The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-11-15

u01Dns anu ne affalBuS IHb ldDoI hHlOu less than he does the agitator and the mischief maker who fattened on the workingman.
 Charles Reade was always much more of a fighter than an observer. He wrote at time when the operations in fac tory towns in England were denied education by the state and decent liy- ing conditions by the employer. Inn pressed by the savagery of the fight between workers and employers, he failed in his novel to place sufficient stress on the fact that the blind blum dering, the blind cruelty and the bling injustice of the new and unaccustomed force, the union, was the legitimate fruit of generations of blind selfish. ness, blind cruelty and blind bunder- ing on the part of the employing classes and of the state.
 IN the great ancient dining room of
 Raby Hall. near Hillsborough, there A was a strange gap in the line of an- cestral and family portraits that always aroused eager but unsatisfied curiosity among strangers who were permitted 10 look at the fine, historical mansion.
 It was a picture turned to the wall with these words written on the back. 'Gone into trade.
 Guy Raby, "the Squire" as every one called him, was not the man who would submit to inquiries about his affairs and the people of the country stood in such awe of him that even the usually daring tongue of gossip had ceased to Wag about the picture.
 His own hand had turned it many r. baf af fS Ci st ar Edith. She had married a great build CT, whom Squire Raby referred to as bricklayer and she had gone to live in Hillsborough, which Squire Raby ab- horred because it was beginning to be- come manufacturing city. He never entered the smoky circle of the hated tradesmen's town thereafter except un- der compu1sion.
 Finally Edith's husband MT. Little, was overtaken by misfortune. He had built too many and too fast and sud- denly found himself immensely rich in brick walls and immensely poor in money. In his emergency, which soon became desperate, he turned to all cor ners for ready cash. At last he even applied to Squire Raby for loan of trust fund of f1900 which had been left by the Squires father in trust for Edith's children.
 The Squire was shocked at the idea of touching the little fortune. This money belongs to your little boy Henry" said he. T am bound in honor not to risk it."
 Edith begged him to let her have it. The Squire refused positively. But for all his hatred of people in trade, he was touched by their distress He arose and stalked out of the house. went straight to his own bank and drew R1000 of his own money
 He returned to the house with tito find that James Little had killed himself and that his sister, half mad was accusing him of being her husbands murderer.
 After the tragedy. Edith and her son disappeared from Hillsborough. James Little's brother, Joseph, a small master cutler of Birmingham, had invited them to make their home with him.
 Squire Raby wrote to her inviting her to live with him, for he loved his beau- tiful sister with all his heart and soul. She refused indignantly in a letter which repeated the charge of murder. When he received that letter he wrote to MT. Little that he would send the interest half yearly on the sum that had escaped bricks and mortar, and that he would never forgive his sister, alive or dead.
 Then he turned her picture toward the wall and wrote on it: Gone into trade.''
 Hillsborough, busy with ever-increasing smokestacks and forges and shops, soon forgot the very name of Little. The Squire never mentioned it again and never heard from his sister. So more than 15 years passed.
 Henry Little had become a workingman, but one of rare sort. He had developed a perfect genius for wood carving, and, dissatisfied with the tools that were cur rent, he learned to make his own, be- coming master of all the mysteries of hardening. forging grinding, handle-mak- ing and cutlery.
 He invented tool after tool. One day master cutler of Hillsborough saw some of these tools in London. He determined to get Harry's services and after repeat ed offers, finally rose to the unheard of kuhcAooitJ ol Oilcilu6 SD d week.
 Mrs. Little resisted Harry's desire for going to Hillsborough until she realized that her sons heart was set on accepting the offer. Then she consented, with many tEars and many fears.
 Her apprehensions were realized very quickly. The Edge Tool Forgers union of Hillsborough and the Handle Makers union ordered Cheetham, his employer. to send him back to London. They fol- lowed this demand by warnings. and when these in turn were disregarded Henry found note pinned to the door of his workroom with dagger threatening him with death unless he left HiIlsbor- ough.
 He applied promptly for admission to both unions and offered each 915 down It was a bitter pill. but he would not have left Hilsborough for e15O0.
 He had met girl who held him there It was Grace Garden, daughter of one of the rich men of the town, and a god daughter of Squire Raby. She did not know that the workman, Henry Little whom she had engaged through Mir Cheetham to teach her wood carving was a nephew of her godfather, and Henry was careful not to tell her. for he had grown up hating the Squire.
 He knew that Miss Garden looked on him as far beneath her but from the