Chapter XXI: Mutiny in the MILL and the Bakehouse

Oliver was a little liable to look over the heads of his subordinates as well as his equals, to be possessed by his purpose instead of possessing it, and to follow it out—having no attention to spare for the signs of the times, though he was particularly calculated to call them forth in hostile array, and they were certain to count largely in the result. It took Oliver by surprise when he was met by the ‘poser’ which he might reasonably have expected, of resistance and anarchy in his own dominions, where he had been seeking to enact transcendental laws and attempting to carry out, not political or social, but moral economy—not every man for himself alone, but every man for his neighbour still more, ‘in honour preferring one another,’ which Oliver persisted in regarding as the only worthy and enduring trade principles.

There had been growls of dissatisfaction, sneers of scepticism, tacit defiance in the mill and the bakehouse, which had all passed unheeded by Oliver, before the storm broke forth. It began with a comparatively trifling _émeute_ in the mill after the miller’s men had been comparing notes with the journeymen bakers who went far before the grinders of the raw grain in crude, shallow quickness of reasoning and one-sided, undigested knowledge. The journeymen bakers first crammed the young millers with the rank growth of their supposed grievances, and then adroitly pushed the crammed men before them, into the breach, to open the battle with Oliver their common enemy.

There were long-standing usages and privileges in the miller and baker trades which Oliver had thought fit to abolish without asking the consent of his servants farther than in the address which he delivered on entering into possession of the mill and the shop, and that lay beyond the comprehension of the cleverest man among them, who immediately made up his mind that it was all ‘soft sawder’ and ‘book-learning bosh.’ The men chose to regard these time-out-of-mind customs and liberties, though they had no direct bearing on any miller’s or baker’s prosperity, and were even sometimes prejudicial to fair play among the men themselves, as their rules to which they had agreed on entering their trades. No master had any right to interfere with and overturn these rules without the men’s concurrence; above all, they were not such fools as to be defrauded of them by a fine assumption of philanthropy on the part of their antagonist.

Oliver discovered that there had been disobedience and evasion of a regulation which he had laid down at the Mill, that two different qualities of grain, whether coming from the same or different owners, should not from that time forward be so taken and ground together as to produce a spurious average of quality, even when that average might be accepted with ignorant or indifferent acquiescence in the case of the better as well as the worse wheat.

‘Why did you not attend to what I said, Green?’ enquired Oliver angrily. ‘Mind that this lumping together does not occur again. At the best it is a slovenly, inaccurate makeshift for clean, correct work, which prevents a proper estimate of each quality of grain and adulterates flour at the mill; at the worst it is an imposition and a cheat, hiding careless negligence on our part, or consenting to withdraw the surplus fineness and cleanness of one man’s growth of corn in order to add it to the deficient worth of another man’s crop. I will not have it.’

‘It were a saving of trouble as nobody objected to, instead of a wexing petikularity,’ said Ned, startling Oliver by speaking again, and that with such fluency as to render it suspicious whether the fluency, together with the bluster, could proceed originally from monosyllabic, stolid Ned. ‘It were always done afore my day, and I dunnot see why it shouldn’t be done no longer. I can tell you Maine, as owns the best stuff, wunnot thank you for turning it out bolted that white it might be furrin flour. Nobody will believe it native, though he take his Bible oath on it. Every customer will swear it’s ’Mericain and has come over in casks, and will sour afore you can say “Jack Robinson.” And Wade, he wunnot own his stuff, as you’d make it come out, in the course of nature and machinery. He’ll swear it’s been tampered with, and no wonder, since he’ll not find a buyer for it on this side of Lon’on. He’ll be forced to mix what might have been food for men in his horse and cattle’s mashes, or to fling it to his cocks and hens. Friarton Mill will have seen the last of his custom,’ ended Ned sardonically.

‘Never mind that, it is my business; do what I bid you.’

‘And the trouble of stowing away the emptyings of the sacks separate, and of setting and keeping the mill a-going for two bouts, which need only have been one, will be your business too?’ said Ned, like all willing learners going considerably beyond the bounds of his lesson and converting bluster into insolence. ‘It is a fine gentleman scholard’s nonsense, which is downright oonreasonable as well. Dang it, I’ll have nowt to do with it,’ protested Ned, flinging down a spade which he had in his hand with a noisy clatter.

‘Leave it alone then, my man, and come to me at the office for your wages,’ said Oliver, walking away.

Green did not resume his work that afternoon, neither did the other men and lads. The mill stood, without anything wrong about the gear which had in these modern times rendered a lack of water a deficiency to be coped with. Oliver missed its accustomed hum and splash, while ‘the merry millers,’ merry no longer, hung about and consulted together, sulky and stubborn-looking.

But next day the premature shabby strike somehow collapsed. Its promoters, including Green, chopfallen and taciturn as of old, were at their duties again, to which Oliver suffered them to return without farther words.

It was otherwise in the bake-shop. There the mutiny was systematised and ripe, and though it did not carry the whole establishment with it, it cost Oliver his manager, some of his best hands, and more than it seemed possible for him to recover from.

Jim Hull came to Oliver one day in the back parlour. Speak of the great Napoleon’s features resembling a finely cut cameo, Jim Hull’s nose, mouth, and chin were quite as hard, clear and set when he refused every parley or overture of good-fellowship in the shape of refreshment, and put it to his master point-blank: ‘Do you continue of the same mind, Master Oliver, that no alum, nor no other harmless stuff for whitening the bread, be used in the bakehouse, and that all sorts of fancy bread, down to them rolls, be weighed and sold by the pound, like the reg’lar loaf?’

‘I do, Jim,’ said Oliver concisely.

‘Have you taken it into consideration, sir,’ went on Jim solemnly, ‘that customers as are used to white bread and don’t want brown won’t buy bread which, though it may be made of first-rate flour, looks as if it were compounded of ’alf and ’alf. There’s a deal in the look of a thing in all trades,’ said Jim almost wistfully, ‘and folk is fanciful, and is guided by the look as well as by the taste. Nay, the taste gets trained to prefer what it has been accustomed to. There’s a many will have pepper-dust rather than pepper, and chicory before coffee.’

‘And bread either flavourless or with a suspicion of sourness or bitterness instead of sweet bread, eh, Jim?’ chimed in Oliver. ‘Then tastes must be reclaimed from their vitiated state for the sake of the tasters, that’s all. I have not become a baker to sell adulterated bread of dubious weight, even if the adulteration were innocent and the weight in favour of the buyer. I mean to sell pure bread, by an exact measure.’

‘Bread has always been divided into two classes,’ remonstrated Jim, growing stiff and stern again: ‘the plain and the fancy. The plain has been measured by weight, the fancy——’

‘By fancy,’ interrupted Oliver. ‘But you are aware, Jim, that if any buyer choose to buy, by the pound, cottage loaves which, no less than rolls, go under the head of fancy bread, the baker is bound to sell them by weight, though I do not suppose he can be fined for apportioning them according to fancy if there is no demand to the contrary.’

‘It ain’t the custom,’ said Jim testily. ‘I crave your pardon, sir, but to put it in that way is to insult an honest man as would not offer less than the bulk of an article for its money’s worth, not though you paid him for doing it in golden guineas. Have you ever thought of that, Master Oliver, of the slur you are ready to cast on other bakers—on your own father, for instance, that always did as he would be done by, and on all as worked under him in responsible situations?’

Oliver flushed. ‘There is no reason to look at the change in that light, Jim,’ he said earnestly. ‘I know my father was an honest man. There is no piece of knowledge I possess which I would be more unwilling to give up. I have never for a moment suspected your integrity—I would as soon question my own. But every man must act according to his individual light. These practices we are talking about are objectionable and can easily be rendered dishonest. At least everybody should know the nature and amount of breadstuff, like any other stuff, that he gets for his money, though I don’t say he is cheated if he knowingly and willingly takes an artificially bleached, roughly calculated purchase, several ounces under or over the mark, for the look or the fashion of it. The worst is that few people know what they are about in such transactions.’

‘Well, all I have to say, Master Oliver,’ said Jim doggedly, ‘these are a deal too fine distinctions for me. I cannot consent to be treated like a man as has long been a party, in the capacity of foreman, to defrauding the public of their due—me as never tampered with light weights, which your father would have been the last to even either me or hisself to—not in our whole lives. I tell you, sir, it is putting shame on us both, and on a respectable trade, for you to sport them whims and fads in carrying it on at this time of day. Nobody will thank you for it, and as for your dark-coloured, home-tasted bread, nobody will like it or buy it. You’ll soon throw to the dogs as fine a baking business as was ever worked up in more than one generation.’

‘I can’t help that,’ said Oliver inflexibly. ‘If the townspeople are fools and pin their faith to mock instead of to real merits, it shall be in spite of me and not because of me.’

‘Then, Master Oliver, it’s right I should speak out. My nephew ’Arry, as was ready, with a little help, to buy the old business if it had come into the market, will begin in Friarton, on his own account, this here Michaelmas. He has axed me to jine him. And why shouldn’t I? I would not have deserted the old concern if I could have been of any use. But it seems my experience was all wrong. I’m too old a cock to begin afresh. Besides, I’m free to tell you the mode followed by a young gentleman as knows nothing of trade save out of books, and is, if he will pardon me for mentioning it, a rank enthusiast, will be all downhill and no mistake. I cannot stop you, Master Oliver; you refuse to be guided by me, so I must wash my hands of you, and jine my nephew ’Arry, to whom I can do a good turn, though it goes sore against the grain if you’ll believe me, sir, to start an opposition to Constable’s business, as I helped to make flourish, and which was the pride of my ’eart, years before you came into the world, Master Oliver.’ As Jim ended a slight quiver passed over his compact features.

‘I believe you, Jim,’ said Oliver gravely, ‘and I, for my part, am so sorry to lose you that you may guess how much the principles are to me which compel such a sacrifice.’

Jim shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

Constable’s baking business without Jim Hull was sure to be crippled for a time, but there were other kinds of crippling going on, and a worse mess for Oliver to get into.

Oliver, in his consciousness of his own shortcomings, and his passion for independence and individuality, was not so much inclined to insist on punctuality and method in his subordinates as most new brooms show themselves. But he happened to remark that what rules and penalties were imposed, had gradually come to be inflicted chiefly on the younger journeymen and apprentices. The elder and more skilled bakers took upon them, in the right of their value to Oliver and the difficulty of replacing them on an emergency, to infringe the orders and do their work earlier or later, faster or slower, according to their convenience and inclination, putting about and causing some slight injury to the subordinates, and creating a certain amount of disorder in the establishment. In place of these experts presenting a good example to their juniors, the latter were stimulated in the reverse direction, and prompted to acquire such qualities as might enable them in their turn to shirk obligations and throw the weight of drudgery and discipline on their weaker, more untrained fellows.

Oliver was determined this should not be. He heard that the baker Webster was conspicuous at this game, that he rarely kept his time, that he compressed his kneading into the briefest operation compatible with success, that he set his sponge at the latest date, and was guilty of the same recklessness in placing his batch in the oven, so that he imperilled his whole night and morning’s work, though he might escape by the skin of the teeth from reducing it—either to a sodden mass or a cinder, as the oven fire served.

Webster was a man given over to a variety of conflicting interests and distractions, rather than the victim of one vice; he was unsettled more than dissipated, still he appeared in the bakehouse occasionally the worse for drink.

Oliver set himself to convict his servant—in name, in one of his misdemeanours, and going into the bakehouse early one morning when the bakers were about to subject the risen dough to the second kneading, he found Webster’s place vacant; a friend had contrived to go through the first process for Webster’s batch as well as for his own, but was halting ere he proceeded to complete the performance. Oliver remarked aloud that Webster was absent from his work, and ordered that his batch should be worked up and put into the oven, without waiting for his arrival or asking his permission, while Jim Hull, who was still in office, should challenge the defender for non-attendance.

But this quick catching up of Webster for neglect of duty was quite another affair from the neighbourly help which connived at and concealed his delinquencies. And Jim Hull looked aggrieved in his own person and worried by Oliver’s interference. ‘It ain’t any good,’ he said in an undertone to Oliver. ‘Webster won’t be put upon, he’ll take his way, but it’s a fact he’ll get more dough through his hands, to better purpose, in ten minutes than the other lads will in twenty.’

‘All the same he’ll not put upon me and the rest of the men, as I take it he does. Who made him an exception to the rest? Put upon indeed! I should like to know who is in danger of being put upon. Jim Hull, you are getting soft in your old age. Let some of these fellows do Webster’s job,’ said Oliver angrily.

‘The’ve got their own jobs, and some of them is hard enough pushed to turn out presentable batches for themselves. I tell you it ain’t every man can take Webster’s place. That there batch of his is for Dr. Riley’s family. The doctor is difficult to please in his bread, and he sets on some of his patients to be as cranky as hisself,’ grumbled Jim.

‘I’m sorry for Riley and his patients then,’ said Oliver shortly. ‘Is there no baker here,’ Oliver raised his voice slightly so as to be heard by more than Jim, ‘who can knead Webster’s stuff in addition to his own?’

No man spoke. Each felt scrupulous as to the kneading which was necessary for his batch this morning. Clearly the movement to call Webster to order was not popular, even though it arose from his own fault, and that a fault which only a sprinkling of the men present would have presumed to commit.

Jim Hull began slowly to strip the jacket from his rheumatic shoulders in the hot steaming air. As he did so he repeated still more surlily, ‘It ain’t every man can take Webster’s place. Baking itself ain’t a trade which a young fellow can pick up at his feet any day, anyhow, and read the rights and wrongs of it straight off—by heart, like a printed page, then give his orders conformable.’

‘Hold on, Jim.’ Oliver stopped his foreman’s preparations. ‘I suppose you think I’ve forgotten any lessons I ever learnt. And as for those fellows yonder,’ pointing to the row of figures at the baking-boards, ‘who are grinning behind their shirt-sleeves and their heads powdered like flunkeys—they are a set of flunkeys to Webster or any ringleader who chooses to hold the asses by the ears of their class prejudices and petty vices— they believe I’m speaking of what I know nothing about, or that I set them to do a task which I hold to be a degradation, therefore I am dependent on their skill and fidelity—Heaven help me! and if I were famishing I should perish for lack of bread without their assistance. You and they are mightily mistaken though, Jim.’