Generally it ended in compromise; but, so far as the Union was
concerned, it was a broken organization; branches went down, and it was
many years afterwards before it was again reestablished in some of the
districts.
Though at the time it might have seemed all loss, yet it had its
advantages, and especially demonstrated the fact that there was a fine
discipline and the necessary unity among the rank and file. The next
great work was to find out how that unity could be guided and that
discipline perfected--how to find a common ideal for the men. This was
Robert Smillie's task, and who shall say, looking at the rank and file
to-day, that he has failed?
CHAPTER XII
THE RIVALS
Eight years passed, and Robert grew into young manhood. One of his
younger brothers had joined him and Andrew Marshall in the partnership.
It had been a long, stiff struggle, and his mother knew all the hardness
and cruelty of it. In after years Robert loved his mother more for the
fight she put up, though it never seemed to him that he himself had done
anything extraordinary. He was always thoughtful, and planned to save
her worry. On "pay-nights," once a fortnight, when other boys of his age
were getting a sixpence, or perhaps even a shilling, as pocket-money, so
that they could spend a few coppers on the things that delight a boy's
heart, Robert resolutely refused to take a penny.
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