saw the pickers, the carding engines, the spinning mules and the
looms put into it, one after the other, and I would see every machine
and stone crumble and fall to the floor again before I would accede
to your wishes." Borden would not have been amiss had he added that
every stone in that mill was cemented with human blood. His
operatives went on a strike, stayed out ten months, suffered
frightful hardships, and then were forced back to their tasks by
hunger. Borden was inflexible, and so were all the other cotton mill
owners. [Footnote: The heroism of the cotton operatives was
extraordinary. Slaves themselves, they battled to exterminate negro
slavery. "The spinner's union," says McNeill, "was almost dead during
the [Civil] war, as most of its members had gone to shoulder the
musket and to fight... to strike the shackles from the negro. A large
number were slain in battle."-"The Labor Movement": 216-217.] It was
not until 1874, after many further bitterly-contested strikes, that
the Masachusetts Legislature was prevailed upon to pass a ten-hour
law, twenty-four years after the British Parliament had passed such
an enactment.

The commercial class, high and low, was impregnated with deceit and
dissimulation, cynicism, selfishness and cruelty. What were the
aspirations of the working class which it was to uplift? The contrast
stood out with stark distinctness. While business men were
frantically sapping the labor and life out of their workers, and then
tricking and cheating one another to seize the proceeds of that
exploitation, the labor unions were teaching the nobility of
brotherly cooperation. "Cultivate friendship among the great
brotherhood of toil," was the advice of Uriah Stevens, master workman
of the Knights of Labor, at the annual meeting of that organization
on January 12, 1871. And he went on: