which existed here from the year 1816, possessed rare organisation
and power. The members were bound by an oath to adhere to the decision
of the majority, and had during every turnout a secret committee which
was unknown to the mass of the members, and controlled the funds of the
Union absolutely. This committee fixed a price upon the heads of
knobsticks and obnoxious manufacturers and upon incendiarisms in mills. A
mill was thus set on fire in which female knobsticks were employed in
spinning in the place of men; a Mrs. M'Pherson, mother of one of these
girls, was murdered, and both murderers sent to America at the expense of
the association. As early as 1820, a knobstick named M'Quarry was shot
at and wounded, for which deed the doer received twenty pounds from the
Union, but was discovered and transported for life. Finally, in 1837, in
May, disturbances occurred in consequence of a turnout in the Oatbank and
Mile End factories, in which perhaps a dozen knobsticks were maltreated.
In July, of the same year, the disturbances still continued, and a
certain Smith, a knobstick, was so maltreated that he died. The
committee was now arrested, an investigation begun, and the leading
members found guilty of participation in conspiracies, maltreatment of
knobsticks, and incendiarism in the mill of James and Francis Wood, and
they were transported for seven years. What do our good Germans say to
this story? {221b}

The property-holding class, and especially the manufacturing portion of
it which comes into direct contact with the working-men, declaims with
the greatest violence against these Unions, and is constantly trying to
prove their uselessness to the working-men upon grounds which are
economically perfectly correct, but for that very reason partially
mistaken, and for the working-man's understanding totally without effect.
The very zeal of the bourgeoisie shows that it is not disinterested in
the matter; and apart from the indirect loss involved in a turnout, the
state of the case is such that whatever goes into the pockets of the
manufacturers comes of necessity out of those of the worker. So that
even if the working-men did not know that the Unions hold the emulation
of their masters in the reduction of wages, at least in a measure, in
check, they would still stand by the Unions, simply to the injury of
their enemies, the manufacturers. In war the injury of one party is the
benefit of the other, and since the w