one of those occasions for
deliberation among the employed, which deeply interested John Barton, and the
discussions concerning which had caused his frequent absence from home of late.
    I am not sure if I can express myself in the technical terms of either
masters or workmen, but I will try simply to state the case on which the latter
deliberated.
    An order for coarse goods came in from a new foreign market. It was a large
order, giving employment to all the mills engaged in that species of
manufacture; but it was necessary to execute it speedily, and at as low prices
as possible, as the masters had reason to believe that a duplicate order had
been sent to one of the continental manufacturing towns, where there were no
restrictions on food, no taxes on building or machinery, and where consequently
they dreaded that the goods could be made at a much lower price than they could
afford them for; and that, by so acting and charging, the rival manufactures
would obtain undivided possession of the market. It was clearly their interest
to buy cotton as cheaply, and to beat down wages as low as possible. And in the
long run the interests of the workmen would have been thereby benefited.
Distrust each other as they may, the employers and the employed must rise or
fall together. There may be some difference as to chronology, none as to fact.
    But the masters did not choose to make all these circumstances known. They
stood upon being the masters, and that they had a right to order work at their
own prices, and they believed that in the present depression of trade, and
unemployment of hands, there would be no great difficulty in getting it done.
    Now let us turn to the workmen's view of the question. The masters (of the
tottering foundation of whose prosperity they were ignorant) seemed doing well,
and, like gentlemen, lived at home in ease, while they were starving, gasping on
from day to day; and there was a foreign order to be executed, the extent of
which, large as it was, was greatly exaggerated; and it was to be done speedily.
Why were the masters offering such low wages under these circumstances? Shame
upon them! It was taking advantage of their work-people being almost starved;
but they would starve entirely rather than come into such terms. It was bad
enough to be poor, while by the labour of their thin hands, the sweat of their
brows, the masters were made rich; but they would not be utterly ground down to
dust. No! they would fold their hands and