'I heard, moreover, that it was considered to the advantage of
the masters to have ignorant workmen--not hedge-lawyers, as
Captain Lennox used to call those men in his company who
questioned and would know the reason for every order.' This
latter part of her sentence she addressed rather to her father
than to Mr. Thornton. Who is Captain Lennox? asked Mr. Thornton
of himself, with a strange kind of displeasure, that prevented
him for the moment from replying to her! Her father took up the
conversation.
'You never were fond of schools, Margaret, or you would have seen
and known before this, how much is being done for education in
Milton.' 'No!' said she, with sudden meekness. 'I know I do not care
enough about schools. But the knowledge and the ignorance of
which I was speaking, did not relate to reading and writing,--the
teaching or information one can give to a child. I am sure, that
what was meant was ignorance of the wisdom that shall guide men
and women. I hardly know what that is. But he--that is, my
informant--spoke as if the masters would like their hands to be
merely tall, large children--living in the present moment--with a
blind unreasoning kind of obedience.' 'In short, Miss Hale, it is very evident that your informant
found a pretty ready listener to all the slander he chose to
utter against the masters,' said Mr. Thornton, in an offended
tone.
Margaret did not reply. She was displeased at the personal
character Mr. Thornton affixed to what she had said.
Mr. Hale spoke next: 'I must confess that, although I have not become so intimately
acquainted with any workmen as Margaret has, I am very much
struck by the antagonism between the employer and the employed,
on the very surface of things. I even gather this impression from
what you yourself have from time to time said.' Mr. Thornton paused awhile before he spoke. Margaret had just
left the room, and he was vexed at the state of feeling between
himself and her. However, the little annoyance, by making him
cooler and more thoughtful, gave a greater dignity to what he
said: 'My theory is, that my interests are identical with those of my
workpeople and vice-versa. Miss Hale, I know, does not like to
hear men called 'hands,' so I won't use that word, though it
comes most readily to my lips as the technical term, whose
origin, whatever it was, dates before my time. On some future
day--in some millennium--in Utopia, this unity may be brought
into practice--just as I can fancy a republic the most perfect
form of government.' 'We will read Plato's Republic as soon as we have finished
Homer.' 'Well, in the Platonic year, it may fall out that we are all--men
women, and children--fit for a republic: but give me a
constitutional monarchy in our present state of morals and
intelligence. In our infancy we require a wise despotism to
govern us. Indeed, long past infancy, children and young people
are the happiest under the unfailing laws of a discreet, firm
authority. I agree with Miss Hale so far as to consider our
people in the condition of children, while I deny that we, the
masters, have anything to do with the making or keeping them so.
I maintain that despotism is the best kind of government for
them; so that in the hours in which I come in contact with them I
must necessarily be an autocrat. I will use my best
discretion--from no humbug or philanthropic feeling, of which we
have had rather too much in the North--to make wise laws and come
to just decisions in the conduct of my business--laws and
decisions which work for my own good in the first instance--for
theirs in the second; but I will neither be forced to give my
reasons, nor flinch from what I have once declared to be my
resolution. Let them turn out! I shall suffer as well as they:
but at the end they will find I have not bated nor altered one
jot.' Margaret had re-entered the room and was sitting at her work; but
she did not speak. Mr. Hale answered-'I dare say I am talking in great ignorance; but from the little
I know, I should say that the masses were already passing rapidly
into the troublesome stage which intervenes between childhood and
manhood, in the life of the multitude as well as that of the
individual. Now, the error which many parents commit in the
treatment of the individual at this time is, insisting on the
same unreasoning obedience as when all he had to do in the way of
duty was, to obey the simple laws of "Come when you're called" and
"Do as you're bid!" But a wise parent humours the desire for
independent action, so as to become the friend and adviser when
his absolute rule shall cease. If I get wrong in my reasoning,
recollect, it is you who adopted the analogy.' 'Very lately,' said Margaret, 'I heard a story of what happened
in Nuremberg only three or four years ago. A rich man there lived
alone in one of the immense mansions which were formerly both
dwellings and warehouses. It was reported that he had a child,
but no one knew of it for certain. For forty years this rumour
kept rising and falling--never utterly dying away. After his
death it was found to be true. He had a son--an overgrown man
with the unexercised intellect of a child, whom he had kept up in
that strange way, in order to save him from temptation and error.
But, of course, when this great old child was turned loose into
the world, every bad counsellor had power over him. He did not
know good from evil. His father had made the blunder of bringing
him up in ignorance and taking it for innocence; and after
fourteen months of riotous living, the city authorities had to
take charge of him, in order to save him from starvation. He
could not even use words effectively enough to be a successful
beggar.' 'I used the comparison (suggested by Miss Hale) of the position
of the master to that of a parent; so I ought not to complain of
your turning the simile into a weapon against me. But, Mr. Hale,
when you were setting up a wise parent as a model for us, you
said he humoured his children in their desire for independent
action. Now certainly, the time is not come for the hands to have
any independent action during business hours; I hardly know what
you would mean by it then. And I say, that the masters would be
trenching on the independence of their hands, in a way that I,
for one, should not feel justified in doing, if we interfered too
much with the life they lead out of the mills. Because they
labour ten hours a-day for us, I do not see that we have any
right to impose leading-strings upon them for the rest of their
time. I value my own independence so highly that I can fancy no
degradation greater than that of having another man perpetually
directing and advising and lecturing me, or even planning too
closely in any way about my actions. He might be the wisest of
men, or the most powerful--I should equally rebel and resent his
interference I imagine this is a stronger feeling in the North of
England that in the South.' 'I beg your pardon, but is not that because there has been none
of the equality of friendship between the adviser and advised
classes? Because every man has had to stand in an unchristian and
isolated position, apart from and jealous of his brother-man:
constantly afraid of his rights being trenched upon?' 'I only state the fact. I am sorry to say, I have an appointment
at eight o'clock, and I must just take facts as I find them
to-night, without trying to account for them; which, indeed,
would make no difference in determining how to act as things
stand--the facts must be granted.' 'But,' said Margaret in a low voice, 'it seems to me that it
makes all the difference in the world--.' Her father made a sign
to her to be silent, and allow Mr. Thornton to finish what he had
to say. He was already standing up and preparing to go.