Both were weavers, and both, therefore, were well aware of the effect likely to be produced by the masters’ proposed scale upon the earnings of themselves and their fellow-workmen. But there was little other resemblance between the two men. Rae was a man of no small natural ability, his forehead denoted intellectuality, his firm, close-set lips determination and self-control. Anyone accustomed to judge character by external indications would have no difficulty in pronouncing Rae to be of an essentially practical turn of mind; of no great ideals or enthusiasms; a safe guide rather than an impassioned leader. Clough, on the other hand, was as readily assessed, or, as his acquaintances would have phrased it, “sized up,” as a man of impulses, apt to allow his judgment to be warped by his passions and his prejudices. And of passions and prejudices he had his full share. He had read much, and the literature to which he was partial consisted, for the most part, of those books that exposed the iniquities of those in high places, men born and nurtured in the lap of luxury. He, at all events, never questioned the divine _dictum_ as to the possibility of a rich man entering the kingdom of heaven. His whole attitude to the capitalist class, as embodied for him in the Masters’ Union, was determined by a consuming sense of the rank injustice of things, the gross iniquity that he and his fellows should be cursed rather than born into the world, foredoomed to moil and toil for a pittance to lead a hard life of endless work, with long hours and paltry pay, to live a dun, colourless existence, a life of carking care and ceaseless struggle, with the prospect at its close, of the Workhouse, unless he should be so happy as to drop at his loom; while other men, many of whom, he was very sure, were neither so clever, nor so well instructed as himself, were by the accident of birth or from positions their own hands and brains had not won, sheltered from the storms of life, had never known and would never know the pangs of hunger nor the hideous monotony of a life of mechanical toil in another’s service. There was not much talk of Socialism in those days; Socialism was vaguely supposed to be a milder orm of Nihilism, having something to do with dynamite and secret societies. Had there been any Socialists in Huddersfield, Clough would have been in their midst; but his Socialism would have been based not so much upon a divine compassion for others as upon a fierce pity for himself. “Have you read that leading article o’ Joe Woodhead in to-neet’s Rag?” it was thus impolitely he referred to the “Huddersfield Daily Examiner.” Rae nodded. “An’ this is th’ paper th’ working-men ha’ been fooils enough to call th’ friend o’ freedom. By gow, Allen, it ma’es me think what fooils we ’n bin.”