Put Yourself in His Place was published by Smith, Elder in 1870, and it is Reade’s most politically contentious novel. The book is set in the Sheffield cutlery district and depicts the coercive practices of the trade unions — intimidation, property destruction, and ultimately attempted murder — used against workers who refused to join or who undercut union prices. The protagonist, Henry Little, is a talented inventor and craftsman who insists on working independently and is subjected to escalating violence by the union operatives known locally as “ratteners.”
Reade’s research was characteristically thorough: the novel was based on the official report of the Sheffield Outrages Commission of 1867, which had investigated a series of real attacks on non-union workers, including the infamous Hereford Street explosion. Reade reproduced the commission’s findings almost verbatim in places, using the documented cases as the raw material for his fiction.
The novel was attacked by the labor movement as anti-union propaganda and praised by employers as a brave exposé of union tyranny. Both responses missed Reade’s more nuanced position: he was not opposed to collective bargaining but to violent coercion. The title — “Put Yourself in His Place” — is an appeal to empathy, asking both employers and union members to consider the situation from the other side. Reade’s sympathies were genuinely divided, though the novel’s structure (heroic individual versus persecuting collective) inevitably tilted toward the anti-union reading.
Collecting Put Yourself in His Place
First edition (Smith, Elder, London, 1870): Three volumes, cloth.
Market values:
- First edition, three volumes: $100–$300
- Single-volume editions: $10–$25