30	KEIR  HARDIE
being " misled by agitators/' So they dismissed
Keir Hardie and his two brothers. In their own
interest they had better have kept him at work.
For now he could give to the miners' cause most
of his time. He started two small shops. One his
mother stocked with groceries ; in the other he
sold newspapers and tobacco. He earned a little,
also, as local correspondent to a Glasgow weekly,
and, after he married and moved into Ayrshire,
he was made editor-manager of the Cumnock News,
published in the little town where he made his
home.
He had all the qualifications for success in
journalism - an observant eye, a gift of vivid
description, a mind that cut always to the core
of the matter, emotions easily roused. He wrote
warmly and with vigour. At times, when he was
inclined to be literary, he descended to making
" lambkins leap and gambol while their dams
cropped the tender grass " and flowers " spangled
the sward.3' But as a rule it was true of his writing
as of his speaking that he " used words to express
what he thought, not to sound well; he had no
nonsense about him and no c^nt " (so a New Tork
World writer put it, when Hardie visited America).
His newspaper work, which he owed to his
reading and his mastery of shorthand, carried
him over a difficult patch in his young life. It
brought in a regular, though very small, income,
and left him time to organise the miners, who as
yet could not pay enough for him to live on. He
thought hard before he resolved to take this task