The Black Opal - Katharine Susannah Prichard (open ebook .TXT) 📗

“Well,” he said, “we’ve got to thank you for puttin’ the thing to us as clear and as square as you have, Mr. Armitage. It gives every man here a chance to see just what you’re drivin’ at. But I might say here and now⁠ ⁠… I’ve got no time for it⁠ ⁠… neither me nor my mates.⁠ ⁠… It’ll save time and finish the business of this meeting if there’s no beatin’ about the bush and we understand each other right away. It sounds all right⁠—your scheme⁠—nice and easy. Looks as if there was more for us to get out of it than to lose by it.⁠ ⁠… I don’t say it wouldn’t mean easier times⁠ ⁠… more money⁠ ⁠… all that sort of thing. We haven’t had the easiest of times here sometimes, and this scheme of yours comes⁠ ⁠… just when we’re in the worst that’s ever knocked us. But speakin’ for myself, and”⁠—his glance round the hall was an appeal to that principle the Ridge stood for⁠—“the most of my mates, we’d rather have the hard times and be our own masters. That’s what we’ve always said on the Ridge.⁠ ⁠… Your scheme ’d be all right if we didn’t feel like that; I suppose. But we do⁠ ⁠… and as far as I’m concerned, we won’t touch it. It’s no go.

“We’re obliged to you for putting the thing to us. We recognise you could have gone another way about getting control here. You may⁠—buy up a few of the mines perhaps, and try to squeeze the rest of us out. Not that I think the boys’d stand for the experiment.”

“They wouldn’t,” Bill Grant called.

“I’m glad to hear that,” George said. He tried to point out that if Fallen Star miners accepted Armitage’s offer they would be shouldering conditions which would take from their work the freedom and interest that had made their life in common what it had been on the Ridge. He asked whether a weekly wage to tide them over years of misfortune would compensate for loss of the sense of being free men; he wanted to know how they’d feel if they won a nest of knobbies worth £400 or £500 and got no more out of them than the weekly wage. The percentage on big stones was only a bluff to encourage men to hand over big stones, George said. And that, beyond the word being used pretty frequently in Mr. Armitage’s argument and documents, was all the profit-sharing he could see in Mr. Armitage’s scheme. He reminded the men, too, that under their own system, in a day they could make a fortune. And all there was for them under Mr. Armitage’s system was three or four pounds a week⁠—and not a bit of potch, nor a penny in the quart pot for their old age.

“We own these mines. Every man here owns his mine,” George said; “that’s worth more to us just now than engineers and prospecting parties.⁠ ⁠… Well have them on our own account directly, when the luck turns and there’s money about again.⁠ ⁠… For the present we’ll hang on to what we’ve got, thank you, Mr. Armitage.”

He sat down, and a guffaw of laughter rolled over his last words.

“Anybody else got anything to say?” Peter Newton inquired.

M’Ginnis stood up.

He had heard a good deal of talk about men of the Ridge being free, he said, but all it amounted to was their being free to starve, as far as he could see. He didn’t see that the men’s ownership of the mines meant much more than that⁠—the freedom to starve. It was all very well for them to swank round about being masters of their own mines; any fool could be master of a rubbish heap if he was keen enough on the rubbish heap. But as far as he was concerned, M’Ginnis declared, he didn’t see the point. What they wanted was capital, and Mr. Armitage had volunteered it on what were more than ordinarily generous terms.⁠ ⁠…

It was all very well for a few shell-backs who, because they had been on the place in the early days, thought they had some royal prerogative to it, to cut up rusty when their ideas were challenged. But their ideas had been given a chance; and how had they worked out? It was all very well to say that if a man was master of his own mine he stood a chance of being a millionaire at a minute’s notice; but how many of them were millionaires? As a matter of fact, not a man on the Ridge had a penny to bless himself with at that moment, and it was sheer madness to turn down this offer of Mr. Armitage’s. For his part he was for it, and, what was more, there was a big body of the men in the hall for it.

“If it’s put to the vote whether people want to take on or turn down Mr. Armitage’s scheme, we’ll soon see which way the cat’s jumping,” M’Ginnis said. “People’d have the nause to see which side their bread’s buttered on⁠—not be led by the nose by a few fools and dreamers. For my part, I don’t see why⁠—”

“You’re not paid to,” a voice called from the back of the hall.

“I don’t see why,” M’Ginnis repeated stolidly, ignoring the interruption, “the ideas of three or four men should be allowed to rule the roost. What’s wanted on the Ridge is a little more horse sense⁠—”

Impatient and derisive exclamations were hurled at him; men sitting near M’Ginnis shouted back at the interrupters. It looked as if the meeting were going to break up in uproar, confusion, and fighting all round. Peter Newton knocked on the table and shouted himself hoarse trying to restore order. The voices of George, Watty, and Pony-Fence Inglewood were heard howling over the din:

“Let him alone.”

“Let’s hear what he’s got to say.”

Then M’Ginnis continued his description of the advantages to be gained by the acceptance of Mr. Armitage’s offer.

“And,” he wound up, “there’s the women and children to think of.” At