'They did help us. Money to the tune of eighteen thousand pounds came to us; but we was a large body--many mouths to feed, and the strike was prolonged. We had to come-to at last, for the masters wouldn't; and we voted our combination a nuisance, and went humbly to 'em, like dogs with their tails between their legs, and craved to be took on again upon their own terms. But we couldn't get took back; not all of us: the masters had learnt a lesson. They had got machinery to work, and had collected workmen from other parts, so that we was not wanted. And that's all the good the strike brought to us! I came away on the tramp with my family, and got work in London after a deal of struggle and privation: and I made a vow never to belong willingly to a strike again.' 'Do you see where the fault lay in that case?--the blame?--the whole gist of the evil?' The question came from a gentleman who had entered the room as old White was speaking. The men would have risen to salute him, but he signed to them to be still and cause no interruption--a tall, noble man, with calm, self-reliant countenance. 'It lay with the masters,' he resumed, nobody replying to him. 'Had those Manchester masters resisted the first demand of their men--a demand made in the insolence of power, not in need--and allowed them fully to understand that they were, and would be, masters, we should, I believe, have heard less of strikes since, than we have done. I never think of those Manchester masters but my blood boils. When a principal suffers himself to be dictated to by his men, he is no longer a master, or worthy of the name.' 'Had you been one of them, and not complied, you might have come to ruin, sir,' cried Robert Darby. 'There's a deal to be said on both sides.' 'Ruin!' was the answer. 'I never would have conceded an inch, though I had known that I must end my days in the workhouse through not doing it.' 'Of course, sir, you'd stand up for the masters, being hand in glove with 'em, and likely to be a master yourself,' grumbled Sam Shuck, a touch of irony in his tone. 'I should stand up for whichever side I deemed in the right, whether it was the masters' or the men's,' was the emphatic answer. 'Is it well--is it in accordance with the fitness of things, that a master should be under the control of his men? Come! I ask it of your common sense.' 'No.' It was readily acknowledged. 'Those Manchester masters and those Manchester operatives were upon a par as regards shame and blame.' 'Sir! Shame and blame?' 'They were upon a par as regards shame and blame,' was the decisive repetition; 'and I make no doubt that both equally deemed themselves to have been so, when they found their senses. The masters came to them: the men were brought to theirs.' 'You speak strongly, sir.'