Books: The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

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Besides the work at the Kiosk, towards the end of March things
gradually began to improve in other directions. Several firms began
to take on a few hands. Several large empty houses that were relet
had to be renovated for their new tenants, and there was a fair amount
of inside work arising out of the annual spring-cleaning in other
houses. There was not enough work to keep everyone employed, and most
of those who were taken on as a rule only managed to make a few hours
a week, but still it was better than absolute idleness, and there also
began to be talk of several large outside jobs that were to be done as
soon as the weather was settled.

This bad weather, by the way, was a sort of boon to the defenders of
the present system, who were hard-up for sensible arguments to explain
the cause of poverty. One of the principal causes was, of course, the
weather, which was keeping everything back. There was not the
slightest doubt that if only the weather would allow there would
always be plenty of work, and poverty would be abolished.

Rushton & Co. had a fair share of what work there was, and Crass,
Sawkins, Slyme and Owen were kept employed pretty regularly, although
they did not start until half past eight and left off at four. At
different houses in various parts of the town they had ceilings to
wash off and distemper, to strip the old paper from the walls, and to
repaint and paper the rooms, and sometimes there were the venetian
blinds to repair and repaint. Occasionally a few extra hands were
taken on for a few days, and discharged again as soon as the job they
were taken on to do was finished.

The defenders of the existing system may possibly believe that the
knowledge that they would be discharged directly the job was done was
a very good incentive to industry, that they would naturally under
these circumstances do their best to get the work done as quickly as
possible. But then it must be remembered that most of the defenders
of the existing system are so constituted, that they can believe
anything provided it is not true and sufficiently silly.

All the same, it was a fact that the workmen did do their very best to
get over this work in the shortest possible time, because although
they knew that to do so was contrary to their own interests, they also
knew that it would be very much more contrary to their interests not
to do so. Their only chance of being kept on if other work came in
was to tear into it for all they were worth. Consequently, most of
the work was rushed and botched and slobbered over in about half the
time that it would have taken to do it properly. Rooms for which the
customers paid to have three coats of paint were scamped with one or
two. What Misery did not know about scamping and faking the work, the
men suggested to and showed him in the hope of currying favour with
him in order that they might get the preference over others and be
sent for when the next job came in. This is the principal incentive
provided by the present system, the incentive to cheat. These fellows
cheated the customers of their money. They cheated themselves and
their fellow workmen of work, and their children of bread, but it was
all for a good cause - to make profit for their master.

Harlow and Slyme did one job - a room that Rushton & Co. had
contracted to paint three coats. It was finished with two and the men
cleared away their paints. The next day, when Slyme wept there to
paper the room, the lady of the house said that the painting was not
yet finished - it was to have another coat. Slyme assured her that it
had already had three, but, as the lady insisted, Slyme went to the
shop and sought out Misery. Harlow had been stood off, as there was
not another job in just then, but fortunately he happened to be
standing in the street outside the shop, so they called him and then
the three of them went round to the job and swore that the room had
had three coats. The lady protested that it was not so. She had
watched the progress of the work. Besides, it was impossible; they
had only been there three days. The first day they had not put any
paint on at all; they had done the ceiling and stripped the walls; the
painting was not started till the second day. How then could it have
had three coats? Misery explained the mystery: he said that for first
coating they had an extra special very fast-drying paint - paint that
dried so quickly that they were able to give the work two coats in one
day. For instance, one man did the window, the other the door: when
these were finished both men did the skirting; by the time the
skirting was finished the door and window were dry enough to second
coat; and then, on the following day - the finishing coat!

Of course, this extra special quick-drying paint was very expensive,
but the firm did not mind that. They knew that most of their
customers wished to have their work finished as quickly as possible,
and their study was to give satisfaction to the customers. This
explanation satisfied the lady - a poverty-stricken widow making a
precarious living by taking in lodgers - who was the more easily
deceived because she regarded Misery as a very holy man, having seen
him preaching in the street on many occasions.

There was another job at another boarding-house that Owen and Easton
did - two rooms which had to be painted three coats of white paint and
one of enamel, making four coats altogether. That was what the firm
had contracted to do. As the old paint in these rooms was of a rather
dark shade it was absolutely necessary to give the work three coats
before enamelling it. Misery wanted them to let it go with two, but
Owen pointed out that if they did so it would be such a ghastly mess
that it would never pass. After thinking the matter over for a few
minutes, Misery told them to go on with the third coat of paint. Then
he went downstairs and asked to see the lady of the house. He
explained to her that, in consequence of the old paint being so dark,
he found that it would be necessary, in order to make a good job of
it, to give the work four coats before enamelling it. Of course, they
had agreed for only three, but as they always made a point of doing
their work in a first-class manner rather than not make a good job,
they would give it the extra coat for nothing, but he was sure she
would not wish them to do that. The lady said that she did not want
them to work for nothing, and she wanted it done properly. If it were
necessary to give it an extra coat, they must do so and she would pay
for it. How much would it be? Misery told her. The lady was
satisfied, and Misery was in the seventh heaven. Then he went
upstairs again and warned Owen and Easton to be sure to say, if they
were asked, that the work had had four coats.

It would not be reasonable to blame Misery or Rushton for not wishing
to do good, honest work - there was no incentive. When they secured a
contract, if they had thought first of making the very best possible
job of it, they would not have made so much profit. The incentive was
not to do the work as well as possible, but to do as little as
possible. The incentive was not to make good work, but to make good
profit.

The same rule applied to the workers. They could not justly be blamed
for not doing good work - there was no incentive. To do good work
requires time and pains. Most of them would have liked to take time
and pains, because all those who are capable of doing good work find
pleasure and happiness in doing it, and have pride in it when done:
but there was no incentive, unless the certainty of getting the sack
could be called an incentive, for it was a moral certainty that any
man who was caught taking time and pains with his work would be
promptly presented with the order of the boot. But there was plenty
of incentive to hurry and scamp and slobber and botch.

There was another job at a lodging-house - two rooms to be painted and
papered. The landlord paid for the work, but the tenant had the
privilege of choosing the paper. She could have any pattern she liked
so long as the cost did not exceed one shilling per roll, Rushton's
estimate being for paper of that price. Misery sent her several
patterns of sixpenny papers, marked at a shilling, to choose from, but
she did not fancy any of them, and said that she would come to the
shop to make her selection. So Hunter tore round to the shop in a
great hurry to get there before her. In his haste to dismount, he
fell off his bicycle into the muddy road, and nearly smashed the
plate-glass window with the handle-bar of the machine as he placed it
against the shop front before going in.

Without waiting to clean the mud off his clothes, he ordered Budd, the
pimply-faced shopman, to get out rolls of all the sixpenny papers they
had, and then they both set to work and altered the price marked upon
them from sixpence to a shilling. Then they got out a number of
shilling papers and altered the price marked upon them, changing it
from a shilling to one and six.

When the unfortunate woman arrived, Misery was waiting for her with a
benign smile upon his long visage. He showed her all the sixpenny
ones, but she did not like any of them, so after a while Nimrod
suggested that perhaps she would like a paper of a little better
quality, and she could pay the trifling difference out of her own
pocket. Then he showed her the shilling papers that he had marked up
to one and sixpence, and eventually the lady selected one of these and
paid the extra sixpence per roll herself, as Nimrod suggested. There
were fifteen rolls of paper altogether - seven for one room and eight
for the other - so that in addition to the ordinary profit on the sale
of the paper - about two hundred and seventy-five per cent. - the firm
made seven and sixpence on this transaction. They might have done
better out of the job itself if Slyme had not been hanging the paper
piece-work, for, the two rooms being of the same pattern, he could
easily have managed to do them with fourteen rolls; in fact, that was
all he did use, but he cut up and partly destroyed the one that was
over so that he could charge for hanging it.

Owen was working there at the same time, for the painting of the rooms
was not done before Slyme papered them; the finishing coat was put on
after the paper was hung. He noticed Slyme destroying the paper and,
guessing the reason, asked him how he could reconcile such conduct as
that with his profession of religion.

Slyme replied that the fact that he was a Christian did not imply that
he never did anything wrong: if he committed a sin, he was a Christian
all the same, and it would be forgiven him for the sake of the Blood.
As for this affair of the paper, it was a matter between himself and
God, and Owen had no right to set himself up as a Judge.

In addition to all this work, there were a number of funerals. Crass
and Slyme did very well out of it all, working all day white-washing
or painting, and sometimes part of the night painting venetian blinds
or polishing coffins and taking them home, to say nothing of the
lifting in of the corpses and afterwards acting as bearers.

As time went on, the number of small jobs increased, and as the days
grew longer the men were allowed to put in a greater number of hours.
Most of the firms had some work, but there was never enough to keep
all the men in the town employed at the same time. It worked like
this: Every firm had a certain number of men who were regarded as the
regular hands. When there was any work to do, they got the preference
over strangers or outsiders. When things were busy, outsiders were
taken on temporarily. When the work fell off, these casual hands were
the first to be `stood still'. If it continued to fall off, the old
hands were also stood still in order of seniority, the older hands
being preferred to strangers - so long, of course, as they were not
old in the sense of being aged or inefficient.

This kind of thing usually continued all through the spring and
summer. In good years the men of all trades, carpenters, bricklayers,
plasterers, painters and so on, were able to keep almost regularly at
work, except in wet weather.

The difference between a good and bad spring and summer is that in
good years it is sometimes possible to make a little overtime, and the
periods of unemployment are shorter and less frequent than in bad
years. It is rare even in good years for one of the casual hands to
be employed by one firm for more than one, two or three months without
a break. It is usual for them to put in a month with one firm, then a
fortnight with another, then perhaps six weeks somewhere else, and
often between there are two or three days or even weeks of enforced
idleness. This sort of thing goes on all through spring, summer and
autumn.

Chapter 41

The Easter Offering. The Beano Meeting

By the beginning of April, Rushton & Co. were again working nine hours
a day, from seven in the morning till five-thirty at night, and after
Easter they started working full time from 6 A.M. till 5.30 P.M.,
eleven and a half hours - or, rather, ten hours, for they had to lose
half an hour at breakfast and an hour at dinner.

Just before Easter several of the men asked Hunter if they might be
allowed to work on Good Friday and Easter Monday, as, they said, they
had had enough holidays during the winter; they had no money to spare
for holiday-making, and they did not wish to lose two days' pay when
there was work to be done. Hunter told them that there was not
sufficient work in to justify him in doing as they requested: things
were getting very slack again, and Mr Rushton had decided to cease
work from Thursday night till Tuesday morning. They were thus
prevented from working on Good Friday, but it is true that not more
than one working man in fifty went to any religious service on that
day or on any other day during the Easter festival. On the contrary,
this festival was the occasion of much cursing and blaspheming on the
part of those whose penniless, poverty-stricken condition it helped to
aggravate by enforcing unprofitable idleness which they lacked the
means to enjoy.

During these holidays some of the men did little jobs on their own
account and others put in the whole time - including Good Friday and
Easter Sunday - gardening, digging and planting their plots of
allotment ground.

When Owen arrived home one evening during the week before Easter,
Frankie gave him an envelope which he had brought home from school.
It contained a printed leaflet:

CHURCH OF THE WHITED SEPULCHRE,
MUGSBOROUGH

Easter 19--

Dear Sir (or Madam),

In accordance with the usual custom we invite you to join with us in
presenting the Vicar, the Rev. Habbakuk Bosher, with an Easter
Offering, as a token of affection and regard.

Yours faithfully,
A. Cheeseman }
W. Taylor } Churchwardens

Mr Bosher's income from various sources connected with the church was
over six hundred pounds a year, or about twelve pounds per week, but
as that sum was evidently insufficient, his admirers had adopted this
device for supplementing it. Frankie said all the boys had one of
these letters and were going to ask their fathers for some money to
give towards the Easter offering. Most of them expected to get
twopence.

As the boy had evidently set his heart on doing the same as the other
children, Owen gave him the twopence, and they afterwards learned that
the Easter Offering for that year was one hundred and twenty-seven
pounds, which was made up of the amounts collected from the
parishioners by the children, the district visitors and the verger,
the collection at a special Service, and donations from the
feeble-minded old females elsewhere referred to.

By the end of April nearly all the old hands were back at work, and
several casual hands had also been taken on, the Semi-drunk being one
of the number. In addition to these, Misery had taken on a number of
what he called `lightweights', men who were not really skilled
workmen, but had picked up sufficient knowledge of the simpler parts
of the trade to be able to get over it passably. These were paid
fivepence or fivepence-halfpenny, and were employed in preference to
those who had served their time, because the latter wanted more money
and therefore were only employed when absolutely necessary. Besides
the lightweights there were a few young fellows called improvers, who
were also employed because they were cheap.

Crass now acted as colourman, having been appointed possibly because
he knew absolutely nothing about the laws of colour. As most of the
work consisted of small jobs, all the paint and distemper was mixed up
at the shop and sent out ready for use to the various jobs.

Sawkins or some of the other lightweights generally carried the
heavier lots of colour or scaffolding, but the smaller lots of colour
or such things as a pair of steps or a painter's plank were usually
sent by the boy, whose slender legs had become quite bowed since he
had been engaged helping the other philanthropists to make money for
Mr Rushton.

Crass's work as colourman was simplified, to a certain extent, by the
great number of specially prepared paints and distempers in all
colours, supplied by the manufacturers ready for use. Most of these
new-fangled concoctions were regarded with an eye of suspicion and
dislike by the hands, and Philpot voiced the general opinion about
them one day during a dinner-hour discussion when he said they might
appear to be all right for a time, but they would probably not last,
because they was mostly made of kimicles.

One of these new-fashioned paints was called `Petrifying Liquid', and
was used for first-coating decaying stone or plaster work. It was
also supposed to be used for thinning up a certain kind of patent
distemper, but when Misery found out that it was possible to thin the
latter with water, the use of `Petrifying Liquid' for that purpose was
discontinued. This `Petrifying Liquid' was a source of much merriment
to the hands. The name was applied to the tea that they made in
buckets on some of the jobs, and also to the four-ale that was
supplied by certain pubs.

One of the new inventions was regarded with a certain amount of
indignation by the hands: it was a white enamel, and they objected to
it for two reasons - one was because, as Philpot remarked, it dried so
quickly that you had to work like greased lightning; you had to be all
over the door directly you started it.

The other reason was that, because it dried so quickly, it was
necessary to keep closed the doors and windows of the room where it
was being used, and the smell was so awful that it brought on fits of
dizziness and sometimes vomiting. Needless to say, the fact that it
compelled those who used it to work quickly recommended the stuff to
Misery.

As for the smell, he did not care about that; be did not have to
inhale the fumes himself.

It was just about this time that Crass, after due consultation with
several of the others, including Philpot, Harlow, Bundy, Slyme, Easton
and the Semi-drunk, decided to call a meeting of the hands for the
purpose of considering the advisability of holding the usual Beano
later on in the summer. The meeting was held in the carpenter's shop
down at the yard one evening at six o'clock, which allowed time for
those interested to attend after leaving work.

The hands sat on the benches or carpenter's stools, or reclined upon
heaps of shavings. On a pair of tressels in the centre of the
workshop stood a large oak coffin which Crass had just finished
polishing.

When all those who were expected to turn up had arrived, Payne, the
foreman carpenter - the man who made the coffins - was voted to the
chair on the proposition of Crass, seconded by Philpot, and then a
solemn silence ensued, which was broken at last by the chairman, who,
in a lengthy speech, explained the object of the meeting. Possibly
with a laudable desire that there should be no mistake about it, he
took the trouble to explain several times, going over the same ground
and repeating the same words over and over again, whilst the audience
waited in a deathlike and miserable silence for him to leave off.
Payne, however, did not appear to have any intention of leaving off,
for he continued, like a man in a trance, to repeat what he had said
before, seeming to be under the impression that he had to make a
separate explanation to each individual member of the audience. At
last the crowd could stand it no longer, and began to shout `Hear,
hear' and to bang bits of wood and hammers on the floor and the
benches; and then, after a final repetition of the statement, that the
object of the meeting was to consider the advisability of holding an
outing, or beanfeast, the chairman collapsed on to a carpenter's stool
and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

Crass then reminded the meeting that the last year's Beano had been an
unqualified success, and for his part he would be very sorry if they
did not have one this year. Last year they had four brakes, and they
went to Tubberton Village.

It was true that there was nothing much to see at Tubberton, but there
was one thing they could rely on getting there that they could not be
sure of getting for the same money anywhere else, and that was - a
good feed. (Applause.) Just for the sake of getting on with the
business, he would propose that they decide to go to Tubberton, and
that a committee be appointed to make arrangements - about the dinner -
with the landlord of the Queen Elizabeth's Head at that place.

Philpot seconded the motion, and Payne was about to call for a show of
hands when Harlow rose to a point of order. It appeared to him that
they were getting on a bit too fast. The proper way to do this
business was first to take the feeling of the meeting as to whether
they wished to have a Beano at all, and then, if the meeting was in
favour of it, they could decide where they were to go, and whether
they would have a whole day or only half a day.

The Semi-drunk said that he didn't care a dreadful expression where
they went: he was willing to abide by the decision of the majority.
(Applause.) It was a matter of indifference to him whether they had a
day, or half a day, or two days; he was agreeable to anything.

Easton suggested that a special saloon carriage might be engaged, and
they could go and visit Madame Tussaud's Waxworks. He had never been
to that place and had often wished to see it. But Philpot objected
that if they went there, Madame Tussaud's might be unwilling to let
them out again.

Bundy endorsed the remarks that had fallen from Crass with reference
to Tubberton. He did not care where they went, they would never get
such a good spread for the money as they did last year at the Queen
Elizabeth. (Cheers.)

The chairman said that. he remembered the last Beano very well. They
had half a day - left off work on Saturday at twelve instead of one -
so there was only one hour's wages lost - they went home, had a wash
and changed their clothes, and got up to the Cricketers, where the
brakes was waiting, at one. Then they had the two hours' drive to
Tubberton, stopping on the way for drinks at the Blue Lion, the
Warrior's Head, the Bird in Hand, the Dewdrop Inn and the World
Turned Upside Down. (Applause.) They arrived at the Queen Elizabeth
at three-thirty, and the dinner was ready; and it was one of the
finest blow-outs he had ever had. (Hear, hear.) There was soup,
vegetables, roast beef, roast mutton, lamb and mint sauce, plum duff,
Yorkshire, and a lot more. The landlord of the Elizabeth kept as good
a drop of beer as anyone could wish to drink, and as for the
teetotallers, they could have tea, coffee or ginger beer.

Having thus made another start, Payne found it very difficult to leave
off, and was proceeding to relate further details of the last Beano
when Harlow again rose up from his heap of shavings and said he wished
to call the chairman to order. (Hear, hear.) What the hell was the
use of all this discussion before they h&d even decided to have a
Beano at all! Was the meeting in favour of a Beano or not? That was
the question.

A prolonged and awkward silence followed. Everyone was very
uncomfortable, looking stolidly on the ground or staring straight in
front of them.

At last Easton broke the silence by suggesting that it would not be a
bad plan if someone was to make a motion that a Beano be held. This
was greeted with a general murmur of `Hear, hear,' followed by another
awkward pause, and then the chairman asked Easton if he would move a
resolution to that effect. After some hesitation, Easton agreed, and
formally moved: `That this meeting is in favour of a Beano.'

The Semi-drunk said that, in order to get on with the business, he
would second the resolution. But meantime, several arguments had
broken out between the advocates of different places, and several men
began to relate anecdotes of previous Beanos. Nearly everyone was
speaking at once and it was some time before the chairman was able to
put the resolution. Finding it impossible to make his voice heard
above the uproar, he began to hammer on the bench with a wooden
mallet, and to shout requests for order, but this only served to
increase the din. Some of them looked at him curiously and wondered
what was the matter with him, but the majority were so interested in
their own arguments that they did not notice him at all.