Part 78 (1/2)
Under no circ.u.mstances is any article or material, however trifling, to be taken away by workmen for their private use, whether waste material or not, from any workshop or place where work is being done. Foremen are hereby instructed to see that this order is obeyed and to report any such act coming to their knowledge. Any man breaking this rule will be either dismissed without notice or given into custody.
Rushton & Co.
Most of the men took these cards with the envelopes containing their wages and walked away without making any comment--in fact, most of them were some distance away before they realized exactly what the card was about. Two or three of them stood a few steps away from the pay window in full view of Rushton and Misery and ostentatiously tore the thing into pieces and threw them into the street. One man remained at the pay window while he read the card--and then flung it with an obscene curse into Rushton's face, and demanded his back day, which they gave him without any 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 quant.i.ty, 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 s.h.i.+llings 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 s.h.i.+llings 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 s.h.i.+lling 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 s.h.i.+lling 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 s.h.i.+lling 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 cla.s.ses, 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 cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sertion 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 gla.s.s 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses! But if the amount of money spent in drink by the 'aristocracy', the clergy and the middle cla.s.ses were deducted from the 'Nation's Drink Bill', it would be seen that the amount spent per head by the working cla.s.ses 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 s.h.i.+llings 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 inst.i.tutions run by the State or the munic.i.p.alities 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, pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+lling towards the half-crown that Owen paid for them.