North and South Page #39

North and South is a social novel published in 1854 by English writer Elizabeth Gaskell. With Wives and Daughters and Cranford, it is one of her best-known novels and was adapted for television three times. The 2004 version renewed interest in the novel and attracted a wider readership.

• Novel

								

used to call those men in his company who questioned and would know the
reason for every order.”

This latter part of her sentence she addressed rather to her father than
to Mr. Thornton. Who is Captain Lennox? asked Mr. Thornton of himself,
with a strange kind of displeasure, that prevented him for the moment
from replying to her! Her father took up the conversation.

“You never were fond of schools, Margaret, or you would have seen and
known before this how much is being done for education in Milton.”

“No!” she said, with sudden meekness. “I know I do not care enough about
schools. But the knowledge and the ignorance of which I was speaking did
not relate to reading and writing,--the teaching or information one can
give to a child. I am sure, that what was meant was ignorance of the
wisdom that shall guide men and women. I hardly know what that is. But
he--that is my informant--spoke as if the masters would like their hands
to be merely tall, large children--living in the present moment--with a
blind unreasoning kind of obedience.”

“In short, Miss Hale, it is very evident that your informant found a
pretty ready listener to all the slander he chose to utter against the
masters,” said Mr. Thornton, in an offended tone.

Margaret did not reply. She was displeased at the personal character Mr.
Thornton affixed to what she had said.

Mr. Hale spoke next:

“I must confess that, although I have not become so intimately
acquainted with any workmen as Margaret has, I am very much struck by
the antagonism between the employer and the employed, on the very
surface of things. I even gather this impression from what you yourself
have from time to time said.”

Mr. Thornton paused awhile before he spoke. Margaret had just left the
room, and he was vexed at the state of feeling between himself and her.
However, the little annoyance, by making him cooler and more thoughtful,
gave a greater dignity to what he said:

“My theory is, that my interests are identical with those of my
workpeople, and vice-versa. Miss Hale, I know, does not like to hear men
called ‘hands,’ so I won’t use that word, though it comes most readily
to my lips as the technical term, whose origin, whatever it was, dates
before my time. On some future day--in some millennium--in Utopia, this
unity may be brought into practice--just as I can fancy a republic the
most perfect form of government.”

“We will read Plato’s Republic as soon as we have finished Homer.”

“Well, in the Platonic year, it may fall out that we are all--men,
women, and children--fit for a republic; but give me a constitutional
monarchy in our present state of morals and intelligence. In our infancy
we require a wise despotism to govern us. Indeed, long past infancy,
children and young people are the happiest under the unfailing laws of a
discreet firm authority. I agree with Miss Hale so far as to consider
our people in the condition of children, while I deny that we, the
masters, have anything to do with the making or keeping them so. I
maintain that despotism is the best kind of government for them; so that
in the hours in which I come in contact with them I must necessarily be
an autocrat. I will use my best discretion--from no humbug or
philanthropic feeling, of which we have had rather too much in the
North--to make wise laws and come to just decisions in the conduct of my
business--laws and decisions which work for my own good in the first
instance--for theirs in the second; but I will neither be forced to give
my reasons, nor flinch from what I have once declared to be my
resolution. Let them turn out! I shall suffer as well as they: but in
the end they will find I have not bated nor altered one jot.”

Margaret had re-entered the room and was sitting at her work; but she
did not speak. Mr. Hale answered--

“I dare say I am talking in great ignorance; but from the little I know,
I should say that the masses were already passing rapidly into the
troublesome stage which intervenes between childhood and manhood, in the
life of the multitude as well as that of the individual. Now, the error
which many parents commit in the treatment of the individual at this
time is, insisting on the same unreasoning obedience as when all he had
to do in the way of duty was, to obey the simple laws of ‘Come when
you’re called,’ and ‘Do as you’re bid!’ But a wise parent humours the
desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and adviser
when his absolute rule shall cease. If I get wrong in my reasoning,
recollect, it is you who adopted the analogy.”

“Very lately,” said Margaret, “I heard a story of what happened in
Nuremberg only three or four years ago. A rich man there lived alone in
one of the immense mansions which were formerly both dwellings and
warehouses. It was reported that he had a child, but no one knew of it
for certain. For forty years this rumour kept rising and falling--never
utterly dying away. After his death it was found to be true. He had a
son--an overgrown man, with the unexercised intellect of a child, whom
he had kept up in that strange way, in order to save him from temptation
and error. But, of course, when this great old child was turned loose in
the world, every bad counsellor had power over him. He did not know good
from evil. His father had made the blunder of bringing him up in
ignorance and taking it for innocence; and after fourteen months of
riotous living, the city authorities had to take charge of him, in order
to save him from starvation. He could not even use words effectively
enough to be a successful beggar.”

“I used the comparison (suggested by Miss Hale) of the position of the
master to that of a parent, so I ought not to complain of your turning
the simile into a weapon against me. But, Mr. Hale, when you were
setting up a wise parent as a model for us, you said he humoured his
children in their desire for independent action. Now certainly, the time
is not come for the hands to have any independent action during business
hours; I hardly know what you would mean by it then. And I say, that the
masters would be trenching on the independence of their hands, in a way
that I, for one, should not feel justified in doing, if we interfered
too much with the life they lead out of the mills. Because they labour
ten hours a-day for us, I do not see that we have any right to impose
leading-strings upon them for the rest of their time. I value my own
independence so highly that I can fancy no degradation greater than that
of having another man perpetually directing and advising and lecturing
me, or even planning too closely in any way about my actions. He might
be the wisest of men or the most powerful--I should equally rebel and
resent his interference. I imagine this is a stronger feeling in the
North of England than in the South.”

“I beg your pardon, but is not that because there has been none of the
equality of friendship between the adviser and advised classes? Because
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