with Boards and other representatives of bloated Capital he preferred to keep to the high moral and sentimental plane—the sufferings of the downtrodden sons of Labour, the equality of all men in the sight of God, and so on. Mundane personalities, coupled with the suggestion that he, a high priest of altruism, was making a good thing out of his exertions on behalf of his fellow-toilers, took him below the belt, he considered.

"Conlin," continued Juggernaut, disregarding the fermenting Mr Winch, "seems to be a comparatively sincere and honest grumbler. He has realised that this is an unjust world, and he wants to put it right by Act of Parliament. Consequently he goes about advocating certain special and particular forms of legislation which, if they came into being, would benefit about one member of the community in a hundred and be grossly unfair to the other ninety-nine. He has not yet discovered for himself that the aim of all legislation must be to benefit the type and not the individual. That is the rock upon which all your friends split, Mr Winch. You are always trying to legislate for special cases, and it can't be done. I quite agree with you that the conditions of labour in parts of this country are deplorable. We all want to put them right. But there are two things we cannot do. We can't cure them in a hurry, and we can't cure them by swallowing quack medicines. What we have to do is to set to work on systematic lines, and go on working, with patience and a sense of proportion, until our whole social fabric develops into a sounder and more healthy condition. That requires time, and time requires patience, and patience requires common-sense, and common-sense is a thing which is lamentably scarce in this world, Mr Winch. We are marching on to a better state of things every year; but every bit of unsound, panic-stricken, vote-catching legislation—Right-to-Work Bills, Unemployment Acts, and so on—throws us back a step, because its tendency is to remove the symptom instead of curing the disease. Now, symptoms are very valuable assets. They give us reliable and necessary information, which is more than can be said of most intelligence departments. If ever you have such a vulgar thing as a pain in your stomach, Mr Winch, that is a kindly hint from Nature that there is something wrong with the works. If you drink two of whisky hot the pain may cease, but it does not follow that the real cause of the trouble has been removed. In effect you have merely put back the danger-signal to safety without removing the danger. That is just what all this despicable, hand-to-mouth, time-serving legislation that you and your friends are trying to force upon a popularity-hunting Government is doing for the country to-day."

The speaker paused. The deputation wore a distinctly chastened appearance. Mr Aymer was engaged upon a third sheet of notes. Sir Nigel Thompson was working out a chemical formula on the back of an envelope.

"Let us get back to the point, sir," said Amos Entwistle doggedly. "I agree with a great deal of what you say——"

"Shame!" interpolated Mr Killick suddenly.

"But we came here to ask for the reinstatement of these two men, and not to discuss social problems."

"Granted all the time," said Juggernaut cheerfully. "I admit that I have not made Messrs Conlin and Murton my Alpha and Omega in these remarks of mine; but that is because I deliberately went back to first principles instead of cutting into the middle of things. Now for your request! You want an answer? Here it is. The two men cannot be reinstated under any circumstances whatsoever. I confess I am rather sorry for Conlin: he is in a different class from Murton. But he is tarred with the same brush, and he must go."

"Take care, Sir John," broke in Mr Winch, in the declamatory bray which he reserved for extreme crises. "Don't push us too hard! What if a strike was to be proclaimed at Marbledown Colliery? You wouldn't like that, Mr Montague! You have a bad enough name in the district as it is. You grind your 'eel——"

"Mr Winch," said Juggernaut in a voice of thunder, "I must ask you to address yourself to me. This matter has been taken out of Mr Montague's hands by the combined action of the Owners' Association; so if you have any strictures to offer they must be laid upon me as representing the Association collectively. As for striking—well, you struck before, you know. I don't think any of us have forgotten that winter—masters or men!"

"We nearly beat you then," said Killick hotly.

"That," retorted Mr Montague, suddenly breaking into the debate, "was because some sentimental fool sent food and necessaries to your wives."

"It's the women and children who pay for strikes, you know, Mr Winch," said Mr Crisp, speaking for the first time—"not you men. You can do without beer and baccy at a pinch, but your families must have groceries and fire. If they had not been kept going by that unknown benefactor the strike would have collapsed as soon as the Union funds gave out."

"Perhaps they will be kept going again," said Amos Entwistle quietly.

"They won't," said Juggernaut emphatically. "You can take my word for that, Mr Entwistle. I have seen to it. And I may add that if you consider it advisable to proclaim a sectional strike, the owners on their part might find it necessary to declare a lock-out at all the collieries in the district. If men can combine, so can masters."

There was a staggered silence. Even the Board were hardly prepared for this. Juggernaut had so dominated the situation since his arrival that one or two—Mr Montague in particular—were beginning to wonder rather peevishly why they had been admitted to the meeting. But Mr Crisp leaned back and took snuff contentedly. He appreciated strong measures, though he was averse to initiating them.

Still, the temper of the meeting was rising. Killick broke out furiously. It was a burning shame, a monstrous iniquity, he declared, that men who had never done an honest day's work in their lives should be enabled, simply because they had money in their pockets, to force humiliating conditions on a majority who had no alternative but to submit or starve. He spoke with all the conviction that absolute sincerity carries; but the effect of his philippic was not enhanced by the marginal comments of his colleague, Mr Brash, who kept up a running fire of sotto voce references to bloody-minded tyrants, champagne, ballet-girls, and other equally relevant topics with a persistence and enthusiasm which would have proved embarrassing to a more self-conscious and less frenzied rhetorician than Mr Killick.

When both solo and obligato had subsided, Juggernaut spoke again.

"It is one of the most common delusions of men of your way of thinking, Mr Killick, to imagine that the only kind of work worthy of the name is manual labour. Personally, I have tried both. For two years after I came down from the University I worked for experience's sake in a pit not far from here. I went down with my shift daily and worked full time; but I assure you that those two years were far from being the most laborious of my life."

"Your case was different, sir," said Amos Entwistle, with a practical man's quick perception of his opponent's weak points. "You were doing it for pleasure, to acquire experience—not to earn your bread. You could look forward to something better later on."

"And so can every man!" replied Juggernaut. "Each one of us is able if he likes to work his way up, and up, and up; and the lower he starts, the greater is his range of opportunity. The man at the bottom has the whole ladder to climb, instead of a few paltry rungs, as is the case of a man born near the top. Let him think of that, and be thankful!"

The chairman's sombre eyes glowed. His tone of raillery was gone: he was in sober earnest now. To him poverty and riches were nothing; he could have lived happily on a pound a-week: the salt of life lay in the overcoming of its difficulties.

But Amos Entwistle was a man of tough fibre—by far the strongest man, next to the chairman, in that assemblage.

"You can't deny, sir," he persisted doggedly, "that it is very difficult for a poor man to rise. His employers don't help him much. They are best satisfied with a man who keeps his proper station, as they call it."

"Tyrants!" interpolated Mr Winch hastily.

"Star Chamber!" added Mr Brash, à propos de bottes.

"Tyrants? Star Chamber?" Juggernaut surveyed the interrupter quizzically. "Here is a question for you, Mr Brash. Which is the worse—the tyranny of the harsh employer who gathers where he has not strawed, or the tyranny of a Trades Union which a man is forced to join, and which compels the best worker to slow down his pace to that of the worst, and frequently compels him to come out on strike over some question upon which he is perfectly satisfied? I won't attempt to place them in order of merit, but I should feel inclined to bracket—"

"Trades Unions," interrupted Mr Winch, who was beginning to feel himself unduly excluded from the present symposium, "are the first steps towards the complete emancipation of Labour"—he smacked his lips as over a savoury bakemeat—"from the degrading shackles of Capital. Every man his own master!"

Juggernaut nodded his head slowly.

"Ye-es," he said. "That sounds admirable. But what does it mean exactly? As far as I can see, it means that every one who is at present a labourer is ultimately going to become a capitalist. In that case it rather looks as if there would be a shortage of hands if there was work to be done. Your Utopia, Mr Winch, appears to me to resemble the Grand Army of Hayti, which consists of five hundred privates and eleven hundred Generals. No, no; you must bear in mind this fact, that ever since the world began mankind has been divided up into masters and men, and will continue to be so divided until the end of time. What we—you and I—have to do is to adjust the relations between the two in such a fashion as to make the conditions fair for both. I don't say that employers aren't frequently most high-handed and tyrannical, but I also say that employés are extraordinarily touchy and thin-skinned. I think it chiefly arises from a sort of distorted notion that there is something degrading and undignified in obeying an order. Why, man, obedience and discipline are the very life-blood of every institution worthy of the name. They are no class affair either. I have seen the captain of a company stand at attention without winking for ten minutes, and receive a damning from his colonel that no non-commissioned officer in the service would have dreamed of administering to a private of the line. Master and man each hold equally honourable positions; and what you must drum into the minds of your associates, gentlemen—I'm speaking to the Board as much as to the deputation—is the fact that the interests of both are identical, instead of being as far apart as the poles, which appears to be your present impression. Neither can exist without the other. So far you have imbibed only half of that truth. You reiterate with distressing frequency, Mr Winch, the fact that Capital cannot exist without Labour. Perfectly true. Now try to absorb into your system the fact—equally important to a hair's-breadth—that Labour cannot exist without Capital. Each depends upon the other for existence, and what we have to do is to balance and balance and balance, employing a sense of proportion, proportion, proportion!"

Juggernaut's fist descended with a crash upon the table, and for a minute he was silent—free-wheeling, so to speak, over the pulverised remains of Mr Winch. Presently he continued, with one of his rare smiles—

"A Frenchman once said that an Englishman begins by making a speech and ends by preaching a sermon. I am afraid I have justified the gibe, but it's a good thing to thrash these matters out. I don't deny that the average employer is in the habit of giving his employés their bare pound of flesh in the way of wages and no more. But I think the employé has himself to blame for that. If you invoke the assistance of the law against your neighbour, that neighbour will give you precisely as much as the law compels him to give. Well, that is what organised Labour has done. It has its Trades Union, its Workmen's Compensation and Employers' Liability, and so on; and lately it has gouged out of a myopic Government a scheme of Old Age Pensions, to be eligible for which a man must on no account have exercised any kind of thrift throughout his working life. If he has, he is disqualified. All this legislation enables you to get the half-nelson on your employer. Under the circumstances you can hardly expect him to throw in benevolence as well. You can't have your cake and eat it. The old personal relations between master and man are dead—dead as Queen Anne—and with them has died the master's sense of moral responsibility for the welfare of those dependent on him."

"Time, too! Degradation! Feudal system!" observed the ever-ready Mr Killick.

"Well, perhaps; but the Feudal System had its points, Mr Killick. It fostered one or two homely and healthy virtues like benevolence and loyalty and pride of race; and I don't think a man-at-arms ever lost his self-respect or felt degraded because he lived in time of peace under the protection of the Lord of the Manor whom he followed in time of war. Yes, I for one rather regret the passing of the old order. Listen, and I will tell you a story. Forty years ago Cherry Hill Pit was flooded—flooded for nearly three months during a bitter hard winter. Sir Nigel Thompson's father, the late baronet—"

Sir Nigel, who was puzzling out some specially complicated formula, suddenly looked up. He had an idea that his name had been mentioned; but as every one present appeared to be listening most intently to the chairman, he resumed his engrossing occupation with a sigh of relief.

"—paid full wages during the whole of that time; and as coal was naturally unobtainable in the village, he imported sufficient to supply the needs of the whole community. Not a house in the village lacked its kitchen fire or its Sunday dinner during all those weeks. That was before the days of the Employers' Liability, gentlemen! If a similar disaster were to occur to-day, I doubt if Sir Nigel here would feel morally bound to do anything for such an independent and self-sufficient community. The present state of things may safeguard you against the ungenerous employer, but it eliminates the milk of human kindness from our mutual transactions, and that is always a matter for regret. That is all, gentlemen. You have our last word in this matter. These two men must go. If you would like to withdraw to the next room for a few minutes and consider whether you have anything further to say, we shall be glad to wait your convenience here."

The deputation rose and filed solemnly from the room, and the Board were left alone.

Presently Mr Aymer observed timidly—

"Mr Chairman, don't you think we might let Conlin stay, and content ourselves with dismissing Murton?"

"Afraid not," said Juggernaut. "It's a bit hard on Conlin, but we have to consider the greatest good of the greatest number. He's a plague-spot, and if we don't eradicate him he'll spread. Do you agree, Kirkley?"

"Bad luck on the poor devil, but I think you are right," assented his lordship.

"Crisp?"

Mr Crisp nodded.

"Nigel?"

Sir Nigel Thompson looked up from his seventh envelope with a contented sigh.

"I have it at last," he said. "It's a perfectly-simple solution, really, but the obvious often escapes one's notice owing to its very proximity. The eye is looking further afield. Eh—what? My decision? I agree implicitly with you, Jack—that is, gentlemen, I support the chairman in his view of the case."

And this vigilant counsellor collected his envelopes and stuffed them into his pocket. The chairman continued—

"Montague?"

"Before I answer that question," began Mr Montague, "I should like to protetht—protest, I mean—against the arbitrary manner in which you have conducted this meeting, Mr Chairman. You have taken the case out of our hands in a manner which I consider most unwarrantable; and, speaking as the actual employer of the two men—"

Juggernaut swung rather deliberately round in his chair.

"Mr Montague," he said, "you got yourself into a hole, and you called—no, howled—for a meeting of directors to come and pull you out. These agitators settled down in your district because they knew that it was the most fertile district to work in. You are considered, rightly, the worst employer of labour here. You are greedy, unscrupulous, and tyrannical. It is men like you who discredit Capital in the eyes of Labour, and make conciliatory dealing between master and man almost an impossibility. We have bolstered you up through a very difficult crisis, sitting here and putting those poor fellows, five of whom are infinitely more honest than you are, quite undeservedly in the wrong, and imperilling our immortal souls by whitewashing such employers as you. Accept the situation and be thankful!"

It is said that hard words break no bones. Still, if you happen to be a member of a race which has endured hard words (to say nothing of broken bones) for twenty centuries, and when the hard words on this particular occasion are delivered by a large man with angry blue eyes and a tongue like a whip-lash, you may be forgiven for losing your nerve a little. Mr Montague lost his. He flapped his ringed hands feebly, mumbled incoherently, and was understood to withdraw his objections unconditionally.

"Mr Amos Entwistle," announced a clerk at the door.

Entwistle junior re-entered the room.

"I am commissioned to inform you, Mr Chairman," he said, "that we acquiesce in your decision; but under protest. I should like to add, gentlemen," he continued, less formally but none the less earnestly, "that the Committee are very much dissatisfied with the result of the interview. I am afraid you haven't heard the last of this trouble. Good-day, and thank you, gentlemen!"

"What does it all mean? Strike—eh?" inquired Lord Kirkley, as he and Juggernaut descended the stairs together five minutes later.

"Perhaps. If so, we'll fight."

"Righto—I'm on! I say, it was pretty smart of you finding out where those private supplies of theirs came from last time. We shall be able to put the lid on that sort of think in future—what?"

Juggernaut nodded, but said no more.

Mr Crisp, Sir Nigel Thompson, and Mr Aymer walked across to the latter's offices for luncheon. Mr Montague had gone home to lunch by himself. He usually did so.

"The chairman arrived at the meeting in the nick of time," said the lawyer. "Kirkley would have been no match for Winch."

"The chairman was very inflexible," sighed Mr Aymer, with all a weak man's passion for compromise. "He has a way of brushing aside obstacles which can only be described as Napoleonic. Is he always within his rights from a legal point of view?"

"From a legal point of view, practically never," said the lawyer simply. "From a common-sense point of view, practically always."

"He is a hard man—as hard as flint," mused Mr Aymer. "I wonder if he has a soft side to him anywhere. I wonder, for instance, how he would treat a woman."

"I wonder," said Mr Crisp.