CHAPTER I.

FLAGS AND BANNERS.

THE procession was coming down Pleasant Lane!

A great number of noisy little boys came trooping on ahead, with shrill cries, to announce this important fact. Hardly one among them understood exactly what the procession was about; but flags and banners are the delight of a boy's heart. Not seldom this particular form of affection for coloured bunting lasts on into manhood.

The wives and mothers, who turned out of their doorways to enjoy the sight, were, however, more learned than their little boys as to the cause of the stir. And everybody was aware that Peter Pope was to be at its head.

Peter Pope, a smooth-tongued and comfortably-dressed individual, had been very busy lately in the town. Most of his business had been in the way of talk; but what of that? There was a committee, of course, behind him, which did a good deal of work while Pope did the talk. He had been sent down, as a delegate from London, for the express purpose of teaching the inhabitants of the town; and teaching commonly means a certain amount of talk. Peter Pope had come to teach the men of the town to appreciate their degraded and enslaved condition. With this object in view he had talked vigorously for many weeks; and the men were becoming fast convinced of the truth of his words. They had not dreamt before what a melancholy thing it was to be a British working-man; but now their eyes were opened.

If you want to convince the British Public about anything,—especially that part of the British Public which reads very few books, and knows very little of history, and never goes out of England, just remember this! There is not the least need that you should be clever or learned yourself, or even powerful in speech. You only have to go on saying the same thing over and over and over again, with dogged pertinacity; and in time you are sure to be believed. The British Public is wonderfully easy of belief, and will swallow anything,—if only you give it time! Peter Pope had done this. He had talked on, with a resolute and dogged pertinacity; he had given his hearers plenty of time; and now he was rewarded by seeing the biggest boluses he could offer, meekly gulped down.

It was a dingy and smoky town enough to which he had come; one of the crowded manufacturing towns, of which England owns so many. Not a clean or pretty town, but a prosperous one hitherto, with a fair abundance of work for willing toilers. Those who were unwilling to toil did badly there as elsewhere; and these were the men who first swallowed Peter Pope's bait.

Pleasant Lane was not the least narrow and dingy of many narrow dingy streets. The houses on either side were small, and for the most part not over clean. One little home near the centre formed a marked exception as to this last point; boasting dainty muslin blinds, windows filled with plants, and a spotless front doorstep.

On that step stood Sarah Holdfast, in her clean print gown, watching like others for the coming procession. Not that she had the least idea of seeing her husband figure in it. She was only dandling her baby, and lifting it up to be amused with the stir.

Martha Stevens, a young and pretty woman in the next doorway, had no such security about her husband. Roger Stevens was morally sure to be in the thick of whatever might be stirring,—whether it were good or bad. He was a well-meaning man, and not usually unsteady; but, like a good many of his companions, he was easily led, always ready to believe what he was told, and ever prepared to follow the crowd. As the stream of public opinion—the public opinion of the little world around himself—happened just then to run in the direction of a grand procession, Martha had not a shadow of doubt that her husband would find his place somewhere in the said procession.

"What's it all about, mother?" asked Robert, a rosy child of nine.

"It's the men, Bobbie," she said. "They're having a procession."

"What for?" asked Bobbie.

"They want something that the masters won't give 'em. They want higher wages and shorter hours."

"But what's the 'cession for?" persisted Bobbie.

"I'll tell you what it's for," volunteered a slovenly woman in the left-hand doorway, tossing a ragged infant in her arms. "It's to show that they're Men, and they're going to have their Rights! Time enough too! Working-men ain't a-going to be trampled on no longer, nor their wives neither. We won't put up with no more tyranny nor nonsense."

Martha moved her head from one side to the other, and was silent.

But Sarah Holdfast remarked dryly, "There's a sort of tyranny in the home that isn't so easy got rid of! And there's a tyranny of working-man to working-man, which I'd like to see done away with. It may be harder tyranny than the tyranny of capital, which folks talk such a lot about nowadays."

"Oh, you! I dare say—you're sure to say that!" the untidy woman retorted with contempt. "Your husband's such a poor-spirited chap—all on the side of the masters."

"He is not on the side of the masters," Sarah answered resolutely. "He's on the side of doing what is right; and he's against tyranny of every sort,—it don't matter whether it's tyranny of masters or of men. That's what the lot of you don't and won't see."

"Here it comes!" cried Bobbie.

Except to a young imagination such as Bobbie's, the advancing procession was not perhaps very imposing; but it made a good show in point of numbers, and the men kept well together, in a solid and orderly phalanx. Outside the main body walked detached individuals, carrying money-boxes; for the processioners had a practical object in view beside the mere display of numbers. They would not only march round the town, endeavour to impress the imaginations of people generally, and pay a visit to their employers' office to make formal demand of what they required, but also they hoped to gather funds by the way for the coming struggle. Most of the men appeared thus far to be sober; but some towards the rear showed signs of a recent visit to a public-house.

At the head of the procession marched a brass band, playing lively jigs, very much out of tune; and the amount of flags and banners following was really quite respectable.

First might be seen a great sheet of white calico, stretched across two poles, and bearing the portentous inscription—

"WE DEMAND FIFTEEN PER CENT. AND EIGHT HOURS."

Next swaggered unsteadily along a second white calico sheet, with the words—

"UNION IS STRENGTH!"

An axiom so self-evident that nobody could question its truth.

An "Oddfellows" banner, drooping gracefully from its single pole, came next. It had a picture of the good Samaritan on a blue ground, and was not peculiarly appropriate to a strike; but flags of all kinds help to swell the general effect, and this with others was borrowed.

After the good Samaritan, a loaf stuck upon a pole was borne along. No especial meaning might be attached to the uplifted loaf; but no doubt bread is always an impressive object. What would man be without the "staff of life"? There is also an obvious connection between loaves and wages.

At the tail of the procession, after sundry other appropriate and inappropriate flags, made or borrowed, came the final output of native genius—another big square of white, having its inscription painted with a tar-brush—

"WE MEAN TO GET OUR RIGHTS!"

This sentiment began with a magnificent "W," and tapered gradually off to an absurdly diminutive "s"; no doubt the natural expression of artistic feeling.

A loose crowd of open-mouthed followers clattered along behind, deeply impressed by the whole affair.

"It's a grand lot of flags, mother, ain't it?" said Bobbie.

Martha was gazing, as if she did not hear, and little fair-haired Millie said, "Daddy's there!"

One look in the direction where the tiny hand pointed, and Martha turned away.

"Come, Millie,—come, Bobbie,—we'll go indoors now."

"O mother, I want to wait," cried Bobbie. But he yielded to her touch and went in, only asking eagerly—"'Why mayn't we stay?"

Martha made no answer. How could she bear to tell her child that his father had been drinking?

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