Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet by Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

R >> Rev. Charles Kingsley et al >> Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41

"Ugh!" said Sandy, "wha wants mongrels atween Burns and Tennyson? A gude
stock baith: but gin ye'd cross the breed ye maun unite the spirits, and
no the manners, o' the men. Why maun ilk a one the noo steal his neebor's
barnacles, before he glints out o' windows? Mak a style for yoursel,
laddie; ye're na mair Scots hind than ye are Lincolnshire laird: sae gang
yer ain gate and leave them to gang theirs; and just mak a gran', brode,
simple, Saxon style for yoursel."

"But how can I, till I know what sort of a style it ought to be?"

"Oh! but yon's amazing like Tom Sheridan's answer to his father. 'Tom,'
says the auld man, 'I'm thinking ye maun tak a wife.' 'Verra weel, father,'
says the puir skellum; 'and wha's wife shall I tak?' Wha's style shall I
tak? say all the callants the noo. Mak a style as ye would mak a wife, by
marrying her a' to yoursel; and ye'll nae mair ken what's your style till
it's made, than ye'll ken what your wife's like till she's been mony a year
by your ingle."

"My dear Mackaye," I said, "you have the most unmerciful way of raising
difficulties, and then leaving poor fellows to lay the ghost for
themselves."

"Hech, then, I'm a'thegither a negative teacher, as they ca' it in the new
lallans. I'll gang out o' my gate to tell a man his kye are laired, but I'm
no obligated thereby to pu' them out for him. After a', nae man is rid o' a
difficulty till he's conquered it single-handed for himsel: besides, I'm na
poet, mair's the gude hap for you."

"Why, then?"

"Och, och! they're puir, feckless, crabbit, unpractical bodies, they poets;
but if it's your doom, ye maun dree it; and I'm sair afeard ye ha' gotten
the disease o' genius, mair's the pity, and maun write, I suppose,
willy-nilly. Some folks' booels are that made o' catgut, that they canna
stir without chirruping and screeking."

However, _æstro percitus_, I wrote on; and in about two years and a half
had got together "Songs of the Highways" enough to fill a small octavo
volume, the circumstances of whose birth shall be given hereafter. Whether
I ever attained to anything like an original style, readers must judge for
themselves--the readers of the same volume I mean, for I have inserted none
of those poems in this my autobiography; first, because it seems too like
puffing my own works; and next, because I do not want to injure the as yet
not over great sale of the same. But, if any one's curiosity is so far
excited that he wishes to see what I have accomplished, the best advice
which I can give him is, to go forth, and buy all the working-men's
poetry which has appeared during the last twenty years, without favour or
exception; among which he must needs, of course, find mine, and also, I am
happy to say, a great deal which is much better and more instructive than
mine.

CHAPTER X.

HOW FOLKS TURN CHARTISTS.

Those who read my story only for amusement, I advise to skip this chapter.
Those, on the other hand, who really wish to ascertain what working men
actually do suffer--to see whether their political discontent has not its
roots, not merely in fanciful ambition, but in misery and slavery most real
and agonizing--those in whose eyes the accounts of a system, or rather
barbaric absence of all system, which involves starvation, nakedness,
prostitution, and long imprisonment in dungeons worse than the cells of the
Inquisition, will be invested with something at least of tragic interest,
may, I hope, think it worth their while to learn how the clothes which they
wear are made, and listen to a few occasional statistics, which, though
they may seem to the wealthy mere lists of dull figures, are to the workmen
symbols of terrible physical realities--of hunger, degradation, and
despair. [Footnote: Facts still worse than those which Mr. Locke's story
contains have been made public by the _Morning Chronicle_ in a series of
noble letters on "Labour and the Poor"; which we entreat all Christian
people to "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest." "That will be better
for them," as Mahomet, in similar cases, used to say.]

Well: one day our employer died. He had been one of the old sort of
fashionable West-end tailors in the fast decreasing honourable trade;
keeping a modest shop, hardly to be distinguished from a dwelling-house,
except by his name on the window blinds. He paid good prices for work,
though not as good, of course, as he had given twenty years before, and
prided himself upon having all his work done at home. His workrooms, as I
have said, were no elysiums; but still, as good, alas! as those of three
tailors out of four. He was proud, luxurious, foppish; but he was honest
and kindly enough, and did many a generous thing by men who had been long
in his employ. At all events, his journeymen could live on what he paid
them.

But his son, succeeding to the business, determined, like Rehoboam of old,
to go ahead with the times. Fired with the great spirit of the nineteenth
century--at least with that one which is vulgarly considered its especial
glory--he resolved to make haste to be rich. His father had made money very
slowly of late; while dozens, who had begun business long after him, had
now retired to luxurious ease and suburban villas. Why should he remain in
the minority? Why should he not get rich as fast as he could? Why should he
stick to the old, slow-going, honourable trade? Out of some four hundred
and fifty West-end tailors, there were not one hundred left who were
old-fashioned and stupid enough to go on keeping down their own profits by
having all their work done at home and at first-hand. Ridiculous scruples!
The government knew none such. Were not the army clothes, the post-office
clothes, the policemen's clothes, furnished by contractors and sweaters,
who hired the work at low prices, and let it out again to journeymen
at still lower ones? Why should he pay his men two shillings where the
government paid them one? Were there not cheap houses even at the West-end,
which had saved several thousands a year merely by reducing their workmen's
wages? And if the workmen chose to take lower wages, he was not bound
actually to make them a present of more than they asked for? They would go
to the cheapest market for anything they wanted, and so must he. Besides,
wages had really been quite exorbitant. Half his men threw each of them as
much money away in gin and beer yearly, as would pay two workmen at cheap
house. Why was he to be robbing his family of comforts to pay for their
extravagance? And charging his customers, too, unnecessarily high
prices--it was really robbing the public!

Such, I suppose, were some of the arguments which led to an official
announcement, one Saturday night, that our young employer intended to
enlarge his establishment, for the purpose of commencing business in the
"show-trade"; and that, emulous of Messrs. Aaron, Levi, and the rest of
that class, magnificent alterations were to take place in the premises, to
make room for which our workrooms were to be demolished, and that for that
reason--for of course it was only for that reason--all work would in future
be given out, to be made up at the men's own homes.

Our employer's arguments, if they were such as I suppose, were reasonable
enough according to the present code of commercial morality. But, strange
to say, the auditory, insensible to the delight with which the public would
view the splendid architectural improvements--with taste too grovelling
to appreciate the glories of plate-glass shop-fronts and brass scroll
work--too selfish to rejoice, for its own sake, in the beauty of arabesques
and chandeliers, which, though they never might behold, the astonished
public would--with souls too niggardly to leap for joy at the thought that
gents would henceforth buy the registered guanaco vest, and the patent
elastic omni-seasonum paletot half-a-crown cheaper than ever--or that
needy noblemen would pay three-pound-ten instead of five pounds for their
footmen's liveries--received the news, clod-hearted as they were, in sullen
silence, and actually, when they got into the street, broke out into
murmurs, perhaps into execrations.

"Silence!" said Crossthwaite; "walls have ears. Come down to the nearest
house of call, and talk it out like men, instead of grumbling in the street
like fish-fags."

So down we went. Crossthwaite, taking my arm, strode on in moody
silence--once muttering to himself, bitterly--

"Oh, yes; all right and natural! What can the little sharks do but follow
the big ones?"

We took a room, and Crossthwaite coolly saw us all in; and locking the
door, stood with his back against it.

"Now then, mind, 'One and all,' as the Cornishmen say, and no peaching. If
any man is scoundrel enough to carry tales, I'll--"

"Do what?" asked Jemmy Downes, who had settled himself on the table, with a
pipe and a pot of porter. "You arn't the king of the Cannibal Islands, as I
know of, to cut a cove's head off?"

"No; but if a poor man's prayer can bring God's curse down upon a traitor's
head--it may stay on his rascally shoulders till it rots."

"If ifs and ans were pots and pans. Look at Shechem Isaacs, that sold
penknives in the street six months ago, now a-riding in his own carriage,
all along of turning sweater. If God's curse is like that--I'll be happy to
take any man's share of it."

Some new idea seemed twinkling in the fellow's cunning bloated face as he
spoke. I, and others also, shuddered at his words; but we all forgot them a
moment afterwards, as Crossthwaite began to speak.

"We were all bound to expect this. Every working tailor must come to this
at last, on the present system; and we are only lucky in having been spared
so long. You all know where this will end--in the same misery as fifteen
thousand out of twenty thousand of our class are enduring now. We shall
become the slaves, often the bodily prisoners, of Jews, middlemen, and
sweaters, who draw their livelihood out of our starvation. We shall have to
face, as the rest have, ever decreasing prices of labour, ever increasing
profits made out of that labour by the contractors who will employ
us--arbitrary fines, inflicted at the caprice of hirelings--the competition
of women, and children, and starving Irish--our hours of work will increase
one-third, our actual pay decrease to less than one-half; and in all this
we shall have no hope, no chance of improvement in wages, but ever more
penury, slavery, misery, as we are pressed on by those who are sucked by
fifties--almost by hundreds--yearly, out of the honourable trade in which
we were brought up, into the infernal system of contract work, which is
devouring our trade and many others, body and soul. Our wives will be
forced to sit up night and day to help us--our children must labour from
the cradle without chance of going to school, hardly of breathing the
fresh air of heaven,--our boys, as they grow up, must turn beggars or
paupers--our daughters, as thousands do, must eke out their miserable
earnings by prostitution. And after all, a whole family will not gain what
one of us had been doing, as yet, single-handed. You know there will be no
hope for us. There is no use appealing to government or parliament. I don't
want to talk politics here. I shall keep them for another place. But you
can recollect as well as I can, when a deputation of us went up to a
member of parliament--one that was reputed a philosopher, and a political
economist, and a liberal--and set before him the ever-increasing penury
and misery of our trade, and of those connected with it; you recollect his
answer--that, however glad he would be to help us, it was impossible--he
could not alter the laws of nature--that wages were regulated by the amount
of competition among the men themselves, and that it was no business of
government, or any one else, to interfere in contracts between the employer
and employed, that those things regulated themselves by the laws of
political economy, which it was madness and suicide to oppose. He may have
been a wise man. I only know that he was a rich one. Every one speaks well
of the bridge which carries him over. Every one fancies the laws which fill
his pockets to be God's laws. But I say this, If neither government nor
members of parliament can help us, we must help ourselves. Help yourselves,
and heaven will help you. Combination among ourselves is the only chance.
One thing we can do--sit still."

"And starve!" said some one.

"Yes, and starve! Better starve than sin. I say, it is a sin to give in to
this system. It is a sin to add our weight to the crowd of artizans who are
now choking and strangling each other to death, as the prisoners did in the
black hole of Calcutta. Let those who will turn beasts of prey, and feed
upon their fellows; but let us at least keep ourselves pure. It may be the
law of political civilization, the law of nature, that the rich should eat
up the poor, and the poor eat up each other. Then I here rise up and curse
that law, that civilization, that nature. Either I will destroy them,
or they shall destroy me. As a slave, as an increased burden on my
fellow-sufferers, I will not live. So help me God! I will take no work
home to my house; and I call upon every one here to combine, and to sign a
protest to that effect."

"What's the use of that, my good Mr. Crossthwaite?" interrupted some one,
querulously. "Don't you know what came of the strike a few years ago, when
this piece-work and sweating first came in? The masters made fine promises,
and never kept 'em; and the men who stood out had their places filled up
with poor devils who were glad enough to take the work at any price--just
as ours will be. There's no use kicking against the pricks. All the rest
have come to it, and so must we. We must live somehow, and half a loaf is
better than no bread; and even that half loaf will go into other men's
mouths, if we don't snap at it at once. Besides, we can't force others to
strike. We may strike and starve ourselves, but what's the use of a dozen
striking out of 20,000?"

"Will you sign the protest, gentlemen, or not?" asked Crossthwaite, in a
determined voice.

Some half-dozen said they would if the others would.

"And the others won't. Well, after all, one man must take the
responsibility, and I am that man. I will sign the protest by myself. I
will sweep a crossing--I will turn cress-gatherer, rag-picker; I will
starve piecemeal, and see my wife starve with me; but do the wrong thing I
will not! The Cause wants martyrs. If I must be one, I must."

All this while my mind had been undergoing a strange perturbation. The
notion of escaping that infernal workroom, and the company I met there--of
taking my work home, and thereby, as I hoped, gaining more time for
study--at least, having my books on the spot ready at every odd moment, was
most enticing. I had hailed the proposed change as a blessing to me, till I
heard Crossthwaite's arguments--not that I had not known the facts before;
but it had never struck me till then that it was a real sin against my
class to make myself a party in the system by which they were allowing
themselves (under temptation enough, God knows) to be enslaved. But now
I looked with horror on the gulf of penury before me, into the vortex
of which not only I, but my whole trade, seemed irresistibly sucked. I
thought, with shame and remorse, of the few shillings which I had earned
at various times by taking piecework home, to buy my candles for study.
I whispered my doubts to Crossthwaite, as he sat, pale and determined,
watching the excited and querulous discussions among the other workmen.

"What? So you expect to have time to read? Study after sixteen hours a
day stitching? Study, when you cannot earn money enough to keep you from
wasting and shrinking away day by day? Study, with your heart full of shame
and indignation, fresh from daily insult and injustice? Study, with the
black cloud of despair and penury in front of you? Little time, or heart,
or strength, will you have to study, when you are making the same coats you
make now, at half the price."

I put my name down beneath Crossthwaite's, on the paper which he handed me,
and went out with him.

"Ay," he muttered to himself, "be slaves--what you are worthy to be, that
you will be! You dare not combine--you dare not starve--you dare not
die--and therefore you dare not be free! Oh! for six hundred men like
Barbaroux's Marseillois--'who knew how to die!'"

"Surely, Crossthwaite, if matters were properly represented to the
government, they would not, for their own existence' sake, to put
conscience out of the question, allow such a system to continue growing."

"Government--government? You a tailor, and not know that government are the
very authors of this system? Not to know that they first set the example,
by getting the army and navy clothes made by contractors, and taking the
lowest tenders? Not to know that the police clothes, the postmen's clothes,
the convicts' clothes, are all contracted for on the same infernal plan, by
sweaters, and sweaters' sweaters, and sweaters' sweaters' sweaters, till
government work is just the very last, lowest resource to which a poor
starved-out wretch betakes himself to keep body and soul together? Why,
the government prices, in almost every department, are half, and less than
half, the very lowest living price. I tell you, the careless iniquity of
government about these things will come out some day. It will be known, the
whole abomination, and future generations will class it with the tyrannies
of the Roman emperors and the Norman barons. Why, it's a fact, that the
colonels of the regiments--noblemen, most of them--make their own vile
profit out of us tailors--out of the pauperism of the men, the slavery of
the children, the prostitution of the women. They get so much a uniform
allowed them by government to clothe the men with; and then--then, they
let out the jobs to the contractors at less than half what government
give them, and pocket the difference. And then you talk of appealing to
government."

"Upon my word," I said, bitterly, "we tailors seem to owe the army a double
grudge. They not only keep under other artizans, but they help to starve us
first, and then shoot us, if we complain too loudly."

"Oh, ho! your blood's getting up, is it? Then you're in the humour to be
told what you have been hankering to know so long--where Mackaye and I go
at night. We'll strike while the iron's hot, and go down to the Chartist
meeting at * * * * *.

"Pardon me, my dear fellow," I said. "I cannot bear the thought of being
mixed up in conspiracy--perhaps, in revolt and bloodshed. Not that I am
afraid. Heaven knows I am not. But I am too much harassed, miserable,
already. I see too much wretchedness around me, to lend my aid in
increasing the sum of suffering, by a single atom, among rich and poor,
even by righteous vengeance."

"Conspiracy? Bloodshed? What has that to do with the Charter? It suits the
venal Mammonite press well enough to jumble them together, and cry 'Murder,
rape, and robbery,' whenever the six points are mentioned; but they know,
and any man of common sense ought to know, that the Charter is just as much
an open political question as the Reform Bill, and ten times as much as
Magna Charter was, when it got passed. What have the six points, right or
wrong, to do with the question whether they can be obtained by moral
force, and the pressure of opinion alone, or require what we call ulterior
measures to get them carried? Come along!"

So with him I went that night.

* * * * *

"Well, Alton! where was the treason and murder? Your nose must have been a
sharp one, to smell out any there. Did you hear anything that astonished
your weak mind so very exceedingly, after all?"

"The only thing that did astonish me was to hear men of my own class--and
lower still, perhaps some of them--speak with such fluency and eloquence.
Such a fund of information--such excellent English--where did they get it
all?"

"From the God who knows nothing about ranks. They're the unknown great--the
unaccredited heroes, as Master Thomas Carlyle would say--whom the flunkeys
aloft have not acknowledged yet--though they'll be forced to, some day,
with a vengeance. Are you convinced, once for all?"

"I really do not understand political questions, Crossthwaite."

"Does it want so very much wisdom to understand the rights and the wrongs
of all that? Are the people represented? Are you represented? Do you feel
like a man that's got any one to fight your battle in parliament, my young
friend, eh?"

"I'm sure I don't know--"

"Why, what in the name of common sense--what interest or feeling of yours
or mine, or any man's you ever spoke to, except the shopkeeper, do Alderman
A---- or Lord C---- D---- represent? They represent property--and we have
none. They represent rank--we have none. Vested interests--we have
none. Large capitals--those are just what crush us. Irresponsibility of
employers, slavery of the employed, competition among masters, competition
among workmen, that is the system they represent--they preach it, they
glory in it.--Why, it is the very ogre that is eating us all up. They are
chosen by the few, they represent the few, and they make laws for the
many--and yet you don't know whether or not the people are represented!"

We were passing by the door of the Victoria Theatre; it was just half-price
time--and the beggary and rascality of London were pouring in to their low
amusement, from the neighbouring gin palaces and thieves' cellars. A herd
of ragged boys, vomiting forth slang, filth, and blasphemy, pushed past us,
compelling us to take good care of our pockets.

"Look there! look at the amusements, the training, the civilization, which
the government permits to the children of the people! These licensed pits
of darkness, traps of temptation, profligacy, and ruin, triumphantly
yawning night after night--and then tell me that the people who see their
children thus kidnapped into hell are represented by a government who
licenses such things!"

"Would a change in the franchise cure that?"

"Household suffrage mightn't--but give us the Charter, and we'll see about
it! Give us the Charter, and we'll send workmen, into parliament that shall
soon find out whether something better can't be put in the way of the ten
thousand boys and girls in London who live by theft and prostitution, than
the tender mercies of the Victoria--a pretty name! They say the Queen's
a good woman--and I don't doubt it. I wonder often if she knows what her
precious namesake here is like."

"But really, I cannot see how a mere change in representation can cure such
things as that."

"Why, didn't they tell us, before the Reform Bill, that extension of the
suffrage was to cure everything? And how can you have too much of a good
thing? We've only taken them at their word, we Chartists. Haven't all
politicians been preaching for years that England's national greatness was
all owing to her political institutions--to Magna Charta, and the Bill of
Rights, and representative parliaments, and all that? It was but the
other day I got hold of some Tory paper, that talked about the English
constitution, and the balance of queen, lords, and commons, as the
'Talismanic Palladium' of the country. 'Gad, we'll see if a move onward in
the same line won't better the matter. If the balance of classes is such a
blessed thing, the sooner we get the balance equal, the better; for it's
rather lopsided just now, no one can deny. So, representative institutions
are the talismanic palladium of the nation, are they? The palladium of the
classes that have them, I dare say; and that's the very best reason why the
classes that haven't got 'em should look out for the same palladium for
themselves. What's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose, isn't it?
We'll try--we'll see whether the talisman they talk of has lost its power
all of a sudden since '32--whether we can't rub the magic ring a little for
ourselves and call up genii to help us out of the mire, as the shopkeepers
and the gentlemen have done."

* * * * *

From that night I was a Chartist, heart and soul--and so were a million and
a half more of the best artisans in England--at least, I had no reason to
be ashamed of my company. Yes; I too, like Crossthwaite, took the upper
classes at their word; bowed down to the idol of political institutions,
and pinned my hopes of salvation on "the possession of one ten-thousandth
part of a talker in the national palaver." True, I desired the Charter, at
first (as I do, indeed, at this moment), as a means to glorious ends--not
only because it would give a chance of elevation, a free sphere of action,
to lowly worth and talent; but because it was the path to reforms--social,
legal, sanatory, educational--to which the veriest Tory--certainly not the
great and good Lord Ashley--would not object. But soon, with me, and I am
afraid with many, many more, the means became, by the frailty of poor human
nature, an end, an idol in itself. I had so made up my mind that it was
the only method of getting what I wanted, that I neglected, alas! but too
often, to try the methods which lay already by me. "If we had but the
Charter"--was the excuse for a thousand lazinesses, procrastinations. "If
we had but the Charter"--I should be good, and free, and happy. Fool that I
was! It was within, rather than without, that I needed reform.