Part 42 (2/2)
Then there was the Chief of the Band--Mr Adam Sweater, the Mayor. He was always the Chief, although he was not always Mayor, it being the rule that the latter 'honour' should be enjoyed by all the members of the Band in turn. A bright 'honour', forsooth! to be the first citizen in a community composed for the most part of ignorant semi-imbeciles, slaves, slave-drivers and psalm-singing hypocrites. Mr Sweater was the managing director and princ.i.p.al shareholder of a large drapery business in which he had ama.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+lling 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 s.h.i.+llings 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 b.u.t.ter.
Few of the girls ever learned their trades thoroughly. Some were taught to make sleeves; others cuffs or b.u.t.ton-holes, 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 apprentices.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+llings 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 apprentices.h.i.+p, 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 a.s.sistants of both s.e.xes 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 circ.u.mstances--would be extracted from the parents. For the first three years, no wages: after that, perhaps two or three s.h.i.+llings 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 a.s.sure him that he was qualified to a.s.sume 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 s.h.i.+llings 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 a.s.sured. 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 ap.r.o.ns 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 them away from their homes and families.
The blouses were paid for at the rate of from two s.h.i.+llings to five s.h.i.+llings 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 s.h.i.+llings 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 cooking and very little to cook, for they lived princ.i.p.ally on bread and margarine and tea. Their homes were squalid, their children half-starved and raggedly clothed in grotesque garments hastily fas.h.i.+oned out of the cast-off clothes of charitable neighbours.
But it was not in vain that these women toiled every weary day until exhaustion compelled them to cease. It was not in vain that they pa.s.sed 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 princ.i.p.al 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 cla.s.s 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 frock-coat, a tall silk hat, a quant.i.ty of jewellery and a morocco-bound gilt-edged Bible. He was an official of some sort of the s.h.i.+ning 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 cla.s.ses, of whom the majority of his const.i.tuents 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 s.p.a.ce 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 t.i.tle of 'The Forty Thieves' was bestowed on the members of the Council by their semi-imbecile const.i.tuents, who, not possessing sufficient intelligence to devise means of punis.h.i.+ng 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 n.o.ble-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.
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