Every
trade of every kind and description was to be stopped: tailor
and cobbler, brushmaker and sweep, tinker and carter, mason
and builder, all, all; for all an enormous Sabbath that was to
compensate for any incidental suffering that it induced by the
increased means and the elevated condition it ultimately would
insure--that paradise of artizans, that Utopia of Toil,
embalmed in those ringing words, sounds cheerful to the Saxon
race--"A fair day's wage for a fair day's work."
Book 6 Chapter 7
During the strike in Lancashire the people had never
plundered, except a few provision shops, chiefly rifled by
boys, and their acts of violence had been confined to those
with whom they were engaged in what on the whole might be
described as fair contest. They solicited sustenance often in
great numbers, but even then their language was mild and
respectful, and they were easily satisfied and always
grateful. A body of two thousand persons, for example--the
writer speaks of circumstances within his own experience--
quitted one morning a manufacturing town in Lancashire, when
the strike had continued for some time and began to be
severely felt, and made a visit to a neighbouring squire of
high degree.
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