Chapter VI. The Grievance Committee

There was trouble at the Maitland Mills. For the first time in his history Grant Maitland found his men look askance at him. For the first time in his life he found himself viewing with suspicion the workers whom he had always taken a pride in designating "my men." The situation was at once galling to his pride and shocking to his sense of fair play. His men were his comrades in work. He knew them--at least, until these war days he had known them--personally, as friends. They trusted him and were loyal to him, and he had taken the greatest care to deal justly and more than justly by them. No labour troubles had ever disturbed the relations which existed between him and his men. It was thus no small shock when Wickes announced one day that a Grievance Committee wished to interview him. That he should have to meet a Grievance Committee, whose boast it had been that the first man in the works to know of a grievance was himself, and that the men with whom he had toiled and shared both good fortune and ill, but more especially the good, that had befallen through the last quarter century should have a grievance against him--this was indeed an experience that cut him to the heart and roused in him a fury of perplexed indignation.

"A what? A Grievance Committee!" he exclaimed to Wickes, when the old bookkeeper came announcing such a deputation.

"That's what they call themselves, sir," said Wickes, his tone of disgust disclaiming all association with any such organization.

"A Grievance Committee?" said Mr. Maitland again. "Well, I'll be! What do they want? Who are they? Bring them in," he roared in a voice whose ascending tone indicated his growing amazement and wrath.

"Come in you," growled Wickes in the voice he generally used for his collie dog, which bore a thoroughly unenviable reputation, "come on in, can't ye?"

There was some shuffling for place in the group at the door, but finally Mr. Wigglesworth found himself pushed to the front of a committee of five. With a swift glance which touched "the boss" in its passage and then rested upon the wall, the ceiling, the landscape visible through the window, anywhere indeed rather than upon the face of the man against whom they had a grievance, they filed in and stood ill at ease.

"Well, Wigglesworth, what is it?" said Grant Maitland curtly.

Mr. Wigglesworth cleared his throat. He was new at the business and was obviously torn between conflicting emotions of pride in his present important position and a wholesome fear of his "boss." However, having cleared his throat, Mr. Wigglesworth pulled himself together and with a wave of the hand began.

"These 'ere--er--gentlemen an' myself 'ave been (h)appinted a Committee to lay before you certain grievances w'ich we feel to be very (h)oppressive, sir, so to speak, w'ich, an'