as it lay upon the deck for prompt discharge, and immediate application to use, was either knocked to pieces or washed overboard.
Well, the strike was directed against the application of strict contract time, under these unavoidable circumstances, and against the heavier work to which human backs must be subjected, if the contract supply must go on, without awaiting the effective aid of the special machinery in question, which machinery had, of course, been at once reordered from Massachusetts, on the occasion of the loss above mentioned. The trust was to suffer damage, because, in default of the large brick supply, just at the exact stipulated time, much other engaged work was kept waiting. But the great Brickmakers' Union stood firm to principle, and was duly justified in its course by the arbitration which followed. The backbone of iron and steel, at once cheap and enduring, uncomplaining and unsuffering, had now been definitively substituted for that of our more sensitive humanity, in all the rougher sections of the work of progress; and to descend from this needful and appropriate elevation and protection was alike injurious to, and unworthy of, our high civilization.
