orking-men are on a war-footing
towards their employers, they do merely what the great potentates do when
they get into a quarrel. Beyond all other bourgeois is our friend Dr.
Ure, the most furious enemy of the Unions. He foams with indignation at
the "secret tribunals" of the cotton-spinners, the most powerful section
of the workers, tribunals which boast their ability to paralyse every
disobedient manufacturer, {222a} "and so bring ruin on the man who had
given them profitable employment for many a year." He speaks of a time
{222b} "when the inventive head and the sustaining heart of trade were
held in bondage by the unruly lower members." A pity that the English
working-men will not let themselves be pacified so easily with thy fable
as the Roman Plebs, thou modern Menenius Agrippa! Finally, he relates
the following: At one time the coarse mule-spinners had misused their
power beyond all endurance. High wages, instead of awakening
thankfulness towards the manufacturers and leading to intellectual
improvement (in harmless study of sciences useful to the bourgeoisie, of
course), in many cases produced pride and supplied funds for supporting
rebellious spirits in strikes, with which a number of manufacturers were
visited one after the other in a purely arbitrary manner. During an
unhappy disturbance of this sort in Hyde, Dukinfield, and the surrounding
neighbourhood, the manufacturers of the district, anxious lest they
should be driven from the market by the French, Belgians, and Americans,
addressed themselves to the machine-works of Sharp, Roberts & Co., and
requested Mr. Sharp to turn his inventive mind to the construction of an
automatic mule in order "to emancipate the trade from galling slavery and
impending ruin." {223a}

"He produced in the course of a few months a machine apparently instinct
with the thought, feeling, and tact of the experienced workman--which
even in its infancy displayed a new principle of regulation, ready in its
mature state to fulfil the functions of a finished spinner. Thus the
Iron Man, as the operatives fitly call it, sprung out of the hands of our
modern Prometheus at the bidding of Minerva--a creation destined to
restore order among the industrious classes, and to confirm to Great
Britain the empire of art. The news of this Herculean prodigy spread
dismay through the Union, and even long before it left its cradle, so to
speak, it strangled the Hydra of misrule." {223b}

Ure