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

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Let them help and foster the growth of association by all means. Let them
advise the honourable tailors, while it is time, to save themselves from
being degraded into slopsellers by admitting their journeymen to a share in
profits. Let them encourage the journeymen to compete with Nebuchadnezzar &
Co. at their own game. Let them tell those journeymen that the experiment
is even now being tried, and, in many instances successfully, by no less
than one hundred and four associations of journeymen in Paris. Let them
remind them of that Great Name which the Parisian "ouvrier" so often
forgets--of Him whose everlasting Fatherhood is the sole ground of all
human brotherhood, whose wise and loving will is the sole source of all
perfect order and government. Let them, as soon as an association is
formed, provide for them a properly ventilated workshop, and let it out
to the associate tailors at a low, fair rent. I believe that they will
not lose by it--because it is right. God will take care of their money.
The world, it comes out now, is so well ordered by Him, that model
lodging-houses, public baths, wash-houses, insurance offices, all pay a
reasonable profit to those who invest money in them--perhaps associate
workshops may do the same. At all events, the owners of these show-shops
realize a far higher profit than need be, while the buildings required for
a tailoring establishment are surely not more costly than those absurd
plate-glass fronts, and brass scroll-work chandeliers, and puffs, and paid
poets. A large house might thus be taken, in some central situation, the
upper floors of which might be fitted up as model lodging-rooms for the
tailor's trade alone. The drawing-room floor might be the work-room; on the
ground floor the shop; and, if possible, a room of call or registration
office for unemployed journeymen, and a reading-room. Why should not this
succeed, if the owners of the house and the workers who rent it are only
true to one another? Every tyro in political economy knows that association
involves a saving both of labour and of capital. Why should it not succeed,
when every one connected with the establishment, landlords and workmen,
will have an interest in increasing its prosperity, and none whatever in
lowering the wages of any party employed?

But above all, so soon as these men are found working together for common
profit, in the spirit of mutual self-sacrifice, let every gentleman and
every Christian, who has ever dealt with, or could ever have dealt with,
Nebuchadnezzar and Co., or their fellows, make it a point of honour and
conscience to deal with the associated workmen, and get others to do the
like. _It is by securing custom, far more than by gifts or loans of money,
that we can help the operatives._ We should but hang a useless burthen of
debt round their necks by advancing capital, without affording them the
means of disposing of their produce.

Be assured, that the finding of a tailors' model lodging house, work rooms,
and shop, and the letting out of the two latter to an association, would
be a righteous act to do. If the plan does not pay, what then? only a part
of the money can be lost; and to have given that to an hospital or an
almshouse would have been called praiseworthy and Christian charity; how
much more to have spent it not in the cure, but in the prevention of
evil--in making almshouses less needful, and lessening the number of
candidates for the hospital!

Regulations as to police order, and temperance, the workmen must, and, if
they are worthy of the name of free men, they can organize for themselves.
Let them remember that an association of labour is very different from
an association of capital. The capitalist only embarks his money on the
venture; the workman embarks his time--that is, much at least of his
life. Still more different is the operatives' association from the single
capitalist, seeking only to realize a rapid fortune, and then withdraw. The
association knows no withdrawal from business; it must grow in length and
in breadth, outlasting rival slopsellers, swallowing up all associations
similar to itself, and which might end by competing with it. "Monopoly!"
cries a free-trader, with hair on end. Not so, good friend; there will
be no real free trade without association. Who tells you that tailors'
associations are to be the only ones?

Some such thing, as I have hinted, might surely be done. Where there is a
will there is a way. No doubt there are difficulties--Howard and Elizabeth
Fry, too, had their difficulties. Brindley and Brunel did not succeed at
the first trial. It is the sluggard only who is always crying, "There is a
lion in the streets." Be daring--trust in God, and He will fight for you;
man of money, whom these words have touched, godliness has the promise
of this life, as well as of that to come. The thing must be done, and
speedily; for if it be not done by fair means, it will surely do itself
by foul. The continual struggle of competition, not only in the tailors'
trade, but in every one which is not, like the navigator's or engineer's,
at a premium from its novel and extraordinary demand, will weaken and
undermine more and more the masters, who are already many of them
speculating on borrowed capital, while it will depress the workmen to a
point at which life will become utterly intolerable; increasing education
will serve only to make them the more conscious of their own misery; the
boiler will be strained to bursting pitch, till some jar, some slight
crisis, suddenly directs the imprisoned forces to one point, and then--

What then?

Look at France, and see.

PARSON LOT.

PREFACE

_To the UNDERGRADUATES of CAMBRIDGE._

I have addressed this preface to the young gentlemen of the University,
first, because it is my duty to teach such of them as will hear me, Modern
History; and I know no more important part of Modern History than the
condition and the opinions of our own fellow-countrymen, some of which are
set forth in this book.

Next, I have addressed them now, because I know that many of them, at
various times, have taken umbrage at certain scenes of Cambridge life drawn
in this book. I do not blame them for having done so. On the contrary, I
have so far acknowledged the justice of their censure, that while I have
altered hardly one other word in this book, I have re-written all that
relates to Cambridge life.

Those sketches were drawn from my own recollections of 1838-1842. Whether
they were overdrawn is a question between me and men of my own standing.

But the book was published in 1849; and I am assured by men in whom I have
the most thorough confidence, that my sketches had by then at least become
exaggerated and exceptional, and therefore, as a whole, untrue; that a
process of purification was going on rapidly in the University; and that I
must alter my words if I meant to give the working men a just picture of
her.

Circumstances took the property and control of the book out of my hand, and
I had no opportunity of reconsidering and of altering the passages. Those
circumstances have ceased, and I take the first opportunity of altering all
which my friends tell me should be altered.

But even if, as early as 1849, I had not been told that I must do so, I
should have done so of my own accord, after the experiences of 1861. I have
received at Cambridge a courtesy and kindness from my elders, a cordial
welcome from my co-equals, and an earnest attention from the undergraduates
with whom I have come in contact, which would bind me in honour to say
nothing publicly against my University, even if I had aught to say. But I
have nought. I see at Cambridge nothing which does not gain my respect for
her present state and hope for her future. Increased sympathy between the
old and young, increased intercourse between the teacher and the taught,
increased freedom and charity of thought, and a steady purpose of internal
self-reform and progress, seem to me already bearing good fruit, by making
the young men regard their University with content and respect. And
among the young men themselves, the sight of their increased earnestness
and high-mindedness, increased sobriety and temperance, combined with a
manliness not inferior to that of the stalwart lads of twenty years ago,
has made me look upon my position among them as most noble, my work among
them as most hopeful, and made me sure that no energy which I can employ in
teaching them will ever have been thrown away.

Much of this improvement seems to me due to the late High-Church movement;
much to the influence of Dr. Arnold; much to that of Mr. Maurice; much to
the general increase of civilization throughout the country: but whatever
be the causes of it, the fact is patent; and I take delight in thus
expressing my consciousness of it.

Another change I must notice in the tone of young gentlemen, not only
at Cambridge, but throughout Britain, which is most wholesome and most
hopeful. I mean their altered tone in speaking to and of the labouring
classes. Thirty years ago, and even later, the young men of the labouring
classes were "the cads," "the snobs," "the blackguards"; looked on with a
dislike, contempt, and fear, which they were not backward to return, and
which were but too ready to vent themselves on both sides in ugly words and
deeds. That hateful severance between the classes was, I believe, an evil
of recent growth, unknown to old England. From the middle ages, up to the
latter years of the French war, the relation between the English gentry and
the labourers seems to have been more cordial and wholesome than in any
other country of Europe. But with the French Revolution came a change for
the worse. The Revolution terrified too many of the upper, and excited too
many of the lower classes; and the stern Tory system of repression, with
its bad habit of talking and acting as if "the government" and "the people"
were necessarily in antagonism, caused ever increasing bad blood. Besides,
the old feudal ties between class and class, employer and employed,
had been severed. Large masses of working people had gathered in the
manufacturing districts in savage independence. The agricultural labourers
had been debased by the abuses of the old Poor-law into a condition upon
which one looks back now with half-incredulous horror. Meanwhile, the
distress of the labourers became more and more severe. Then arose Luddite
mobs, meal mobs, farm riots, riots everywhere; Captain Swing and his
rickburners, Peterloo "massacres," Bristol conflagrations, and all the
ugly sights and rumours which made young lads, thirty or forty years ago,
believe (and not so wrongly) that "the masses" were their natural enemies,
and that they might have to fight, any year, or any day, for the safety of
their property and the honour of their sisters.

How changed, thank God! is all this now. Before the influence of religion,
both Evangelical and Anglican; before the spread of those liberal
principles, founded on common humanity and justice, the triumph of which we
owe to the courage and practical good sense of the Whig party; before the
example of a Court, virtuous, humane, and beneficent; the attitude of the
British upper classes has undergone a noble change. There is no aristocracy
in the world, and there never has been one, as far as I know, which has so
honourably repented, and brought forth fruits meet for repentance; which
has so cheerfully asked what its duty was, that it might do it. It is not
merely enlightened statesmen, philanthropists, devotees, or the working
clergy, hard and heartily as they are working, who have set themselves to
do good as a duty specially required of them by creed or by station. In
the generality of younger laymen, as far as I can see, a humanity (in the
highest sense of the word) has been awakened, which bids fair, in another
generation, to abolish the last remnants of class prejudices and class
grudges. The whole creed of our young gentlemen is becoming more liberal,
their demeanour more courteous, their language more temperate. They inquire
after the welfare, or at least mingle in the sports of the labouring man,
with a simple cordiality which was unknown thirty years ago; they are
prompt, the more earnest of them, to make themselves of use to him on the
ground of a common manhood, if any means of doing good are pointed out to
them; and that it is in any wise degrading to "associate with low fellows,"
is an opinion utterly obsolete, save perhaps among a few sons of squireens
in remote provinces, or of parvenus who cannot afford to recognize the
class from whence they themselves have risen. In the army, thanks to the
purifying effect of the Crimean and Indian wars, the same altered tone
is patent. Officers feel for and with their men, talk to them, strive to
instruct and amuse them more and more year by year; and--as a proof that
the reform has not been forced on the officers by public opinion from
without, but is spontaneous and from within, another instance of the
altered mind of the aristocracy--the improvement is greatest in those
regiments which are officered by men of the best blood; and in care for
and sympathy with their men, her Majesty's Footguards stands first of all.
God grant that the friendship which exists there between the leaders and
the led may not be tested to the death amid the snow-drift or on the
battle-field; but if it be so, I know too that it will stand the test.

But if I wish for one absolute proof of the changed relation between
the upper and the lower classes, I have only to point to the volunteer
movement. In 1803, in the face of the most real and fatal danger, the
Addington ministry was afraid of allowing volunteer regiments, and Lord
Eldon, while pressing the necessity, could use as an argument that if the
people did not volunteer for the Government, they would against it. So
broad was even then the gulf between the governed and the governors. How
much broader did it become in after years! Had invasion threatened us at
any period between 1815 and 1830, or even later, would any ministry have
dared to allow volunteer regiments? Would they have been justified in doing
so, even if they had dared?

And now what has come to pass, all the world knows: but all the world
should know likewise, that it never would have come to pass save for--not
merely the late twenty years of good government in State, twenty years
of virtue and liberality in the Court, but--the late twenty years of
increasing right-mindedness in the gentry, who have now their reward in
finding that the privates in the great majority of corps prefer being
officered by men of a rank socially superior to their own. And as good
always breeds fresh good, so this volunteer movement, made possible by the
goodwill between classes, will help in its turn to increase that goodwill.
Already, by the performance of a common duty, and the experience of a
common humanity, these volunteer corps are become centres of cordiality
between class and class; and gentleman, tradesman, and workman, the more
they see of each other, learn to like, to trust, and to befriend each other
more and more; a good work in which I hope the volunteers of the University
of Cambridge will do their part like men and gentlemen; when, leaving this
University, they become each of them, as they ought, an organizing point
for fresh volunteers in their own districts.

I know (that I may return to Cambridge) no better example of the way in
which the altered tone of the upper classes and the volunteer movement
have acted and reacted upon each other, than may be seen in the
Cambridge Working Men's College, and its volunteer rifle corps, the 8th
Cambridgeshire.

There we have--what perhaps could not have existed, what certainly did not
exist twenty years ago--a school of a hundred men or more, taught for the
last eight years gratuitously by men of the highest attainments in the
University; by a dean--to whom, I believe, the success of the attempt is
mainly owing; by professors, tutors, prizemen, men who are now head-masters
of public schools, who have given freely to their fellow-men knowledge
which has cost them large sums of money and the heavy labour of years.
Without insulting them by patronage, without interfering with their
religious opinions, without tampering with their independence in any wise,
but simply on the ground of a common humanity, they have been helping to
educate these men, belonging for the most part, I presume, to the very
class which this book sets forth as most unhappy and most dangerous--the
men conscious of unsatisfied and unemployed intellect. And they have their
reward in a practical and patent form. Out of these men a volunteer corps
is organized, officered partly by themselves, partly by gentlemen of the
University; a nucleus of discipline, loyalty, and civilization for the
whole population of Cambridge.

A noble work this has been, and one which may be the parent of works nobler
still. It is the first instalment of, I will not say a debt, but a duty,
which the Universities owe to the working classes. I have tried to express
in this book, what I know were, twenty years ago, the feelings of clever
working men, looking upon the superior educational advantages of our class.
I cannot forget, any more than the working man, that the Universities
were not founded exclusively, or even primarily, for our own class; that
the great mass of students in the middle ages were drawn from the lower
classes, and that sizarships, scholarships, exhibitions, and so forth, were
founded for the sake of those classes, rather than of our own. How the case
stands now, we all know. I do not blame the Universities for the change. It
has come about, I think, simply by competition. The change began, I should
say, in the sixteenth century. Then, after the Wars of the Roses, and the
revival of letters, and the dissolution of the monasteries, the younger
sons of gentlemen betook themselves to the pursuit of letters, fighting
having become treasonable, and farming on a small scale difficult (perhaps
owing to the introduction of large sheep-farms, which happened in those
days), while no monastic orders were left to recruit the Universities, as
they did continually through the middle ages, from that labouring-class to
which they and their scholars principally belonged.

So the gentlemen's sons were free to compete against the sons of working
men; and by virtue of their superior advantages they beat them out of
the field. We may find through the latter half of the sixteenth and the
beginning of the seventeenth centuries, bequest after bequest for the
purpose of stopping this change, and of enabling poor men's sons to enter
the Universities; but the tendency was too strong to be effectually
resisted then. Is it too strong to be resisted now? Does not the increased
civilization and education of the working classes call on the Universities
to consider whether they may not now try to become, what certainly they
were meant to be, places of teaching and training for genius of every
rank, and not merely for that of young gentlemen? Why should not wealthy
Churchmen, in addition to the many good deeds in which they employ their
wealth now-a-days, found fresh scholarships and exhibitions, confined to
the sons of working men? If it be asked, how can they be so confined? What
simpler method than that of connecting them with the National Society, and
bestowing them exclusively on lads who have distinguished themselves in our
National Schools? I believe that money spent in such a way, would be well
spent both for the Nation, the Church, and the University. As for the
introduction of such a class of lads lowering the tone of the University, I
cannot believe it. There is room enough in Cambridge for men of every rank.
There are still, in certain colleges, owing to circumstances which I should
be very sorry to see altered, a fair sprinkling of young men who, at least
before they have passed through a Cambridge career, would not be called
well-bred. But they do not lower the tone of the University; the tone of
the University raises them. Wherever there is intellectual power, good
manners are easily acquired; the public opinion of young men expresses
itself so freely, and possibly coarsely, that priggishness and forwardness
(the faults to which a clever National School pupil would be most prone)
are soon hammered out of any Cambridge man; and the result is, that some of
the most distinguished and most popular men in Cambridge, are men who have
"risen from the ranks." All honour to them for having done so. But if they
have succeeded so well, may there not be hundreds more in England who would
succeed equally? and would it not be as just to the many, as useful to the
University, in binding her to the people and the people to her, to invent
some method for giving those hundreds a fair chance?

I earnestly press this suggestion (especially at the present time of
agitation among Churchmen on the subject of education) upon the attention,
not of the University itself, but of those wealthy men who wish well both
to the University and to the people. Not, I say, of the University: it is
not from her that the proposal must come, but from her friends outside. She
is doing her best with the tools which she has; fresh work will require
fresh tools, and I trust that such will be some day found for her.

I have now to tell those of them who may read this book, that it is not
altogether out of date.

Those political passions, the last outburst of which it described, have,
thank God, become mere matter of history by reason of the good government
and the unexampled prosperity of the last twelve years: but fresh outbursts
of them are always possible in a free country, whenever there is any
considerable accumulation of neglects and wrongs; and meanwhile it is
well--indeed it is necessary--for every student of history to know what
manner of men they are who become revolutionaries, and what causes drive
them to revolution; that they may judge discerningly and charitably of
their fellow-men, whenever they see them rising, however madly, against the
powers that be.

As for the social evils described in this book, they have been much
lessened in the last few years, especially by the movement for Sanatory
Reform: but I must warn young men that they are not eradicated; that for
instance, only last year, attention was called by this book to the working
tailors in Edinburgh, and their state was found, I am assured, to be
even more miserable than that of the London men in 1848. And I must warn
them also that social evils, like dust and dirt, have a tendency to
re-accumulate perpetually; so that however well this generation may have
swept their house (and they have worked hard and honestly at it), the
rising generation will have assuredly in twenty years' time to sweep it
over again.

One thing more I have to say, and that very earnestly, to the young men of
Cambridge. They will hear a "Conservative Reaction" talked of as imminent,
indeed as having already begun. They will be told that this reaction is
made more certain by the events now passing in North America; they will be
bidden to look at the madnesses of an unbridled democracy, to draw from
them some such lesson as the young Spartans were to draw from the drunken
Helots, and to shun with horror any further attempts to enlarge the
suffrage.

But if they have learnt (as they should from the training of this
University) accuracy of thought and language, they will not be content with
such vague general terms as "Conservatism" and "Democracy": but will ask
themselves--If this Conservative Reaction is at hand, what things is it
likely to conserve; and still more, what ought it to conserve? If the
violences and tyrannies of American Democracy are to be really warnings
to, then in what points does American Democracy coincide with British
Democracy?--For so far and no farther can one be an example or warning for
the other.

And looking, as they probably will under the pressure of present
excitement, at the latter question first, they will surely see that no
real analogy would exist between American and English Democracy, even were
universal suffrage to be granted to-morrow.

For American Democracy, being merely arithmocratic, provides no
representation whatsoever for the more educated and more experienced
minority, and leaves the conduct of affairs to the uneducated and
inexperienced many, with such results as we see. But those results are, I
believe, simply impossible in a country which possesses hereditary Monarchy
and a House of Lords, to give not only voice, but practical power to
superior intelligence and experience. Mr. J. S. Mill, Mr. Stapleton, and
Mr. Hare have urged of late the right of minorities to be represented as
well as majorities, and have offered plans for giving them a fair hearing.
That their demands are wise, as well as just, the present condition of the
Federal States proves but too painfully. But we must not forget meanwhile,
that the minorities of Britain are not altogether unrepresented. In a
hereditary Monarch who has the power to call into his counsels, private and
public, the highest intellect of the land; in a House of Lords not wholly
hereditary, but recruited perpetually from below by the most successful
(and therefore, on the whole, the most capable) personages; in a free
Press, conducted in all its most powerful organs by men of character and
of liberal education, I see safeguards against any American tyranny of
numbers, even if an enlargement of the suffrage did degrade the general
tone of the House of Commons as much as some expect.