The cause of his unrest on this occasion was the threat Lord Lamerton had uttered of closing the manganese mine. This mine had its adit, crushing mill and washing floors at but a short distance from the great house. About fifteen years previous, a mine had been worked on the estate that yielded so richly, that with the profits, Lord Lamerton had been able to clear off some mortgages. That lode was worked out. It had been altogether an extraordinary one, bunching, as it is termed, into a great mass of solid manganese, but this bunch, when worked out, ended without a trace of continuance. Then, as Lord Lamerton was assured, another came to the surface in the hill behind the mansion, and as he was in want of money, he reluctantly permitted the mine to be opened within a rifle shot of his house. The workings were out of sight, hidden by a plantation, and manganese mines make no great heaps of unsightly deposit; nevertheless, the mine was inconveniently near the place. It did not yield as it had promised, or as the experts had pretended it promised, and Lord Lamerton had lost all hope of making money by it. The vein was followed, but it never “bunched.” Foreign competition affected the market, English manganese was under-sold, and Wheal Perseverance, as the mine was called, did not pay for the “working.” Lord Lamerton annually lost money on it. Then he was informed that the lode ran under Orleigh gardens, and promised freely to “bunch” under the mansion. That is to say, he was asked to allow his house to be undermined. This decided his lordship, and he announced that the mine must be abandoned. Bunch or no bunch, he was not going to have his old place tunnelled under and brought about his ears, on the chance – the chimerical chance – of a few thousand pounds’ worth of metal being extracted from the rock on which it stood.
To Lord Lamerton his determination seemed right and reasonable. The land was his. The royalties were his; the house was his. Every man may do what he will with his own. If he has a penny in his pocket, he is at liberty to spend or to hoard it as he deems best.
But this decision of his lordship threatened ruin or something like ruin to a good many men who had lived on the mine, to families whereof the father worked underground, and the children above washing ore on the floors. The cessation of the mining would throw all these out of employ. It was known to the miners that manganese mines were everywhere unprofitable and were being abandoned. Where then should they look for employment?
It was open to bachelors to migrate to America, but what were the married men to do? The captain would feel the stoppage of the mine most of all. He had kept the accounts of the output, had paid the wages, and sold the metal. The miners might, indeed, take temporary work on the new line in course of construction, but that meant a change of life from one that was regular, whilst living in settled homes, to a wandering existence, to makeshift housing, separation from their families, and to association with demoralising and lawless companions. The captain, however, had not this chance within reach. He could not migrate, because he possessed the little house in which he lived, together with an acre of garden ground beside it, which his father had enclosed and reclaimed. Moreover, he was not likely to find work which gave him a situation of authority and superiority. Instead of being a master he must be content – if he found employ – to work as a servant. Hitherto, he had engaged and dismissed the hands, now he must become a hand – and be glad to be one – liable to dismissal.
It was natural that the men, and especially Saltren, should feel keenly and resent the closing of the mine. People see things as they affect themselves, and appreciate them only as they relate to their own affairs. I knew a man named Balhatchet who patented a quack medicine which he called his Heal-all, and this man never could be brought to see that the Fall of Man was a disaster to humanity, for, he argued, if there had been no fall, then no sickness, and therefore no place for Balhatchet’s Heal-all.
According to “The Spectator,” when the news reached London that the King of France was dead, “Now we shall have fish cheaper,” was the greeting the tidings evoked. The miners were angry with the bleachers, because they used German manganese instead of that raised in England, and angry with the shippers for bringing it across the sea. But above all, at this time, they were inclined to resent the action of Lord Lamerton in closing the mine, for by so doing he was, as they put it, snatching the bread out of their hungry mouths, whilst himself eating cake. They did not believe that undermining the great house would disturb its foundations. That was a mere excuse. How could his lordship be sure that undermining would crack his walls till he had tried it? And – supposing they did settle, what of that? They might be rebuilt. The men had been told that his lordship had painted the north wall with impenetrable, anti-damp preparation, because on that side of the house the paper in the rooms became mildewed. If there was damp, what better means of drying the house than undermining it? Why should his lordship send many pounds to London for damp-excluding paint, when by spending the money in Orleigh he might so drain the soil through a level under the foundations that no moisture could possibly rise?
Lord Lamerton had made a great deal of money out of the first mine. He had provided good cottages for his tenants, the workmen, but so much worse if they were to be turned out of them.
The mine had been christened Wheal Perseverance, and what does perseverance mean, but going on with what is begun? If his lordship had not intended to carry on the mine indefinitely, he should not have called it Wheal Perseverance. When he gave it that name he as much as promised to keep it going always, and to stop it now was a breach of faith. Was it endurable that Lord Lamerton should close the mine? Who had put the manganese in the rock? Was it Lord Lamerton? What had the metal been run there for but for the good of mankind, that it might be extracted and utilized? God had carried the lode under Orleigh Park before a Lamerton was thought of. Was it justifiable that one man through his aristocratic selfishness should interfere with the public good, should contravene the arrangements of the Creator? In the gospel the man who hid his talent was held up to condemnation, but here was a nobleman who sat down upon the talent belonging to a score of hard-working and necessitous men, desirous of extracting it, and refused to permit them to do what God had commanded. Was there not a fable about a dog in the manger? Was not his lordship a very dog in a manger, neither using the manganese himself, nor allowing those who desired to dig it out to put a pick into the ground and disturb it? Maybe there was a “bunch” under the state drawing-room large enough to support a score of families for three years, the men in meat and broadcloth, the women in velvets and jockey-club essence. Lord Lamerton and Lady Lamerton begrudged them these necessaries of life. The laws of the land, no doubt, were on the side of the nobleman, but the law of God on that of the labourer. The laws were imposed on the people by a House of Lords and the Queen, and therefore they would agitate for the abolition of an hereditary aristocracy and keep their hats on when next the National Anthem was played.
There were more mixed up in the matter than his lordship. Lord Lamerton did nothing without consulting the agent, Mr. Macduff. The abandonment of the mine was Macduff’s doing. The reason was known to every one – Macduff was under the control of his wife. Mrs. Macduff was offended because the school children did not curtsey and touch their caps when she drove through the village in her victoria.
The rector also had a finger in this particular pie. He bore a spite against Captain Saltren, because the captain was not a church-man. Not a word had been said about stopping the lime-quarry. Oh no! of course not, for Captain Tubb taught in the Sunday-school. If Stephen Saltren had taken a class, nothing would have been said about discontinuing the mine. Therefore the miners resolved to join the Liberation Society and make an outcry for the disestablishment of the Church.
So the men argued – we will not say reasoned, and that is no caricature of their arguments, not reasonings, in similar cases. The uneducated man is always a suspicious man. He never believes in the reasons alleged, these are disguises to hide the true springs of action.
When his lordship was told how incensed the miners were, he made light of the matter. Pshaw! fiddlesticks! He was not going to have his dear old Elizabethan home in which he was born, and which had belonged to the Ingletts before they were peers, tumbled about his ears like a pack of cards, just because there was a chance of finding three ha’porth of manganese under it. The mine had been a nuisance for some years. The standing up to their knees in water had been injurious to the health of the girls, many of whom had died of decline. Wheal Perseverance was a bad school of morals, lads and lasses worked together there,