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

remark or delay, the other men who

were not yet paid having to wait while he made out his time-sheet for

that morning.

 

The story of this card spread all over the place in a very short time.

It became the talk of every shop in the town. Whenever any of

Rushton’s men encountered the employees of another firm, the latter

used to shout after them - `However trifling!’ - or `Look out, chaps!

‘Ere comes some of Rushton’s pickpockets.’

 

Amongst Rushton’s men themselves it became a standing joke or form of

greeting to say when one met another - `Remember! However trifling!’

 

If one of their number was seen going home with an unusual amount of

paint or whitewash on his hands or clothes, the others would threaten

to report him for stealing the material. They used to say that

however trifling the quantity, it was against orders to take it away.

 

Harlow drew up a list of rules which he said Mr Rushton had instructed

him to communicate to the men. One of these rules provided that

everybody was to be weighed upon arrival at the job in the morning and

again at leaving-off time: any man found to have increased in weight

was to be discharged.

 

There was also much cursing and covert resentment about it; the men

used to say that such a thing as that looked well coming from the

likes of Rushton and Hunter, and they used to remind each other of the

affair of the marble-topped console table, the barometer, the venetian

blinds and all the other robberies.

 

None of them ever said anything to either Misery or Rushton about the

cards, but one morning when the latter was reading his letters at the

breakfast table, on opening one of them he found that it contained one

of the notices, smeared with human excrement. He did not eat any more

breakfast that morning.

 

It was not to be much wondered at that none of them had the courage to

openly resent the conditions under which they had to work, for

although it was summer, there were many men out of employment, and it

was much easier to get the sack than it was to get another job.

 

None of the men were ever caught stealing anything, however trifling,

but all the same during the course of the summer five or six of them

were captured by the police and sent to jail - for not being able to

pay their poor rates.

 

All through the summer Owen continued to make himself objectionable

and to incur the ridicule of his fellow workmen by talking about the

causes of poverty and of ways to abolish it.

 

Most of the men kept two shillings or half a crown of their wages back

from their wives for pocket money, which they spent on beer and

tobacco. There were a very few who spent a little more than this, and

there were a still smaller number who spent so much in this way that

their families had to suffer in consequence.

 

Most of those who kept back half a crown or three shillings from their

wives did so on the understanding that they were to buy their clothing

out of it. Some of them had to pay a shilling a week to a tallyman or

credit clothier. These were the ones who indulged in shoddy new suits -

at long intervals. Others bought - or got their wives to buy for them -

their clothes at second-hand shops, `paying off’ about a shilling or

so a week and not receiving the things till they were paid for.

 

There were a very large proportion of them who did not spend even a

shilling a week for drink: and there were numerous others who, while

not being formally total abstainers, yet often went for weeks together

without either entering a public house or tasting intoxicating drink

in any form.

 

Then there were others who, instead of drinking tea or coffee or cocoa

with their dinners or suppers, drank beer. This did not cost more

than the teetotal drinks, but all the same there are some persons who

say that those who swell the `Nation’s Drink Bill’ by drinking beer

with their dinners or suppers are a kind of criminal, and that they

ought to be compelled to drink something else: that is, if they are

working people. As for the idle classes, they of course are to be

allowed to continue to make merry, `drinking whisky, wine and sherry’,

to say nothing of having their beer in by the barrel and the dozen -

or forty dozen - bottles. But of course that’s a different matter,

because these people make so much money out of the labour of the

working classes that they can afford to indulge in this way without

depriving their children of the necessaries of life.

 

There is no more cowardly, dastardly slander than is contained in the

assertion that the majority or any considerable proportion of working

men neglect their families through drink. It is a condemned lie.

There are some who do, but they are not even a large minority. They

are few and far between, and are regarded with contempt by their

fellow workmen.

 

It will be said that their families had to suffer for want of even the

little that most of them spent in that way: but the persons that use

this argument should carry it to its logical conclusion. Tea is an

unnecessary and harmful drink; it has been condemned by medical men so

often that to enumerate its evil qualities here would be waste of

time. The same can be said of nearly all the cheap temperance drinks;

they are unnecessary and harmful and cost money, and, like beer, are

drunk only for pleasure.

 

What right has anyone to say to working men that when their work is

done they should not find pleasure in drinking a glass or two of beer

together in a tavern or anywhere else? Let those who would presume to

condemn them carry their argument to its logical conclusion and

condemn pleasure of every kind. Let them persuade the working classes

to lead still simpler lives; to drink water instead of such

unwholesome things as tea, coffee, beer, lemonade and all the other

harmful and unnecessary stuff. They would then be able to live ever

so much more cheaply, and as wages are always and everywhere regulated

by the cost of living, they would be able to work for lower pay.

 

These people are fond of quoting the figures of the `Nation’s Drink

Bill,’ as if all this money were spent by the working classes! But if

the amount of money spent in drink by the `aristocracy’, the clergy

and the middle classes were deducted from the `Nation’s Drink Bill’,

it would be seen that the amount spent per head by the working classes

is not so alarming after all; and would probably not be much larger

than the amount spent on drink by those who consume tea and coffee and

all the other unwholesome and unnecessary `temperance’ drinks.

 

The fact that some of Rushton’s men spent about two shillings a week

on drink while they were in employment was not the cause of their

poverty. If they had never spent a farthing for drink, and if their

wretched wages had been increased fifty percent, they would still have

been in a condition of the most abject and miserable poverty, for

nearly all the benefits and privileges of civilization, nearly

everything that makes life worth living, would still have been beyond

their reach.

 

It is inevitable, so long as men have to live and work under such

heartbreaking, uninteresting conditions as at present that a certain

proportion of them will seek forgetfulness and momentary happiness in

the tavern, and the only remedy for this evil is to remove the cause;

and while that is in process, there is something else that can be done

and that is, instead of allowing filthy drinking dens, presided over

by persons whose interest it is to encourage men to drink more bad

beer than is good for them or than they can afford, - to have

civilized institutions run by the State or the municipalities for use

and not merely for profit. Decent pleasure houses, where no

drunkenness or filthiness would be tolerated - where one could buy

real beer or coffee or tea or any other refreshments; where men could

repair when their day’s work was over and spend an hour or two in

rational intercourse with their fellows or listen to music and

singing. Taverns to which they could take their wives and children

without fear of defilement, for a place that is not fit for the

presence of a woman or a child is not fit to exist at all.

 

Owen, being a teetotaller, did not spend any of his money on drink;

but he spent a lot on what he called `The Cause’. Every week he

bought some penny or twopenny pamphlets or some leaflets about

Socialism, which he lent or gave to his mates; and in this way and by

means of much talk he succeeded in converting a few to his party.

Philpot, Harlow and a few others used to listen with interest, and

some of them even paid for the pamphlets they obtained from Owen, and

after reading them themselves, passed them on to others, and also

occasionally `got up’ arguments on their own accounts. Others were

simply indifferent, or treated the subject as a kind of joke,

ridiculing the suggestion that it was possible to abolish poverty.

They repeated that there had `always been rich and poor in the world

and there always would be, so there was an end of it’. But the

majority were bitterly hostile; not to Owen, but to Socialism. For

the man himself most of them had a certain amount of liking,

especially the ordinary hands because it was known that he was not a

`master’s man’ and that he had declined to `take charge’ of jobs which

Misery had offered to him. But to Socialism they were savagely and

malignantly opposed. Some of those who had shown some symptoms of

Socialism during the past winter when they were starving had now quite

recovered and were stout defenders of the Present System.

 

Barrington was still working for the firm and continued to maintain

his manner of reserve, seldom speaking unless addressed but all the

same, for several reasons, it began to be rumoured that he shared

Owen’s views. He always paid for the pamphlets that Owen gave him,

and on one occasion, when Owen bought a thousand leaflets to give

away, Barrington contributed a shilling towards the half-crown that

Owen paid for them. But he never took any part in the arguments that

sometimes raged during the dinner-hour or at breakfast-time.

 

It was a good thing for Owen that he had his enthusiasm for `the

cause’ to occupy his mind. Socialism was to him what drink was to

some of the others - the thing that enable them to forget and tolerate

the conditions under which they were forced to exist. Some of them

were so muddled with beer, and others so besotted with admiration of

their Liberal and Tory masters, that they were oblivious of the misery

of their own lives, and in a similar way, Owen was so much occupied in

trying to rouse them from their lethargy and so engrossed in trying to

think out new arguments to convince them of the possibility of

bringing about an improvement in their condition that he had no time

to dwell upon his own poverty; the money that he spent on leaflets and

pamphlets to give away might have been better spent on food