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

Skull and

Crossbones Boys’, which existed for the purpose of perpetuating the

great religious festival of Guy Fawkes. This association also came to

the aid of the unemployed and organized a Grand Fancy Dress Carnival

and Torchlight Procession. When this took place, although there was a

slight sprinkling of individuals dressed in tawdry costumes as

cavaliers of the time of Charles I, and a few more as highwaymen or

footpads, the majority of the processionists were boys in women’s

clothes, or wearing sacks with holes cut in them for their heads and

arms, and with their faces smeared with soot. There were also a

number of men carrying frying-pans in which they burnt red and blue

fire. The procession - or rather, mob - was headed by a band, and the

band was headed by two men, arm in arm, one very tall, dressed to

represent Satan, in red tights, with horns on his head, and smoking a

large cigar, and the other attired in the no less picturesque costume

of a bishop of the Established Church.

 

This crew paraded the town, howling and dancing, carrying flaring

torches, burning the blue and red fire, and some of them singing silly

or obscene songs; whilst the collectors ran about with the boxes

begging for money from people who were in most cases nearly as

poverty-stricken as the unemployed they were asked to assist. The

money thus obtained was afterwards handed over to the Secretary of the

Organized Benevolence Society, Mr Sawney Grinder.

 

Then there was the Soup Kitchen, which was really an inferior

eating-house in a mean street. The man who ran this was a relative of

the secretary of the OBS. He cadged all the ingredients for the soup

from different tradespeople: bones and scraps of meat from butchers:

pea meal and split peas from provision dealers: vegetables from

greengrocers: stale bread from bakers, and so on. Well-intentioned,

charitable old women with more money than sense sent him donations in

cash, and he sold the soup for a penny a basin - or a penny a quart to

those who brought jugs.

 

He had a large number of shilling books printed, each containing

thirteen penny tickets. The Organized Benevolence Society bought a

lot of these books and resold them to benevolent persons, or gave them

away to `deserving cases’. It was this connection with the OBS that

gave the Soup Kitchen a semi-official character in the estimation of

the public, and furnished the proprietor with the excuse for cadging

the materials and money donations.

 

In the case of the Soup Kitchen, as with the unemployed processions,

most of those who benefited were unskilled labourers or derelicts:

with but few exceptions the unemployed artisans - although their need

was just as great as that of the others - avoided the place as if it

were infected with the plague. They were afraid even to pass through

the street where it was situated lest anyone seeing them coming from

that direction should think they had been there. But all the same,

some of them allowed their children to go there by stealth, by night,

to buy some of this charity-tainted food.

 

Another brilliant scheme, practical and statesmanlike, so different

from the wild projects of demented Socialists, was started by the Rev.

Mr Bosher, a popular preacher, the Vicar of the fashionable Church of

the Whited Sepulchre. He collected some subscriptions from a number

of semi-imbecile old women who attended his church. With some of this

money he bought a quantity of timber and opened what he called a

Labour Yard, where he employed a number of men sawing firewood. Being

a clergyman, and because he said he wanted it for a charitable

purpose, of course he obtained the timber very cheaply - for about

half what anyone else would have had to pay for it.

 

The wood-sawing was done piecework. A log of wood about the size of a

railway sleeper had to be sawn into twelve pieces, and each of these

had to be chopped into four. For sawing and chopping one log in this

manner the worker was paid ninepence. One log made two bags of

firewood, which were sold for a shilling each - a trifle under the

usual price. The men who delivered the bags were paid three

halfpence for each two bags.

 

As there were such a lot of men wanting to do this work, no one was

allowed to do more than three lots in one day - that came to two

shillings and threepence - and no one was allowed to do more than two

days in one week.

 

The Vicar had a number of bills printed and displayed in shop windows

calling attention to what he was doing, and informing the public that

orders could be sent to the Vicarage by post and would receive prompt

attention and the fuel could be delivered at any address - Messrs

Rushton & Co. having very kindly lent a handcart for the use of the

men employed at the Labour Yard.

 

As a result of the appearance of this bill, and of the laudatory

notices in the columns of the Ananias, the Obscurer, and the

Chloroform - the papers did not mind giving the business a free

advertisement, because it was a charitable concern - many persons

withdrew their custom from those who usually supplied them with

firewood, and gave their orders to the Yard; and they had the

satisfaction of getting their fuel cheaper than before and of

performing a charitable action at the same time.

 

As a remedy for unemployment this scheme was on a par with the method

of the tailor in the fable who thought to lengthen his cloth by

cutting a piece off one end and sewing it on to the other; but there

was one thing about it that recommended it to the Vicar - it was

self-supporting. He found that there would be no need to use all the

money he had extracted from the semi-imbecile old ladies for timber,

so he bought himself a Newfoundland dog, an antique set of carved

ivory chessmen, and a dozen bottles of whisky with the remainder of

the cash.

 

The reverend gentleman hit upon yet another means of helping the poor.

He wrote a letter to the Weekly Chloroform appealing for castoff

boots for poor children. This was considered such a splendid idea

that the editors of all the local papers referred to it in leading

articles, and several other letters were written by prominent citizens

extolling the wisdom and benevolence of the profound Bosher. Most of

the boots that were sent in response to this appeal had been worn

until they needed repair - in a very large proportion of instances,

until they were beyond repair. The poor people to whom they were

given could not afford to have them mended before using them, and the

result was that the boots generally began to fall to pieces after a

few days’ wear.

 

This scheme amounted to very little. It did not increase the

number of castoff boots, and most of the people who `cast off’ their

boots generally gave them to someone or other. The only difference It

can have made was that possibly a few persons who usually threw their

boots away or sold them to second-hand dealers may have been induced

to send them to Mr Bosher instead. But all the same nearly everybody

said it was a splendid idea: its originator was applauded as a public

benefactor, and the pettifogging busybodies who amused themselves with

what they were pleased to term `charitable work’ went into imbecile

ecstasies over him.