CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. — HOW THE PRESS-GANG CAME IN.
CHAPTER II. — WHY THE GANG WAS NECESSARY.
CHAPTER III. — WHAT THE PRESS-GANG WAS.
CHAPTER IV. — WHOM THE GANG MIGHT TAKE.
CHAPTER V. — WHAT THE GANG DID AFLOAT.
CHAPTER VI. — EVADING THE GANG.
CHAPTER VII. — WHAT THE GANG DID ASHORE.
CHAPTER VIII. — AT GRIPS WITH THE GANG.
CHAPTER IX. — THE GANG AT PLAY.
CHAPTER X. — WOMEN AND THE PRESS-GANG.
CHAPTER XI. — IN THE CLUTCH OF THE GANG.
CHAPTER XII. — HOW THE GANG WENT OUT.
The practice of pressing men—that is to say, of taking by intimidation or force those who will not volunteer—would seem to have been world-wide in its adoption.
Wherever man desired to have a thing done, and was powerful enough to insure the doing of it, there he attained his end by the simple expedient of compelling others to do for him what he, unaided, could not do for himself.
The individual, provided he did not conspire in sufficient numbers to impede or defeat the end in view, counted only as a food-consuming atom in the human mass which was set to work out the purpose of the master mind and hand. His face value in the problem was that of a living wage. If he sought to enhance his value by opposing the master hand, the master hand seized him and wrung his withers.
So long as the compelling power confined the doing of the things it desired done to works of construction, it met with little opposition in its designs, experienced little difficulty in coercing the labour necessary for piling its walls, excavating its tanks, raising its pyramids and castles, or for levelling its roads and building its ships and cities. These were the commonplace achievements of peace, at which even the coerced might toil unafraid; for apart from the normal incidence of death, such works entailed little danger to the lives of the multitudes who wrought upon them. Men could in consequence be procured for them by the exercise of the minimum of coercion—by, that is to say, the mere threat of it.
When peace went to the wall and the pressed man was called upon to go to battle,