第170章 CHAPTER XXV CHANGES AT MILTON (1)
NURSERY SONG.
Meanwhile, at Milton the chimneys smoked, the ceaseless roar andmighty beat, and dizzying whirl of machinery, struggled and stroveperpetually. Senseless and purposeless were wood and iron and steamin their endless labours; but the persistence of their monotonous workwas rivalled in tireless endurance by the strong crowds, who, with senseand with purpose, were busy and restless in seeking after--What? In thestreets there were few loiterers,--none walking for mere pleasure; everyman\"s face was set in lines of eagerness or anxiety; news was sought forwith fierce avidity; and men jostled each other aside in the Mart and inthe Exchange, as they did in life, in the deep selfishness of competition.
There was gloom over the town. Few came to buy, and those who didwere looked at suspiciously by the sellers; for credit was insecure, andthe most stable might have their fortunes affected by the sweep in thegreat neighbouring port among the shipping houses. Hitherto there hadbeen no failures in Milton; but, from the immense speculations that had
come to light in making a bad end in America, and yet nearer home, itwas known that some Milton houses of business must suffer so severelythat every day men\"s faces asked, if their tongues did not, \"What news?
Who is gone? How will it affect me?\" And if two or three spoketogether, they dwelt rather on the names of those who were safe thandared to hint at those likely, in their opinion, to go; for idle breath may,at such times, cause the downfall of some who might otherwise weatherthe storm; and one going down drags many after. \"Thornton is safe,\" saythey. \"His business is large--extending every year; but such a head as hehas, and so prudent with all his daring!\" Then one man draws anotheraside, and walks a little apart, and, with head inclined into hisneighbour\"s ear, he says, \"Thornton\"s business is large; but he has spenthis profits in extending it; he has no capital laid by; his machinery isnew within these two years, and has cost him--we won\"t say what!--aword to the wise!\" But that Mr. Harrison was a croaker,--a man who hadsucceeded to his father\"s trade-made fortune, which he had feared tolose by altering his mode of business to any having a larger scope; yethe grudged every penny made by others more daring and far-sighted.
But the truth was, Mr. Thornton was hard pressed. He felt it acutely inhis vulnerable point--his pride in the commercial character which hehad established for himself. Architect of his own fortunes, he attributedthis to no special merit or qualities of his own, but to the power, whichhe believed that commerce gave to every brave, honest, and perseveringman, to raise himself to a level from which he might see and read thegreat game of worldly success, and honestly, by such far-sightedness,command more power and influence than in. any other mode of life. Faraway, in the East and in the West, where his person would never beknown, his name was to be regarded, and his wishes to be fulfilled, andhis word pass like gold. That was the idea of merchant-life with whichMr. Thornton had started. \"Her merchants be like princes,\" said hismother, reading the text aloud, as if it were a trumpet-call to invite herboy to the struggle. He was but like many others--men, women, andchildren--alive to distant, and dead to near things. He sought to possessthe influence of a name in foreign countries and far-away seas,--tobecome the head of a firm that should be known for generations; and ithad taken him long silent years to come even to a glimmering of whathe might be now, to-day, here in his own town, his own factory, amonghis own people. He and they had led parallel lives--very close, but nevertouching--till the accident (or so it seemed) of his acquaintance withHiggins. Once brought face to face, man to man, with an individual ofthe masses around him, and (take notice) out of the character of masterand workman, in the first instance, they had each begun to recognisethat \"we have all of us one human heart.\" It was the fine point of the
wedge; and until now, when the apprehension of losing his connectionwith two or three of the workmen whom he had so lately begun to knowas men,--of having a plan or two, which were experiments lying veryclose to his heart, roughly nipped off without trial,--gave a newpoignancy to the subtle fear that came over him from time to time; untilnow, he had never recognised how much and how deep was the interesthe had grown of late to feel in his position as manufacturer, simplybecause it led him into such close contact, and gave him the opportunityof so much power, among a race of people strange, shrewd, ignorant;but, above all, full of character and strong human feeling.
He reviewed his position as a Milton manufacturer. The strike a yearand a half ago,--or more, for it was now untimely wintry weather, in alate spring,--that strike, when he was young, and he now was old--hadprevented his completing some of the large orders he had then on hand.
He had locked up a good deal of his capital in new and expensivemachinery, and he had also bought cotton largely, for the fulfilment ofthese orders, taken under contract. That he had not been able tocomplete them, was owing in some degree to the utter want of skill onthe part of the Irish hands whom he had imported; much of their workwas damaged and unfit to be sent forth by a house which prided itselfon turning out nothing but first-rate articles. For many months, theembarrassment caused by the strike had been an obstacle in Mr.