150 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



to the foul subterranean haunt where they enjoyed the 

 sport of badger-baiting. Everything he beheld in the 

 character and conduct of these workmen offended his 

 higher nature. They were too far below him to exert 

 any such influence as might have tempted him to fel- 

 lowship with them. In an atmosphere of profanity, sen- 

 suality, and the most coarse and sordid selfishness, he 

 continued an Apollo among neat-herds, pure, proud, 

 and lofty-minded. 



As was to have been expected, the strike in which 

 these masons engaged seemed to him unreasonable, and 

 we need not doubt that his view of the matter was 

 correct. In point of fact, there was no redeeming 

 feature in his experience of working men during his resi- 

 dence at Niddrie to modify the sternly unfavourable 

 opinion which he formed of the class. He concluded 

 that they were incurably disqualified for promoting their 

 true interests by combination. He declared against 

 trades' unions, and from this decision he never swerved. 

 Finding that William Ross wa not only member of a 

 house-painters' union, but one of the officials of the 

 society, he told his friend that his union would never 

 benefit the house-painters as a class, and advised him to 

 resign his clerkship. He gives us in the autobiography 

 the argument which he addressed to Ross, and as it was 

 substantially the argument he continued to urge against 

 trades' unions to the end of his life, it is as well to 

 quote it here. ' There is a want/ he said, ' of true 

 leadership among our operatives in these combinations. 

 It is the wilder spirits that dictate the conditions ; and, 

 pitching their demands high, they begin usually by en- 

 forcing acquiescence among their companions. They are 

 tyrants to their fellows ere they come into collision with 

 their masters, and have thus an enemy in the camp, not 



