Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (read novel full TXT) 📖

in which he had amassed a considerable fortune.

This was not very surprising, considering that he paid none of his

workpeople fair wages and many of them no wages at all. He employed a

great number of girls and young women who were supposed to be learning

dressmaking, mantle-making or millinery. These were all indentured

apprentices, some of whom had paid premiums of from five to ten

pounds. They were `bound’ for three years. For the first two years

they received no wages: the third year they got a shilling or

eightpence a week. At the end of the third year they usually got the

sack, unless they were willing to stay on as improvers at from three

shillings to four and sixpence per week.

 

They worked from half past eight in the morning till eight at night,

with an interval of an hour for dinner, and at half past four they

ceased work for fifteen minutes for tea. This was provided by the

firm - half a pint for each girl, but they had to bring their own milk

and sugar and bread and butter.

 

Few of the girls ever learned their trades thoroughly. Some were

taught to make sleeves; others cuffs or buttonholes, and so on. The

result was that in a short time each one became very expert and quick

at one thing; and although their proficiency in this one thing would

never enable them to earn a decent living, it enabled Mr Sweater to

make money during the period of their apprenticeship, and that was all

he cared about.

 

Occasionally a girl of intelligence and spirit would insist on the

fulfilment of the terms of her indentures, and sometimes the parents

would protest. If this were persisted in those girls got on better:

but even these were turned to good account by the wily Sweater, who

induced the best of them to remain after their time was up by paying

them what appeared - by contrast with the others girls’ money - good

wages, sometimes even seven or eight shillings a week! and liberal

promises of future advancement. These girls then became a sort of

reserve who could be called up to crush any manifestation of

discontent on the part of the leading hands.

 

The greater number of the girls, however, submitted tamely to the

conditions imposed upon them. They were too young to realize the

wrong that was being done them. As for their parents, it never

occurred to them to doubt the sincerity of so good a man as Mr

Sweater, who was always prominent in every good and charitable work.

 

At the expiration of the girl’s apprenticeship, if the parents

complained of her want of proficiency, the pious Sweater would

attribute it to idleness or incapacity, and as the people were

generally poor he seldom or never had any trouble with them. This was

how he fulfilled the unctuous promise made to the confiding parents at

the time the girl was handed over to his tender mercy - that he would

`make a woman of her’.

 

This method of obtaining labour by false pretences and without

payment, which enabled him to produce costly articles for a mere

fraction of the price for which they were eventually sold, was adopted

in other departments of his business. He procured shop assistants of

both sexes on the same terms. A youth was indentured, usually for

five years, to be `Made a Man of and `Turned out fit to take a

Position in any House’. If possible, a premium, five, ten, or twenty

pounds - according to their circumstances - would be extracted from

the parents. For the first three years, no wages: after that, perhaps

two or three shillings a week.

 

At the end of the five years the work of `Making a Man of him’ would

be completed. Mr Sweater would then congratulate him and assure him

that he was qualified to assume a `position’ in any House but regret

that there was no longer any room for him in his. Business was so

bad. Still, if the Man wished he might stay on until he secured a

better `position’ and, as a matter of generosity, although he did not

really need the Man’s services, he would pay him ten shillings per

week!

 

Provided he was not addicted to drinking, smoking, gambling or the

Stock Exchange, or going to theatres, the young man’s future was thus

assured. Even if he were unsuccessful in his efforts to obtain

another position he could save a portion of his salary and eventually

commence business on his own account.

 

However, the branch of Mr Sweater’s business to which it is desired to

especially direct the reader’s attention was the Homeworkers

Department. He employed a large number of women making ladies’

blouses, fancy aprons and children’s pinafores. Most of these

articles were disposed of wholesale in London and elsewhere, but some

were retailed at `Sweaters’ Emporium’ in Mugsborough and at the firm’s

other retail establishments throughout the county. Many of the women

workers were widows with children, who were glad to obtain any

employment that did not take hem away from their homes and families.

 

The blouses were paid for at tie rate of from two shillings to five

shillings a dozen, the women having to provide their own machine and

cotton, besides calling for and delivering the work. These poor women

were able to clear from six to eight shillings a week: and to earn

even that they had to work almost incessantly for fourteen or sixteen

hours a day. There was no time for cooling and very little to cook,

for they lived principally on bread and margarine and tea. Their

homes were squalid, their children half-starved and raggedly clothed

in grotesque garments hastily fashioned out of the castoff clothes of

charitable neighbours.

 

But it was not in vain that these women toiled every weary day until

exhaustion compelled them to case. It was not in vain that they

passed their cheerless lives bending with aching shoulders over the

thankless work that barely brought them bread. It was not in vain that

they and their children went famished and in rags, for after all, the

principal object of their labour was accomplished: the Good Cause was

advanced. Mr Sweater waxed rich and increased in goods and

respectability.

 

Of course, none of those women were COMPELLED to engage in that

glorious cause. No one is compelled to accept any particular set of

conditions in a free country like this. Mr Trafaim - the manager of

Sweater’s Homework Department - always put the matter before them in

the plainest, fairest possible way. There was the work: that was the

figure! And those who didn’t like it could leave it. There was no

compulsion.

 

Sometimes some perverse creature belonging to that numerous class who

are too lazy to work DID leave it! But as the manager said, there

were plenty of others who were only too glad to take it. In fact,

such was the enthusiasm amongst these women - especially such of them

as had little children to provide for - and such was their zeal for

the Cause, that some of them have been known to positively beg to be

allowed to work!

 

By these and similar means Adam Sweater had contrived to lay up for

himself a large amount of treasure upon earth, besides attaining

undoubted respectability; for that he was respectable no one

questioned. He went to chapel twice every Sunday, his obese figure

arrayed in costly apparel, consisting - with other things - of grey

trousers, a long garment called a frockcoat, a tall silk hat, a

quantity of jewellery and a morocco-bound gilt-edged Bible. He was an

official of some sort of the Shining Light Chapel. His name appeared

in nearly every published list of charitable subscriptions. No

starving wretch had ever appealed to him in vain for a penny soup

ticket.

 

Small wonder that when this good and public-spirited man offered his

services to the town - free of charge - the intelligent working men of

Mugsborough accepted his offer with enthusiastic applause. The fact

that he had made money in business was a proof of his intellectual

capacity. His much-advertised benevolence was a guarantee that his

abilities would be used to further not his own private interests, but

the interests of every section of the community, especially those of

the working classes, of whom the majority of his constituents was

composed.

 

As for the shopkeepers, they were all so absorbed in their own

business - so busily engaged chasing their employees, adding up their

accounts, and dressing themselves up in feeble imitation of the

`Haristocracy’ - that they were incapable of taking a really

intelligent interest in anything else. They thought of the Town

Council as a kind of Paradise reserved exclusively for jerry-builders

and successful tradesmen. Possibly, some day, if they succeeded in

making money, they might become town councillors themselves! but in

the meantime public affairs were no particular concern of theirs. So

some of them voted for Adam Sweater because he was a Liberal and some

of them voted against him for the same `reason’.

 

Now and then, when details of some unusually scandalous proceeding of

the Council’s leaked out, the townspeople - roused for a brief space

from their customary indifference - would discuss the matter in a

casual, half-indignant, half-amused, helpless sort of way; but always

as if it were something that did not directly concern them. It was

during some such nine days’ wonder that the title of `The Forty

Thieves’ was bestowed on the members of the Council by their

semi-imbecile constituents, who, not possessing sufficient

intelligence to devise means of punishing the culprits, affected to

regard the manoeuvres of the Brigands as a huge joke.

 

There was only one member of the Council who did not belong to the

Band - Councillor Weakling, a retired physician; but unfortunately he

also was a respectable man. When he saw something going forwards that

he did not think was right, he protested and voted against it and then -

he collapsed! There was nothing of the low agitator about HIM. As

for the Brigands, they laughed at his protests and his vote did not

matter.

 

With this one exception, the other members of the band were very

similar in character to Sweater, Rushton, Didlum and Grinder. They

had all joined the Band with the same objects, self-glorification and

the advancement of their private interests. These were the real

reasons why they besought the ratepayers to elect them to the Council,

but of course none of them ever admitted that such was the case. No!

When these noble-minded altruists offered their services to the town

they asked the people to believe that they were actuated by a desire

to give their time and abilities for the purpose of furthering the

interests of Others, which was much the same as asking them to believe

that it is possible for the leopard to change his spots.

 

Owing to the extraordinary apathy of the other inhabitants, the

Brigands were able to carry out their depredations undisturbed.

Daylight robberies were of frequent occurrence.

 

For many years these Brigands had looked with greedy eyes upon the

huge profits of the Gas Company. They thought it was a beastly shame

that those other bandits should be always raiding the town and getting

clear away with such rich spoils.

 

At length - about two years ago - after much study and many private

consultations, a plan of campaign was evolved; a secret council of war

was held, presided over by Mr Sweater, and the Brigands formed

themselves into an association called `The Mugsborough Electric Light

Supply and Installation Coy. Ltd.’, and bound themselves by a solemn

oath to do their best to drive the