At twelve o'clock the new and well-appointed hooter of Messrs. Harman and James's works having sounded, Mr. Peake immediately laid down the mop and hand-pump with which he had been furnished, and proceeded to pass the check door and receive his salary, for it was a Saturday. The day was very sunny and bright--but that is not to my purpose. Mr. Harman himself approached Mr. Peake and suggested to him that now the tide was rising he might gratify the firm by remaining at an increased salary for a couple of hours to accomplish his task; but Mr. Peake pointed out with such brevity as the occasion demanded that this would be a gross violation of the rules of his Union, and moved towards the gate. It was at this moment that Mr. Harman committed the deplorable error which was to lead to such enormous consequences in the body politic: he lost his temper. He was alleged, I know not with how much truth, to have addressed Mr. Peake in terms vividly suggesting social inferiority; but whether this be true or not it is certain that he assured Mr. Peake of the uselessness of seeking further employment at the wharf; nay, he had the brutality to tender to that gentleman a week's salary in lieu of notice, and having done so he retired. I will not here go into the vexed question of the language used on either side, nor enter into Mr. Harman's somewhat lame excuses that he was provoked by a certain expression of his employee's which cast a most unjust reflection upon his, Mr. Harman's, pride of birth and personal morals. Mr. Harman's hasty action was surely indefensible upon any provocation, and its natural consequence was that the remainder of those who worked at Podger's Wharf were called out by their Union, while the United Riverside Workers and Sons of Southwark threatened a sympathetic cessation of labour to extend from the eastern side of Hammersmith Bridge to the western edge of the steps at the bottom of Edgar Street in Limehouse. I need hardly say that under these circumstances the compulsory clauses of the Conciliation Act of 1909 were at once acted upon by the popular and wealthy President of the Board of Trade, and the decision of the courts, the machinery of which in such actions is extraordinarily rapid, was given within three days entirely in favour of the Union; indeed, no other decision could possibly have been arrived at, and public opinion thoroughly justified the coercion very properly applied to the tyrannical master; papers as different as the _Spectator_ and the _Winning Post_ were at one upon the matter, and their widely separate reading publics heartily agreed.