Page:Gaskell - North and South, vol. I, 1855.djvu/219

 worth two i' th' bush. So them's the different views we take on th' strike question."

"But," said Margaret, "if the people struck, as you call it, where I come from, as they are mostly all field labourers, the seed would not be sown, the hay got in, the corn reaped."

"Well? " said he. He had resumed his pipe, and put his "well" in the form of an interrogation.

"Why," she went on, "what would become of the farmers."

He puffed away. "I reckon, they'd have either to give up their farms, or to give fair rate of wage."

"Suppose they could not, or would not do the last; they could not give up their farms all in a minute, however much they might wish to do so; but they would have no hay, nor corn to sell that year; and where would the money come from to pay the labourers' wages the next?"

Still puffing away. At last he said:

"I know nought of your ways down South. I have heerd they're a pack of spiritless, down-trodden men; welly clemmed to death; too much dazed wi' clemming to know when they're put upon. Now, it's not so here. We known when we're put upon; and we'en too much blood in us to stand it. We just take our hands fro' our looms, and say, 'Yo may clem us, but yo'll not put upon us, my masters!' And be danged to 'em, they shan't this time!"

"I wish I lived down South," said Bessy.

"There's a deal to bear there," said Margaret. "There are sorrows to bear everywhere. There is very hard bodily labour to be gone through, with very little food to give strength."