'Let us go back to 1833,' spoke up old White again, and the man's age and venerable aspect caused him to be listened to with respect. 'I was then working in Manchester, and belonged to the Trades' Union; a powerful Union as ever was formed. In our strength, we thought we should like a thing or two altered, and we made a formal demand upon the master builders, requiring them to discontinue the erection of buildings on sub-contracts. The masters fell in with it. You'll understand, friends,' he broke off to say, 'that, looking at things now, and looking at 'em then, is just as if I saw 'em in two opposite aspects. Next, we gave out a set of various rules for the masters, and required them to abide by such--about the making of the wages equal; the number of apprentices they should take; the machinery they should or should not use, and other things. Well, the masters gave us that also, and it put us all cock-a-hoop, and we went on to dictate to 'em more and more. If they--the masters--broke any of our rules, we levied fines on 'em, and made 'em pay up; we ordered them before us at our meetings, found fault with 'em, commanded 'em to obey us, to take on such men as we pointed out, and to turn off others; in short, forced 'em to do as we chose. People might have thought that we was the masters and they the operatives. Pretty well, that, wasn't it?' The room nodded acquiescence. Slippery Sam snapped his fingers in delight. 'The worst was, it did not last,' resumed the old man. 'Like too many other folks emboldened with success, we wasn't content to let well alone, but went on a bit too far. The masters took up their own defence at last; and the wonder to me now, looking back, is, that they didn't do it before. They formed themselves into a Union, and passed a resolve to employ no man unless he signed a pledge not to belong to a Trades' Union. Then we all turned out. Six months the strike was on, and the buildings was at a standstill, and us out of work.' 'Were wages bad at that time?' inquired Robert Darby. 'No. The good workmen among us had been earning in the summer thirty-five shillings a-week; and the bricklayers had just had a rise of three shillings. We was just fools: that's my opinion of it now. Awful misery we were reduced to. Every stick we had went to the pawn-shop; our wives was skin and bone, our children was in rags; and some of us just laid our heads down on the stones, clammed to death.' 'What was the trade in other places about, that it didn't help you?' indignantly demanded Sam Shuck.