Put Yourself in His Place Part 23

"After you have punched your fellow-creature's head."

"But it is impossible, sir. How can you know? These acts are kept as secret as the grave."

"And how often has the grave revealed its secrets to observant men? Dr.

Donne sauntered about among graves, and saw a s.e.xton turn up a skull.

He examined it, found a nail in it, identified the skull, and had the murderess hung. She was safe from the s.e.xton and the rest of the parish, but not from a stray observer. Well, the day you were blown up, I observed something, and arrived at a conclusion, by my art."

"What, physic?"

"Oh, dear, no; my other art, my art of arts, that I don't get paid for; the art of putting myself in other people's places. I'll tell you. While you lay on the ground, in Mr. Cheetham's yard, I scanned the workmen's faces. They were full of pity and regret, and were much alike in expression--all but one. That one looked a man awakened from a dream.

His face was wild, stupid, confused, astonished. 'Hallo!' said I, 'why are your looks so unlike the looks of your fellows?' Instantly I put myself in his place. I ceased to be the Democritus, or laughing philosopher of Hillsborough, and became a low uneducated brute of a workman. Then I asked this brute, viz, myself, why I was staring and glaring in that way, stupidly astonished, at the injured man? 'Were you concerned in the criminal act, ye blackguard?' said I to myself. The next step was to put myself in the place of the criminal. I did so; and I realized that I, the criminal, had done the act to please the Unions, and expecting the sympathy of all Union workmen to be with me. Also that I, being an ignorant brute, had never pictured to myself what suffering I should inflict. But what was the result? I now saw the sufferer, and did not like my own act; and I found all the sympathy of my fellows went with him, and that I was loathed and execrated, and should be lynched on the spot were I to own my act. I now whipped back to Dr. Amboyne with the theory thus obtained, and compared it with that face; the two fitted each other, and I saw the criminal before me."

"Good heavens! This is very deep."

"No slop-basin was ever deeper. So leave it for the present, and go to work. Here are cards admitting you, as my commissioner, to all the princ.i.p.al works. Begin with--Stop a moment, while I put myself in your place. Let me see, 'Cheetham's grinders think they have turned me out of Hillsborough. That mortifies a young man of merit like me. Confound 'em! I should like to show them they have not the power to drive me out.

Combine how they will, I rise superior. I forge as they could not forge: that was my real crime. Well, I'll be their superior still. I'm their inspector, and their benefactor, at higher wages than they, poor devils, will ever earn at inspecting and benefiting, or any thing else.' Ah!

your color rises. I've hit the right nail, isn't it an excellent and most transmigratory art? Then begin with Cheetham. By-the-bye, the Anomaly has spotted a defective grindstone there. Scrutinize all his departments severely; for no man values his people's lives less than my good friend John Cheetham. Away with you both; and G.o.d speed you."

Henry walked down the street with the Anomaly, and tried to gauge his intellects.

"What's your real name, my man?"

"Silly Billy."

"Oh, then I'm afraid you can't do much to help me."

"Oh yes, I can, because--"

"Because what?"

"Because I like you."

"Well, that's lucky, any way."

"Billy can catch trout when n.o.body else can," said the youngster, turning his eyes proudly up to Henry's.

"Oh, indeed! But you see that is not exactly what the doctor wants us for."

"Nay; he's wrapped up in trout. If it wasn't for Billy and the trout, he'd die right off."

Henry turned a look of silent pity on the boy, and left him in his pleasing illusion. He wondered that Dr. Amboyne should have tacked this biped on to him.

They entered Cheetham's works, and Henry marched grimly into the office, and showed Mr. Bayne his credentials.

"Why, Little, you had no need of that."

"Oh, it is as well to have no misunderstanding with your employer's masters. I visit these works for my present employer, Dr. Amboyne, with the consent of Mr. Cheetham, here written."

"Very well, sir," said Bayne, obsequiously; "and I respectfully solicit the honor of conducting our esteemed visitor."

A young man's ill-humor could not stand against this. "Come along, old fellow," said Henry. "I'm a bear, with a sore heart; but who could be such a brute as quarrel with you? Let us begin with the chaps who drove me out--the grinders. I'm hired to philanthropize 'em--d--n 'em."

They went among the dry-grinders first; and Henry made the following observations. The workman's hair and clothes were powdered with grit and dust from the grindstones. The very air was impregnated with it, and soon irritated his own lungs perceptibly. Here was early death, by bronchitis and lung diseases, reduced to a certainty. But he also learned from the men that the quant.i.ty of metal ground off was prodigious, and entered their bodies they scarce knew how. A razor-grinder showed him his s.h.i.+rt: it was a deep buff-color. "There, sir," said he, "that was clean on yesterday. All the washerwomen in Hillsbro' can't make a s.h.i.+rt of mine any other color but that." The effect on life, health, and happiness was visible; a single glance revealed rounded shoulders and narrow chests, caused partly by the grinder's position on his horsing, a position very injurious to the organs of breathing, and partly by the two devil's dusts that filled the air; cadaverous faces, the muscles of which betrayed habitual suffering, coughs short and dry, or with a frothy expectoration peculiar to the trade. In answer to questions, many complained of a fearful tightness across the chest, of inability to eat or to digest. One said it took him five minutes to get up the factory stairs, and he had to lean against the wall several times.

A razor-grinder of twenty-two, with death in his face, told Henry he had come into that room when he was eleven. "It soon takes hold of boys,"

said he. "I've got what I shall never get shut on."

Another, who looked ill, but not dying, received Henry's sympathy with a terrible apathy. "I'm twenty-eight," said he; "and a fork-grinder is an old c.o.c.k at thirty. I must look to drop off my perch in a year or two, like the rest."

Only one, of all these victims, seemed to trouble his head about whether death and disease could be averted. This one complained that some employers provided fans to drive the dust from the grinder, but Cheetham would not go to the expense.

The rest that Henry spoke to accepted their fate doggedly. They were ready to complain, but not to move a finger in self-defense. Their fathers had been ground out young, and why not they?

Indifferent to life, health, and happiness, they could nevertheless be inflamed about sixpence a week. In other words, the money-price of their labor was every thing to them, the blood-price nothing.

Henry found this out, and it gave him a glimpse into the mind of Amboyne.

He felt quite confused, and began to waver between hate, contempt, and pity. Was it really these poor doomed wretches who had robbed him of his livelihood? Could men so miscalculate the size of things, as to strike because an inoffensive individual was making complete caring-tools all by himself, and yet not strike, nor even stipulate for fans, to carry disease and death away from their own vitals? Why it seemed wasting hate, to bestow it on these blind idiots.

He went on to the wet-grinders, and he found their trade much healthier than dry-grinding: yet there were drawbacks. They suffered from the grit whenever a new stone was hung and raced. They were also subject to a canker of the hands, and to colds, coughs, and inflammations, from perspiration checked by cold draughts and drenched floors. These floors were often of mud, and so the wet stagnated and chilled their feet, while their bodies were very hot. Excellent recipe for filling graves.

Here Bayne retired to his books, and Henry proceeded to the saw-grinders, and entered their rooms with no little interest, for they were an envied trade. They had been for many years governed by Grotait, than whom no man in England saw clearer; though such men as Amboyne saw further. Grotait, by a system of Machiavellian policy, ingeniously devised and carried out, n.o.bly, basely, craftily, forcibly, benevolently, ruthlessly, whichever way best suited the particular occasion, had built a model Union; and still, with unremitting zeal and vigilance, contrived to keep numbers down and prices up--which is the great Union problem.

The work was hard, but it was done in a position favorable to the lungs, and the men were healthy, brawny fellows; one or two were of remarkable stature.

Up to this moment Silly Billy had fully justified that t.i.tle. He had stuck to Henry's side like a dog, but with no more interest in the inquiry than a calf, indeed, his wandering eye and vacant face had indicated that his scanty wits were wool-gathering miles from the place that contained his body.

But, as soon as he entered the saw-grinders' room, his features lighted up, and his eye kindled. He now took up a commanding position in the center, and appeared to be listening keenly. And he had not listened many seconds before he cried out, "There's the bad music! there! there!"

And he pointed to a grindstone that was turning and doing its work exactly like the others. "Oh, the bad music!" cried Billy. "It is out of tune. It says, 'Murder! murder! Out of tune!'"

Henry thought it his duty to inspect the grindstone so vigorously denounced, and, naturally enough, went in front of the grinder. But Billy pulled him violently to the side. "You musn't stand there," said he. "That is the way they fly when they break, and kill the poor father, and then the mother lets down her hair, and the boy goes crazed."

By this time the men were attracted by the Anomaly's gestures and exclamations, and several left their work, and came round him. "What is amiss, Billy? a flawed stone, eh? which is it?"

"Here! here!" said the boy. "This is the wheel of death. Kill it, break it, smash it, before it kills another father."

Henry spoke to the grinder, and asked him if there was anything amiss with the stone.

The man seemed singularly uneasy at being spoken to: however he made answer sullenly that he had seen better ones, and worse ones, and all.

Henry was, however, aware, that the breaking of a large grindstone, while revolving by steam power, was a serious, and often a fatal thing; he therefore made a private mark upon the wall opposite the grindstone, and took his excited companion to Bayne. "This poor lad says he has found a defective grindstone. It is impossible for me to test it while it is running. Will you let us into the works when the saw-grinders have left?"

Bayne hem'd and haw'd a little, but consented. He would remain behind half an-hour to oblige Little.

Henry gave the Anomaly his dinner, and then inspected the file-cutters in two great works. Here he found suicide reduced to a system. Whereof anon.

Returning, to keep his appointment with Bayne he met a well-dressed man, who stopped Billy, and accosted him kindly.