five shillings, was demanded of me by the compositors. I thought it an imposition, as I had paid one to the pressmen. The master thought so too, and forbade my paying it. I stood out two or three weeks, was accordingly considered as an excommunicate, and had so many pieces of private malice practised on me, by mixing my sorts, transposing and breaking my matter, etc. etc., if ever I stepped out of the room, and all ascribed to the chapel ghost, which, they said, ever haunted those not regularly admitted, that notwithstanding my master's prohibition, I found myself obliged to comply and pay the money."

Another illustration of this practice may be found in a book published a few years ago, The Autobiography of a Working Man. The party referred to in the extract, were working at a quarry on the Berwick coast, and the time was during the agitation for the Reform Bill :

"One day, when we had been reading in the newspapers a great deal about the tyranny of the Tories, and the tyranny of the aristocracy in general, and some of the hewers had been, as usual, wordy and loud in denouncing all tyrants, and exclaiming, 'Down with them for ever!' one of them took up a long wooden straight-edge, and struck a labourer with the sharp edge of it over the shoulders. Throwing down my pick, I turned round and told him that so long as I was about the works I would not see a labourer struck in that manner, without questioning

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the mason's pretended right to domineer over labourers. You exclaim against tyranny,' I continued, and you yourselves are tyrants, if anybody is.' The hewer answered, that I had no business to interfere-that he had not struck me. 'No,' said I, or you would have been in the sea by this time. But I have seen labourers who dared not speak for themselves knocked about by you and many others, and by every mason about these works. I have seen labourers ordered to do things, and compelled to do them, which no working man should order another to do, far less have power to compel him to do; and I tell you it shall not be done.' The labourers gathered around me; the masons conferred together. One of them said, speaking for the rest, that he must put a stop to this; the privileges of masons were not to be questioned by labourers, and I must either submit to that reproof or punishment which they thought fit to inflict, or leave the works; if not, they must all leave the works. The punishment hinted at was, to submit to be held over one of the blocks of stone, face downward, the feet held down on one side, the head and the arms held down on the other side, while the mason apprentices would whack the offender with their aprons knotted hard. I said, 'That so far from submitting to reproof or punishment, I would carry my opposition a great deal further than I had done. They had all talked about Parliamentary reform; we had all joined in the cry for reform, and denounced the exclusive privileges of the anti-reformers, but I would begin reform where we then stood. I would demand, and I then demanded, that if a hewer wanted his stone turned over, and called labourers together to do it, they should not put hands to it unless he assisted; that if a hewer struck a labourer at his work, none of the labourers should do anything thereafter, of any nature wnatever, for that hewer. (The masons laughed.) And further,' said I, the masons shall not be entitled to

any room they choose, if we go into a public-house to be paid, to the exclusion of the labourers; nor, if there be only one room in the house, shall the labourers be sent outside the door to give the room to the masons, as has been the case. In everything we shall be your equals, except in wages-that we have no right to expect.' The masons, on hearing these conditions, set up a shout of derisive laughter. It was against the laws of their body, they said, to hear their privileges discussed by a labourer- ... that wherever masons were at work, they were superior, and their privileges not to be questioned- ... that in this case the labourer was insolent to the mason, and the mason had a right to strike him. They demanded that I should at once cease to argue the question, and submit, before it was too late, to whatever punishment they chose to inflict. Upon hearing this, I put myself in a defensive attitude, and said, 'Let me see who shall first lay hands on me!'

None of them offered to lay hands on me; one said they had better let the affair rest where it was, as there would only be a fight about it, and several others assented; and so we resumed our work."-Pp. 145-147.

Were we to venture on specific recommendations to workmen on the spirit they should cultivate towards one another, we would say—

(1.) Be particularly careful to keep your temper. You have often temptations to lose it. The boy who works to you may be a very stupid one, or your neighbour may be a very disobliging one. At the moment when you have something important on hand, it is ruined through the boy's stupidity, or the disobliging selfishness of your neighbour. Your first

impulse is to pour out a volley. Be assured, it is not a right impulse, and, in the end, it will do more harm than good. Think of the noble moral victory you would gain if, under such provocation, you ruled your temper and were calm. Solomon says, "He that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city." Good temper is an inestimable blessing, both in the workshop and out of it. If people thought more of its value, they would be at more pains to secure it. It was a saying of the great Addison, we think, that a good temper was worth five hundred a year. The Christian workman knows how it is to be got. When not a natural gift, it must be planted and watered by God in the soil of a regenerated

nature.

We well remember the words in which a man of this kind once spoke to us of the benefit of prayer in the morning before going to his work. "If for nothing else," he said, "it is invaluable for calming the temper. I might find," he said, “when I went to my bench, that some one had been interfering with my tools, and that I could not get what I wanted. Or the foreman might come round and blame me for something which I felt was not deserving blame. Or some of my fellow-workmen might be angry at me, and load me with abuse. All that is very irritating, and at one time it would have

set me a-blaze. But when I prepare myself for it by prayer, I feel I have got a shield to resist it, and my time passes pleasantly and calmly."

(2.) Be careful not to irritate the temper of others. When a man is discovered to be weak in temper, he is often made the butt of his fellow-workmen. This

is savage sport. It is like the bull-baitings of Spain. The writhings and tossings of the infuriated bull under the attacks of the dogs are the sport of the spectators. The writhings of a man out of temper under the assaults of his comrades are an equally coarse and savage sport. Foolish though it be in him to lose his temper, it is a fact that he does so. Then, the effect is to produce more of that feeling of alienation to which we have so often adverted as the curse of workshops. Less systematically, too, there is often much provocation given to weak tempers. If workmen are their own friends, they will try to avoid this. Give unnecessary offence to none, but rather bear one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

(3.) Oaths, imprecations, and indecent language, should be most carefully avoided. We might say much of the awful sin of profanity, and illustrate the tendency of this hell-born practice to degrade this fair world to the level, and pollute its atmosphere with the exhalations, of hell. In this place, how