‘Why, yo’ see, there’s five or six masters who have set themselves again paying the wages they’ve been paying these two years past, and flourishing upon, and getting richer upon. And now they come to us, and say we’re to take less. And we won’t. We’ll just clem them to death first; and see who’ll work for ’em then. They’ll have killed the goose that laid ’em the golden eggs, I reckon.’

‘And so you plan dying, in order to be revenged upon them!’

‘No,’ said he, ‘I dunnot. I just look forward to the chance of dying at my post sooner than yield. That’s what folk call fine and honourable in a soldier, and why not in a poor weaver-chap?’

‘But,’ said Margaret, ‘a soldier dies in the cause of the Nation — in the cause of others.’

He laughed grimly. ‘My lass,’ said he, ‘yo’re but a young wench, but don’t yo’ think I can keep three people — that’s Bessy, and Mary, and me — on sixteen shilling a week? Dun yo’ think it’s for mysel’ I’m striking work at this time? It’s just as much in the cause of others as yon soldier — only m’appen, the cause he dies for is just that of somebody he never clapt eyes on, nor heerd on all his born days, while I take up John Boucher’s cause, as lives next door but one, wi’ a sickly wife, and eight childer, none on ’em factory age; and I don’t take up his cause only, though he’s a poor good-for-nought, as can only manage two looms at a time, but I take up th’ cause o’ justice. Why are we to have less wage now, I ask, than two year ago?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ said Margaret; ‘I am very ignorant. Ask some of your masters. Surely they will give you a reason for it. It is not merely an arbitrary decision of theirs, come to without reason.’

‘Yo’re just a foreigner, and nothing more,’ said he, contemptuously. ‘Much yo’ know about it. Ask th’ masters! They’d tell us to mind our own business, and they’d mind theirs. Our business being, yo’ understand, to take the bated’ wage, and be thankful, and their business to bate us down to clemming point, to swell their profits. That’s what it is.’

‘But said Margaret, determined not to give way, although she saw she was irritating him, ‘the state of trade may be such as not to enable them to give you the same remuneration.

(Editor：theory)