The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

by Robert Tressell

  ‘I’m afraid he won’t find it very easy to get another job,’ he remarked, referring to Linden. ‘Even in the summer nobody will be inclined to take him on. He’s too old.’

  ‘It’s a dreadful prospect for the two children,’ answered his wife.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Owen bitterly. ‘It’s the children who will suffer most. As for Linden and his wife, although of course one can’t help feeling sorry for them, at the same time there’s no getting away from the fact that they deserve to suffer. All their lives they’ve been working like brutes and living in poverty. Although they have done more than their fair share of the work, they have never enjoyed anything like a fair share of the things they have helped to produce. And yet, all their lives they have supported and defended the system that robbed them, and have resisted and ridiculed every proposal to alter it. It’s wrong to feel sorry for such people; they deserve to suffer.’

  After tea, as he watched his wife clearing away the tea things and rearranging the drying clothing by the fire, Owen for the first time noticed that she looked unusually ill.

  ‘You don’t look well tonight, Nora,’ he said, crossing over to her and putting his arm around her.

  ‘I don’t feel well,’ she replied, resting her head wearily against his shoulder. ‘I’ve been very bad all day and I had to lie down nearly all the afternoon. I don’t know how I should have managed to get the tea ready if it had not been for Frankie.’

  ‘I set the table for you, didn’t I, Mum?’ said Frankie with pride; ‘and tidied up the room as well.’

  ‘Yes, darling, you helped me a lot,’ she answered, and Frankie went over to her and kissed her hand.

  ‘Well, you’d better go to bed at once,’ said Owen. ‘I can put Frankie to bed presently and do whatever else is necessary.’

  ‘But there are so many things to attend to. I want to see that your clothes are properly dry and to put something ready for you to take in the morning before you go out, and then there’s your breakfast to pack up –’

  ‘I can manage all that.’

  ‘I didn’t want to give way to it like this,’ the woman said, ‘because I know you must be tired out yourself, but I really do feel quite done up now.’

  ‘Oh, I’m all right,’ replied Owen, who was really so fatigued that he was scarcely able to stand. ‘I’ll go and draw the blinds down and light the other lamp; so say good night to Frankie and come at once.’

  ‘I won’t say good night properly, now, Mum,’ remarked the boy, ‘because Dad can carry me into your room before he puts me into bed.’

  A little later, as Owen was undressing Frankie, the latter remarked as he looked affectionately at the kitten, which was sitting on the hearthrug watching the child’s every movement under the impression that it was part of some game:

  ‘What name do you think we ought to call it, Dad?’

  ‘You may give him any name you like,’ replied Owen, absently.

  ‘I know a dog that lives down the road,’ said the boy, ‘his name is Major. How would that do? Or we might call him Sergeant.’

  The kitten, observing that he was the subject of their conversation, purred loudly and winked as if to intimate that he did not care what rank was conferred upon him so long as the commissariat department was properly attended to.

  ‘I don’t know, though,’ continued Frankie, thoughtfully. ‘They’re all right names for dogs, but I think they’re too big for a kitten, don’t you, Dad?’

  ‘Yes, p’raps they are,’ said Owen.

  ‘Most cats are called Tom or Kitty, but I don’t want a common name for him.’

  ‘Well, can’t you call him after someone you know?’

  ‘I know; I’ll call him after a little girl that comes to our school; a fine name, Maud! That’ll be a good one, won’t it, Dad?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Owen.

  ‘I say, Dad,’ said Frankie, suddenly realizing the awful fact that he was being put to bed. ‘You’re forgetting all about my story, and you promised that you’d have a game of trains with me tonight.’

  ‘I hadn’t forgotten, but I was hoping that you had, because I’m very tired and it’s very late, long past your usual bedtime, you know. You can take the kitten to bed with you tonight and I’ll tell you two stories tomorrow, because it’s Saturday.’

  ‘All right, then,’ said the boy, contentedly; ‘and I’ll get the railway station built and I’ll have the lines chalked on the floor, and the signals put up before you come home, so that there’ll be no time wasted. And I’ll put one chair at one end of the room and another chair at the other end, and tie some string across for telegraph wires. That’ll be a very good idea, won’t it, Dad?’ and Owen agreed.

  ‘But of course I’ll come to meet you just the same as other Saturdays, because I’m going to buy a ha’porth of milk for the kitten out of my penny.’

  After the child was in bed, Owen sat alone by the table in the draughty sitting-room, thinking. Although there was a bright fire, the room was very cold, being so close to the roof. The wind roared loudly round the gables, shaking the house in a way that threatened every moment to hurl it to the ground. The lamp on the table had a green glass reservoir which was half full of oil. Owen watched this with unconscious fascination. Every time a gust of wind struck the house the oil in the lamp was agitated and rippled against the glass like the waves of a miniature sea. Staring abstractedly at the lamp, he thought of the future.

  A few years ago the future had seemed a region of wonderful and mysterious possibilities of good, but tonight the thought brought no such illusions, for he knew that the story of the future was to be much the same as the story of the past.

  The story of the past would continue to repeat itself for a few years longer. He would continue to work and they would all three continue to do without most of the necessaries of life. When there was no work they would starve.

  For himself he did not care much because he knew that at the best – or worst – it would only be a very few years. Even if he were to have proper food and clothing and be able to take reasonable care of himself, he could not live much longer; but when that time came, what was to become of them?

  There would be some hope for the boy if he were more robust and if his character were less gentle and more selfish. Under the present system it was impossible for anyone to succeed in life without injuring other people and treating them and making use of them as one would not like to be treated and made use of oneself.

  In order to succeed in the world it was necessary to be brutal, selfish and unfeeling: to push others aside and to take advantage of their misfortunes: to undersell and crush out one’s competitors by fair means or foul: to consider one’s own interests first in every case, absolutely regardless of the wellbeing of others.

  That was the ideal character. Owen knew that Frankie’s character did not come up to this lofty ideal. Then there was Nora, how would she fare?

  Owen stood up and began walking about the room, oppressed with a kind of terror. Presently he returned to the fire and began rearranging the clothes that were drying. He found that the boots, having been placed too near the fire, had dried too quickly and consequently the sole of one of them had begun to split away from the upper: he remedied this as well as he was able and then turned the wetter parts of the clothing to the fire. Whilst doing this he noticed the newspaper, which he had forgotten, in the coat pocket. He drew it out with an exclamation of pleasure. Here was something to distract his thoughts: if not instructive or comforting, it would at any rate be interesting and even amusing to read the reports of the self-satisfied, futile talk of the profound statesmen who with comical gravity presided over the working of the Great System which their combined wisdom pronounced to be the best that could possibly be devised. But tonight Owen was not to read of those things, for as soon as he opened the paper his attention was riveted by the staring headlines of one of the principal columns:

  TERRIBLE DOMESTIC TRAGEDY

  WIFE AND TWO CHILDRE
N KILLED

  SUICIDE OF THE MURDERER

  It was one of the ordinary poverty crimes. The man had been without employment for many weeks and they had been living by pawning or selling their furniture and other possessions. But even this resource must have failed at last, and when one day the neighbours noticed that the blinds remained down and that there was a strange silence about the house, no one coming out or going in, suspicions that something was wrong were quickly aroused. When the police entered the house, they found, in one of the upper rooms, the dead bodies of the woman and the two children, with their throats severed, laid out side by side upon the bed, which was saturated with their blood.

  There was no bedstead and no furniture in the room except the straw mattress and the ragged clothes and blankets which formed the bed upon the floor.

  The man’s body was found in the kitchen, lying with outstretched arms face downwards on the floor, surrounded by the blood that had poured from the wound in his throat which had evidently been inflicted by the razor that was grasped in his right hand.

  No particle of food was found in the house, and on a nail in the wall in the kitchen was hung a piece of blood-smeared paper on which was written in pencil:

  ‘This is not my crime, but society’s.’

  The report went on to explain that the deed must have been perpetrated during a fit of temporary insanity brought on by the sufferings the man had endured.

  ‘Insanity!’ muttered Owen, as he read this glib theory. ‘Insanity! It seems to me that he would have been insane if he had not killed them.’

  Surely it was wiser and better and kinder to send them all to sleep, than to let them continue to suffer.

  At the same time he thought it very strange that the man should have chosen to do it that way, when there were so many other cleaner, easier and more painless ways of accomplishing the same object. He wondered why it was that most of these killings were done in more or less the same crude, cruel messy way. No; he would set about it in a different fashion. He would get some charcoal, then he would paste strips of paper over the joinings of the door and windows of the room and close the register of the grate. Then he would kindle the charcoal on a tray or something in the middle of the room, and then they would all three just lie down together and sleep; and that would be the end of everything. There would be no pain, no blood, and no mess.

  Or one could take poison. Of course, there was a certain amount of difficulty in procuring it, but it would not be impossible to find some pretext for buying some laudanum: one could buy several small quantities at different shops until one had sufficient. Then he remembered that he had read somewhere that vermillion, one of the colours he frequently had to use in his work, was one of the most deadly poisons: and there was some other stuff that photographers used, which was very easy to procure. Of course, one would have to be very careful about poisons, so as not to select one that would cause a lot of pain. It would be necessary to find out exactly how the stuff acted before using it. It would not be very difficult to do so. Then he remembered that among his books was one that probably contained some information about this subject. He went over to the book-shelf and presently found the volume; it was called The Cyclopedia of Practical Medicine, rather an old book, a little out of date, perhaps, but still it might contain the information he wanted. Opening it, he turned to the table of contents. Many different subjects were mentioned there and presently he found the one he sought:

  Poisons: chemically, physiologically and pathologically considered.

  Corrosive Poisons.

  Narcotic Poisons.

  Slow Poisons.

  Consecutive Poisons.

  Accumulative Poisons.

  He turned to the chapter indicated and, reading it, he was astonished to find what a number of poisons there were within easy reach of whoever wished to make use of them: poisons that could be relied upon to do their work certainly, quickly and without pain. Why, it was not even necessary to buy them: one could gather them from the hedges by the road side and in the fields.

  The more he thought of it the stranger it seemed that such a clumsy method as a razor should be so popular. Why almost any other way would be better and easier than that. Strangulation or even hanging, though the latter method could scarcely be adopted in that house, because there were no beams or rafters or anything from which it would be possible to suspend a cord. Still, he could drive some large nails or hooks into one of the walls. For that matter, there were already some clothes-hooks on some of the doors. He began to think that this would be an even more excellent way than poison or charcoal; he could easily pretend to Frankie that he was going to show him some new kind of play.

  He could arrange the cord on the hook on one of the doors and then under pretence of play, it would be done. The boy would offer no resistance, and in a few minutes it would all be over.

  He threw down the book and pressed his hands over his ears: he fancied he could hear the boy’s hands and feet beating against the panels of the door as he struggled in his death agony.

  Then, as his arms fell nervelessly by his side again, he thought that he heard Frankie’s voice calling.

  ‘Dad! Dad!’

  Owen hastily opened the door.

  ‘Are you calling, Frankie?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been calling you quite a long time.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want you to come here. I want to tell you something.’

  ‘Well, what is it, dear? I thought you were asleep a long time ago,’ said Owen as he came into the room.

  ‘That’s just what I want to speak to you about: the kitten’s gone to sleep all right, but I can’t go. I’ve tried all different ways, counting and all, but it’s no use, so I thought I’d ask you if you’d mind coming and staying with me, and letting me hold your hand for a little while and then p’raps I could go.’

  The boy twined his arms round Owen’s neck and hugged him very tightly.

  ‘Oh, Dad, I love you so much!’ he said. ‘I love you so much, I could squeeze you to death.’

  ‘I’m afraid you will, if you squeeze me so tightly as that.’

  The boy laughed softly as he relaxed his hold. ‘That would be a funny way of showing you how much I loved you, wouldn’t it, Dad? Squeezing you to death!’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it would,’ replied Owen huskily, as he tucked the bedclothes round the child’s shoulders. ‘But don’t talk any more, dear; just hold my hand and try to sleep.’

  ‘All right,’ said Frankie.

  Lying there very quietly, holding his father’s hand and occasionally kissing it, the child presently fell asleep. Then Owen got up very gently and, having taken the kitten out of the bed again and arranged the bedclothes, he softly kissed the boy’s forehead and returned to the other room.

  Looking about for a suitable place for the kitten to sleep in, he noticed Frankie’s toy box, and having emptied the toys on to the floor in a corner of the room, he made a bed in the box with some rags and placed it on its side on the hearthrug, facing the fire, and with some difficulty persuaded the kitten to lie in it. Then, having placed the chairs on which his clothes were drying at a safe distance from the fire, he went into the bedroom. Nora was still awake.

  ‘Are you feeling any better, dear?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. I’m ever so much better since I’ve been in bed, but I can’t help worrying about your clothes. I’m afraid they’ll never be dry enough for you to put on the first thing in the morning. Couldn’t you stay at home till after breakfast, just for once?’

  ‘No; I mustn’t do that. If I did Hunter would probably tell me to stay away altogether. I believe he would be glad of an excuse to get rid of another full-price man just now.’

  ‘But if it’s raining like this in the morning, you’ll be wet through before you get there.’

  ‘It’s no good worrying about that, dear: besides, I can wear this old coat that I have on now, over the other.’

  ‘And if you wrap yo
ur old shoes in some paper, and take them with you, you can take off your wet boots as soon as you get to the place.’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ responded Owen. ‘Besides,’ he added, reassuringly, ‘even if I do get a little wet, we always have a fire there, you know.’

  ‘Well, I hope the weather will be a little better than this in the morning,’ said Nora. ‘Isn’t it a dreadful night! I keep feeling afraid that the house is going to be blown down.’

  Long after Nora was asleep, Owen lay listening to the howling of the wind and the noise of the rain as it poured heavily on the roof…

  7

  The Exterminating Machines

  ‘Come on, Saturday!’ shouted Philpot, just after seven o’clock one Monday morning as they were getting ready to commence work.

  It was still dark outside, but the scullery was dimly illuminated by the flickering light of two candles which Crass had lighted and stuck on the shelf over the fireplace in order to enable him to see to serve out the different lots of paints and brushes to the men.

  ‘Yes, it do seem a ’ell of a long week, don’t it?’ remarked Harlow as he hung his overcoat on a nail and proceeded to put on his apron and blouse. ‘I’ve ’ad bloody near enough of it already.’

  ‘Wish to Christ it was breakfast-time,’ growled the more easily satisfied Easton.

  Extraordinary as it may appear, none of them took any pride in their work: they did not ‘love’ it. They had no conception of that lofty ideal of ‘work for work’s sake’, which is so popular with the people who do nothing. On the contrary, when the workers arrived in the morning they wished it was breakfast-time. When they resumed work after breakfast they wished it was dinner-time. After dinner they wished it was one o’clock on Saturday.

  So they went on, day after day, year after year, wishing their time was over and, without realizing it, really wishing that they were dead.