Part 5

Such were some of my experiences of American life, and I was working on in my usual plodding way, when I found that there was still something to be learned. The journeymen cabinet-makers throughout the city took it into their heads that too great a share of the profits of trade went into the masters' pockets, and they determined, by demanding higher wages, to secure if possible an increased proportion for themselves. The masters being informed of the fact, maintained the contrary, and thereupon issue was joined. An 'old-price book' and a 'new-price book' came immediately to be talked about, with a fervour scarcely exceeded by that of the O.P. hostilities, well remembered by old playgoers in London; and among the men, a few ambitious spirits assumed the direction of affairs, and drew around them many willing helpers. Preliminary meetings were held to organise an opposition to the masters, and to take measures for the proper setting-forth and enforcement of the claims of the men, and the grounds on which the advance of wages was demanded. Deputations were appointed to wait on the employers, or 'bosses,' and shew reason why they should 'give in;' but the bosses would not give in, and declared themselves to be the best-judges of their own business; that wages were as high as sale-prices would allow, and that a rise was out of the question. On hearing this, the men threatened a strike, to take place by a certain day, if their demands were not complied with.

From ten to twelve hands were employed in the shop where I worked--a rather heterogeneous assemblage. The foreman and one or two others were Americans, and the rest were Germans, French, and Irish--I being the only Englishman. Notwithstanding the diversity of nation, there was but little in sentiment, for with the exception of the apprentice, who was not a free agent, and myself, they all determined to 'turn out,' and many a taunt had I to bear for refusing to join them. Our boss was a man well to do in the world. Having of course heard of the threatened strike, he said: 'Well, you can do just as you like. There's no boss in the city pays better prices than I do, and they wont go up a cent the higher for all your striking.'

For my part, I was quite taken by surprise by the strike; it was the last thing I should have expected to see in America. But there it was, sure enough; and now that the boss had so unequivocally declared his sentiments, the shop became the more demonstrative in the expression of theirs. They were not going to be slaves for anybody; it was a free country; they had a right to higher wages, and higher wages they would have. The Britisher wasn't half a man; he was a sneak, who ought to have stayed in his own tyrannical country; and much more to the same effect. Consequently, on the day fixed, they just shewed themselves at the shop for a few minutes after breakfast, and then went off in a body to a great 'mass meeting,' called for the first day of the strike; and all the while emigrants from Europe were pouring into the city at the rate of ten or twelve hundred every week.

A first measure was to ascertain the numbers who had struck, how many were recusants, and in what shops they were working, with a view to devise means for procuring a total cessation of work in all the shops of the city. Advertisements of the proceedings speedily appeared in the daily papers, chiefly in those which, being sold at a cent apiece, circulated most largely among the working population. The masters were warned, that holding out on their part would be of little avail; and as for the 'misguided men' who persisted in working, they were invited to join the ranks of the insurgents, with promises of work at twelve dollars a week, or the option of being stigmatised as unworthy members of society. Compared with the 'turn-outs,' the number of those who persisted in their labour was very small. As for myself, it seemed at first uncommonly dull to hear only the noise of my own tools, or of the apprentice's, echoing through the workshop. But the weather was fine; my 'job,' a 'secretary bookcase,' was one that I liked; and I kept on without a single misgiving as to the propriety of my determination.

After a few days spent in debates and discussions, and adjustment of differences between the old and new list of prices, deputations were sent round to all shops where the men had not joined the strike, and, among others, they visited me. For some reason--perhaps to avoid vexing the boss--they would not come up stairs, and requested me to meet them at the basement door. On going down, I saw some five or six well-dressed, intelligent-looking men--not a rare sight among the mechanics of New York--and then, they standing under the 'stoop,' and I leaning against a pile of maple-joists, one of them opened the business with a little dissertation on political and social economy, and the inherent right of men to band themselves together for the common good; after which, he inquired my reasons for continuing to work in opposition to the _will of the majority_. Those who have lived in America, and those only, will be able fully to comprehend the significance of these four words in italics. My answer was, that 'I had come to America to better myself, and could not afford to lose time.'

'But you need not lose time. There's a steam-boat fitting up down below at the dock; we can get you work on board of her at twelve dollars a week.'

'I don't know anything of steam-boat work; and if I did, it would not suit me to give up a steady place for one that must necessarily be uncertain.'

'You mean to say, then, that you will keep on working where you are?'

'I do.'

'You must be a fool to work for eight or nine dollars a week, when, by standing out, you could get twelve.'

'Not so sure of that; it is but a few who can make two dollars a day, and I am not one of them. Nine dollars is about a fair rate for what I can do.'

'That's no reason why you shouldn't try to better yourself by standing out. The bosses must give in, if all hands will only strike; and if it weren't for you European slaves and convicts, we'd soon carry our point.'

The term convict is a taunt frequently applied to Englishmen by working-people in the United States, and its introduction into the argument did not at all surprise me.

'I have little inclination,' I answered, 'to throw myself out of work just to enable you, and a dozen or two more, to get your twelve dollars a week. My first duty is, to take care of myself and my family. Our boss is a good fellow in the main, and I don't want to leave him; and, besides, there's another reason why I won't strike.'

'And what's that?'

'Because it won't succeed. You might as well try to stop the stream of the Hudson, as to keep up wages, while fifty or a hundred cabinet-makers are coming in every week from Germany, ready to work for twelve dollars a month.'

'That shews how much you know about it. In our great and free country, there's work for all Europe; so it's no use saying wages can't be kept up.'

'Whether or not,' I retorted, 'that's my opinion, and I shall stick to it till I find a better.'

On this, the opposite party delivered himself of a lengthy harangue, in which arguments were quoted from Adam Smith, De Tocqueville, and others, with considerable fluency; all intended, apparently, to convict me of flagrant error, and prognosticate 'consequences.' I had not at that time read the works of these writers, and had only very youthful experience to oppose to such a weight of authority; and being, besides, one of those unfortunate individuals who cannot think of the right thing to say until twenty-four hours after the occasion has passed, I remained silent. My opponents mistook silence for assent, and left me, expressing a hope that they should see me at their committee-room next day.

The passage, at the entrance of which this scene had taken place, was separated from a turner's shop adjoining by a thin wooden partition, and the turner, who was a New Yorker, stopped his lathe to listen to our parley. When he heard me turn to go up stairs, he shouted: 'Hillo! Johnny Bull, they were rather too many for you. You must get up a little sooner in the mornin', if you want to circumvent Yankees! Look out for squalls, old fellow!'

'Words is only wind,' I replied, quoting one-half of a 'down-east' adage, as I ran up the stairs; he, however, before I got out of hearing, added the second half: 'but blows hurts.'

Three or four days passed away; trade was remarkably brisk, and a few of the bosses gave in--a fact announced with great exultation by the turn-outs, who now felt confident of victory, and urged their demands more strenuously than ever. But compliance was no part of the bosses' intentions, for no sooner were the arrears of unfinished work cleared off, than the hands found themselves again at liberty. This proceeding naturally irritated the struggle somewhat; and subscriptions for the support of those who, habituated to live from hand to mouth, had saved nothing, were called for with renewed importunity. The strike was beginning to feel the pressure of the laws of nature.

Now and then, one of my shopmates would drop in, and intimate that it would be dangerous for me to persist in having my own way; but I felt no whit inclined to yield, for, although I had seen the houses of intermarried blacks and whites devastated, and a bonfire made in the street with their furniture, I had but little apprehension of personal violence, and the boss protested that he would 'see me righted,' should any mischief befall. So it went on for a few days longer, when a second deputation waited upon me, and, less ceremonious than the first, they rushed noisily, and without notice, up the stairs, and crowded into my bench-room. There were about twenty of them; their spokesman looked clean and respectable, but the others were a dirty, out-at-elbows, tobacco-chewing crew, only to be described by that expressive American epithet, 'loafers;' and they eyed me with very sinister looks, while the leader began an appeal to my _ésprit de corps_. It is scarcely necessary to repeat the argument that followed. Having nothing new to offer, I merely said, that I considered myself at full liberty to work for whatever amount of wages to me seemed satisfactory; that I would no more submit to any interference with that liberty, than to any tyranny over my conscience; and that all I claimed at their hands, was to be let alone. Cries of 'Hustle him out!' frequently interrupted me; and perhaps a proof that 'blows hurts' might have followed, but just as I finished, my boss came in, and commanded the party to leave his premises, with an assurance that he would not suffer me to be molested. The leader, who seemed as much ashamed of his followers as Falstaff was of his ragged regiment, immediately beat a retreat, and his troop with him; one or two, as they went out, declaring that they would 'hammer' me whenever they caught me in the street. I, however, went and came as usual, and for some reason--perhaps the boss's declaration in my favour--met with no annoyance.

What was the upshot? As emigrant cabinet-makers arrived, they were at once engaged, and set to work; and at the end of six weeks, the strike came to an end. The turn-outs not only failed in carrying their point, but found themselves in a worse position than when they began, for numbers of them were no longer 'wanted,' and had to migrate to the country, or accept a lower rate of wages than before, besides the loss of the best part of the busy season. In our own shop, one American and two of the Germans were altogether dismissed, greatly to their mortification; and in this unexpected reverse, they began to perceive how they had been duped. I, on the other hand, having finished the first bookcase, was well advanced in a second; and had, besides, the satisfaction of knowing that the overplus of my six weeks' earnings was safely added to the 'nest-egg,' and of hearing my shopmates applaud my resolution, and wish that they had done likewise. Many were the conversations touching masters and men that grew out of the event, and, if permitted, I may perhaps take an opportunity of making our conclusions public.

One day, some two years after the strike, while walking down Washington Street, I met the leader of the second deputation aforementioned. 'I guess I have seen you before,' he said, laying a hand upon my shoulder. 'Didn't you work at C----'s? Ah! you were the toughest customer we had; but if we had all done as you did, it would have been better for us.'

THE DOCTOR VERSUS THE MEDICINE.

We have not taken any part in the controversy now raging between the Allopathists and Homoeopathists; but we think it our duty to point out a signal benefit which appears to have resulted from it. Allopathy means simply 'another suffering,' and Homoeopathy 'the same suffering;' from which the ingenious may conclude, that our regular doctors pretend to cure diseases by inducing other diseases, and the new school by inducing symptoms identical with those of the existing disease. But there is another difference between the schools. The one gives the medicine boldly by the grain, the other cautiously by the millionth part of a grain. Both sometimes fail; both sometimes cure. Which is right?

We cannot pretend to answer the question; but in practice we hold with the regular doctors. We do this because we are used to it. We may be said to have been born with their silver spoon in our mouths; and we should be terrified if the ghost of a grain went in instead. We have done our duty from our youth up by pills, boluses, and draughts: we can lay our hand, with a clear conscience, on our stomach, and avouch that fact. We have ever held our doctor in too much reverence to disobey him; and we revere him more and more every day, since we find him grappling closer and closer with the Homoeopathists, and meeting them manfully on their own ground. 'We will not,' says he, 'give in to the absurdity of attempting to counteract a disease by a medicine that produces the same disease; but something good may be learned from your infinitesimal system. To that system you owe the fact that you are now at large: if you had given doses like ours of such medicines, you would have been in the hands of the turnkey or the mad-doctor long ago. Your cures have been effected by your giving so little as not to interrupt nature in any appreciable manner. But we will improve upon your placebos. If an infinitesimal dose is good, no dose at all is better--and, except in special cases, _that_ shall henceforward be our system!'

Our readers may think this a jest; but it is actually the point at which, on the part of the Allopathists, the controversy has arrived. A very intelligent and intelligible paper by Dr C. Radclyffe Hall, of Torquay, has appeared in the _Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal_, in which the subject is treated in a pleasant and profitable way. He is aware of the difficulty there will be in introducing the new system--of the surprised stare with which the patient will regard the doctor 'doing nothing;' and as confidence is an important part of the cure, the rule cannot be made absolute. 'But as often as it can be adopted it should. By degrees, the doctrine will work its way, that medical attendants are required to survey, superintend, and direct disease, to watch lest harm accrue unnoticed, to employ active remedies when required, or not to interfere at all, as seems to their own judgment best. Every case of successful treatment without medicines will assist to indoctrinate the public with this view. By learning how much nature can do without medicines, people will be able to perceive more correctly how much medicines, when they are necessary, can assist nature.'

The following is given as an example of a case of non-interference. 'A child, above the age of infancy, is chilly, looks dull around its eyes, has headache, pain in the back, quick pulse, and no appetite. It is not known that the digestive organs have been overtaxed. The case may prove--anything. A local inflammation not yet made manifest by local pain; the commencement of continued, or remittent, or exanthematous fever; in a word, there is scarcely any ailment of children of which this may not be the commencement. _If_, on careful examination, no local disease can be made out, we have no correct indication for special treatment. Give nature fair play. Put the child into a warm bed in a warm room, keep it quiet, stop the supplies of food, but not of water, and wait. When reaction takes place, if there be anything serious, it shews itself, and we then know what to attend to. Very frequently, the case is one of mere ephemeral febrile disorder, from exposure to cold; and in two or three days, the child is perfectly well again, without having taken either medicines or globules. But have we done nothing? When the heart was striving to restore the balance of the circulation, by adopting the recumbent posture, we gave it less work to do. The equable warmth of bed was soothing to the nervous system, and solicited the afflux of blood to the surface. By abstinence, we avoided ministering to congestion of the viscera, and introducing food which, as it could not be properly digested, would decompose and irritate the stomach and bowels.' Here the do-nothing doctor actually assisted nature; he took care that she should not be thwarted in her operations, and he stood by watching the case, like an attorney at the examination of a prisoner, who does nothing, but whose presence is essential to his client. If the usual counteracting remedies had been administered, a disease would have been induced, for which a process of convalescence would have had to be gone through. If the globules had been given simultaneously with the hygienic treatment described, Homoeopathy instead of nature would have had the credit of the cure.

'In all chronic blood-diseases,' says Dr Hall, 'medicines are useful, but hygienic treatment'--the word is explained by the treatment of the above case--'must rank the first. In all acute blood-diseases, when mild and occurring in a previously healthy constitution, as they must run through a special course, and last for a certain time, cases will frequently do very well without any medicines. More frequently, a little medicine occasionally to meet a temporary requirement is serviceable; but in every case of this kind, however severe, the difficult point of medical judgment is, rather, when to do nothing, than what to do. Hygienic treatment is invariably necessary. Acting on the principle of the accoucheur, that nature is to be carefully watched, but that so long as she proceeds well, she is to be let alone, we shall meet with few cases of illness in which we cannot find opportunities to judiciously dispense with medicines.' Another difficulty in adopting this system may be found in the doctor's fear, that if he dispenses with medicines, the patient may dispense with him; but we are of Dr Hall's opinion, that this is quite illusory. The only difference it will make will be, that patients will learn to trust more to the judgment of their medical attendant, and less to the efficacy of his medicines.

Hydropathy proceeds on the hygienic treatment, although doubtless in a somewhat rough manner. Air, exercise, rubbing, cold water, simple food--such are its substitutes both for medicines and globules; and we think the regular doctors might with great advantage take a leaf out of its book, as well as out of the book of homoeopathy. With this reform, we would suggest--although with some timidity, for doctors are sensitive on the point--that a re-examination, on broad scientific principles, even of common diseases, would do some good. Doctors are too fond of systems of treatment, which are not made to fit the patient, but which the patient is expected to fit. Diseases run their course, and so do remedies; but it might be well to inquire what relation there is between the course of the one, and that of the other. The unvarying treatment of a disease looks odd to a thinking bystander. The same medicines are administered in case after case; the dose follows the symptom with the certainty of fate. The patient dies--the patient recovers. What then? The doctor has done his best--everything has been according to rule!

The following are the rules laid down for practitioners on the new system:--

'1. Never prescribe medicines when hygiene will do as well and can be enforced.

'2. Never permit the patient, or those around him, to expect more from medicines than medicines can perform.

'3. Never prescribe medicines, except avowedly as mere palliatives, when the period is gone by for them to be of ultimate service.

'4. Never conceal the _general_ intention of the treatment; that is, whether it be adopted with a view to cure, or only to mitigate the disease, or merely to alleviate a symptom or symptoms.

'5. Never prescribe medicines more powerful than are necessary; or continue a powerful medicine longer, or repeat it oftener, than the disease actually requires.

'6. Never attribute to the medicine-giving part of the management of a successful case more than its due share of credit.'

We have called this a new system, but a new system is nothing without a name; and we therefore beg leave to suggest one, made up, like the others, of a Greek compound. First, we have Allopathy, another suffering; then Homoeopathy, the same suffering; then Hydropathy, water-suffering; and now let us have Anapathy, no suffering at all.

APPLICATION OF THE SIRENE TO COUNT THE RATE AT WHICH THE WINGS OF INSECTS MOVE.

The buzzing and humming noises produced by winged insects are not, as might be supposed, vocal sounds. They result from sonorous undulations imparted to the air by the flapping of their wings. This may be rendered evident by observing, that the noise always ceases when the insect alights on any object. The sirene has been ingeniously applied for the purpose of ascertaining the rate at which the wings of such creatures flap. The instrument being brought into unison with the sound produced by the insect, indicates, as in the case of any other musical sound, the rate of vibration. In this way it has been ascertained that the wings of a gnat flap at the rate of 15,000 times per second. The pitch of the note produced by this insect in the act of flying is, therefore, more than two octaves above the highest note of a seven-octave pianoforte.--_Lardner's Handbook_.

A WELCOME SACRIFICE.

BY THE REV. JAMES GILBORNE LYONS, LL.D.

Vain is the blood of rare and spotless herds, Pastured in meads where blue Clitumnus shines; Vain are sweet gums from lands that Indus girds, Or diamonds sought in deep Brazilian mines; Vain are Iberian fruits, and perfumed flowers, Rich as a Grecian sunset's purest dyes, If deemed, when worship claims thy holiest hours, For HIM IN HEAVEN fit gift or sacrifice.

The flocks that roam on thrice ten thousand hills, Each living thing that moves on shore and sea, The gems and gold which gleam in caves and rills, Saba's low shrub, and Lebanon's proud tree, The fragrant tribes that spring on cliff and field, That flush the stream, or fringe the smooth lake's brim, Breathe, burn, and bloom, at His high will revealed, And own with joy their Light and Lord in Him.

Our gains are His, and, laid before the Cross, These must of our oblations form a part, But oh! the choicest ores and gems are dross, If brought without that pearl of price--THE HEART. The poorest serf who fears a tyrant's nod, Whose inmost soul hard bondage racks and wrings-- That toil-worn slave may send unseen to God An offering far beyond the wealth of kings.