The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

by Robert Tressell

  ‘What about the Navy?’ cried several voices.

  ‘Nobody wants to interfere with the Navy except to make its organization more democratic – the same as that of the Citizen Army – and to protect its members from tyranny by entitling them to be tried in a civil court for any alleged offence.

  ‘It has been proved that if the soil of this country were scientifically cultivated, it is capable of producing sufficient to maintain a population of a hundred millions of people. Our present population is only about forty millions, but so long as the land remains in the possession of persons who refuse to allow it to be cultivated we shall continue to be dependent on other countries for our food supply. So long as we are in that position, and so long as foreign countries are governed by Liberal and Tory capitalists, we shall need the Navy to protect our oversea commerce from them. If we had a Citizen Army such as I have mentioned, of nine or ten millions of men and if the land of this country was properly cultivated, we should be invincible at home. No foreign power would ever be mad enough to attempt to land their forces on our shores. But they would now be able to starve us all to death in a month if it were not for the Navy. It’s a sensible and creditable position, isn’t it?’ concluded Barrington. ‘Even in times of peace, thousands of people standing idle and tamely starving in their own fertile country, because a few land “Lords” forbid them to cultivate it.’

  ‘Is there any more questions?’ demanded Philpot, breaking a prolonged silence.

  ‘Would any Liberal or Tory capitalist like to get up into the pulpit and oppose the speaker?’ the chairman went on, finding that no one responded to his appeal for questions.

  The silence continued.

  ‘As there’s no more questions and no one won’t get up into the pulpit, it is now my painful duty to call upon someone to move a resolution.’

  ‘Well, Mr Chairman,’ said Harlow, ‘I may say that when I came on this firm I was a Liberal, but through listenin’ to several lectures by Professor Owen and attendin’ the meetings on the hill at Windley and reading the books and pamphlets I bought there and from Owen, I came to the conclusion some time ago that it’s a mug’s game for us to vote for capitalists whether they calls theirselves Liberals or Tories. They’re all alike when you’re workin’ for ’em; I defy any man to say what’s the difference between a Liberal and a Tory employer. There is none – there can’t be; they’re both sweaters, and they’ve got to be, or they wouldn’t be able to compete with each other. And since that’s what they are, I say it’s a mug’s game for us to vote ’em into Parliament to rule over us and to make laws that we’ve got to abide by whether we like it or not. There’s nothing to choose between ’em, and the proof of it is that it’s never made much difference to us which party was in or which was out. It’s quite true that in the past both of ’em have passed good laws, but they’ve only done it when public opinion was so strong in favour of it that they knew there was no getting out of it, and then it was a toss up which side did it.

  ‘That’s the way I’ve been lookin’ at things lately, and I’d almost made up my mind never to vote no more, or to trouble myself about politics at all, because although I could see there was no sense in voting for Liberal or Tory capitalists, at the same time I must admit I couldn’t make out how Socialism was going to help us. But the explanation of it which Professor Barrington has given us this afternoon has been a bit of an eye opener for me, and with your permission I should like to move as a resolution, “That it is the opinion of this meeting that Socialism is the only remedy for Unemployment and Poverty.”’

  The conclusion of Harlow’s address was greeted with loud cheers from the Socialists, but most of the Liberal and Tory supporters of the present system maintained a sulky silence.

  ‘I’ll second that resolution,’ said Easton.

  [‘And I’ll lay a bob both ways,’ remarked Bundy. The resolution was then put, and though the majority were against it, the Chairman declared it was carried unanimously.]

  By this time the violence of the storm had in a great measure abated, but as rain was still falling it was decided not to attempt to resume work that day. Besides, it would have been too late, even if the weather had cleared up.

  ‘P’raps it’s just as well it ’as rained,’ remarked one man. ‘If it ’adn’t some of us might ’ave got the sack tonight. As it is, there’ll be hardly enough for all of us to do tomorrer and Saturday mornin’ even if it is fine.’

  This was true: nearly all the outside was finished, and what remained to be done was ready for the final coat. Inside all there was to do was to colour wash the walls and to give the woodwork of the kitchen and scullery the last coat of paint.

  It was inevitable – unless the firm had some other work for them to do somewhere else – that there would be a great slaughter on Saturday.

  ‘Now,’ said Philpot, assuming what he meant to be the manner of a school teacher addressing children, ‘I wants you hall to make a speshall heffort and get ’ere very early in the mornin’ – say about four o’clock – and them wot doos the most work tomorrer, will get a prize on Saturday.’

  ‘What’ll it be, the sack?’ inquired Harlow.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Philpot, ‘and not honly will you get a prize for good conduck tomorrer, but if you all keep on workin’ like we’ve bin doing lately till you’re too hold and wore hout to do any more, you’ll be allowed to go to a nice workhouse for the rest of your lives! and each one of you will be given a title – “Pauper!”’

  And they laughed!

  Although the majority of them had mothers or fathers or other near relatives who had already succeeded to the title – they laughed!

  As they were going home, Crass paused at the gate, and pointing up to the large gable at the end of the house, he said to Philpot:

  ‘You’ll want the longest ladder – the 65, for that, tomorrow.’

  Philpot looked up at the gable.

  It was very high.

  46

  The ‘Sixty-five’

  The next morning after breakfast, Philpot, Sawkins, Harlow and Barrington went to the Yard to get the long ladder – the 65 – so called because it had sixty-five rungs. It was really what is known as a builder’s scaffold ladder, and it had been strengthened by several iron bolts or rods which passed through just under some of the rungs. One side of the ladder had an iron band or ribbon twisted and nailed round it spirally. It was not at all suitable for painters’ work, being altogether too heavy and cumbrous. However, as none of the others were long enough to reach the high gable at the Refuge, they managed, with a struggle, to get it down from the hooks and put it on one of the handcarts and soon passed through the streets of mean and dingy houses in the vicinity of the yard, and began the ascent of the long hill.

  There had been a lot of rain during the night, and the sky was still overcast with dark grey clouds. The cart went heavily over the muddy road; Sawkins was at the helm, holding the end of the ladder and steering; the others walked a little further ahead, at the sides of the cart.

  It was such hard work that by the time they were half-way up the hill they were so exhausted and out of breath that they had to stop for a rest.

  ‘This is a bit of all right, ain’t it?’ remarked Harlow as he took off his cap and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief.

  While they rested they kept a good look out for Rushton or Hunter, who were likely to pass by at any moment.

  At first, no one made any reply to Harlow’s observation, for they were all out of breath and Philpot’s lean fingers trembled violently as he wiped the perspiration from his face.

  ‘Yes, mate,’ he said despondently, after a while. ‘It’s one way of gettin’ a livin’ and there’s plenty better ways.’

  In addition to the fact that his rheumatism was exceptionally bad, he felt unusually low-spirited this morning; the gloomy weather and the prospect of a long day of ladder work probably had something to do with it.

  ‘A “living”
is right,’ said Barrington bitterly. He also was exhausted with the struggle up the hill and enraged by the woebegone appearance of poor old Philpot, who was panting and quivering from the exertion.

  They relapsed into silence. The unaccountable depression that possessed Philpot deprived him of all his usual jocularity and filled him with melancholy thoughts. He had travelled up and down this hill a great many times before under similar circumstances and he said to himself that if he had half a quid now for every time he had pushed a cart up this road, he wouldn’t need to do anyone out of a job all the rest of his life.

  The shop where he had been apprenticed used to be just down at the bottom; the place had been pulled down years ago, and the ground was now occupied by more pretentious buildings. Not quite so far down the road – on the other side – he could see the church where he used to attend Sunday School when he was a boy, and where he was married just thirty years ago. Presently – when they reached the top of the hill – he would be able to look across the valley and see the spire of the other church, the one in the graveyard, where all those who were dear to him had been one by one laid to rest. He felt that he would not be sorry when the time came to join them there. Possibly, in the next world – if there were such a place – they might all be together once more.

  He was suddenly aroused from these thoughts by an exclamation from Harlow.

  ‘Look out! Here comes Rushton.’

  They immediately resumed their journey. Rushton was coming up the hill in his dog-cart with Grinder sitting by his side. They passed so closely that Philpot – who was on that side of the cart – was splashed with mud from the wheels of the trap.

  ‘Them’s some of your chaps, ain’t they?’ remarked Grinder.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Rushton. ‘We’re doing a job up this way.’

  ‘I should ’ave thought it would pay you better to use a ’orse for sich work as that,’ said Grinder.

  ‘We do use the horses whenever it’s necessary for very big loads, you know,’ answered Rushton, and added with a laugh: ‘But the donkeys are quite strong enough for such a job as that.’

  The ‘donkeys’ struggled on up the hill for about another hundred yards and then they were forced to halt again.

  ‘We mustn’t stop long, you know,’ said Harlow. ‘Most likely he’s gone to the job, and he’ll wait to see how long it takes us to get there.’

  Barrington felt inclined to say that in that case Rushton would have to wait, but he remained silent, for he remembered that although he personally did not care a brass button whether he got the sack or not, the others were not so fortunately circumstanced.

  While they were resting, another two-legged donkey passed by pushing another cart – or rather, holding it back, for he was coming slowly down the hill. Another Heir of all the ages – another Imperialist – a degraded, brutalized wretch, clad in filthy, stinking rags, his toes protruding from the rotten broken boots that were tied with bits of string upon his stockingless feet. The ramshackle cart was loaded with empty bottles and putrid rags, heaped loosely in the cart and packed into a large sack. Old coats and trousers, dresses, petticoats, and underclothing, greasy, mildewed and malodorous. As he crept along with his eyes on the ground, the man gave utterance at intervals to uncouth, inarticulate sounds.

  ‘That’s another way of gettin’ a livin’,’ said Sawkins with a laugh as the miserable creature slunk past.

  Harlow also laughed, and Barrington regarded them curiously. He thought it strange that they did not seem to realize that they might some day become like this man themselves.

  ‘I’ve often wondered what they does with all them dirty old rags,’ said Philpot.

  ‘Made into paper,’ replied Harlow, briefly.

  ‘Some of them are,’ said Barrington, ‘and some are manufactured into shoddy cloth and made into Sunday clothes for working men.’

  ‘There’s all sorts of different ways of gettin’ a livin’,’ remarked Sawkins, after a pause. ‘I read in a paper the other day about a bloke wot goes about lookin’ for open trap doors and cellar flaps in front of shops. As soon as he spotted one open, he used to go and fall down in it; and then he’d be took to the ’orspital, and when he got better he used to go and threaten to bring a action against the shop-keeper and get damages, and most of ’em used to part up without goin’ in front of the judge at all. But one day a slop was a watchin’ of ’im, and seen ’im chuck ’isself down one, and when they picked ’im up they found he’d broke his leg. So they took ’im to the ’orspital and when he came out and went round to the shop and started talkin’ about bringin’ a action for damages, the slop collared ’im and they give ’im six months.’

  ‘Yes. I read about that,’ said Harlow, ‘and there was another case of a chap who was run over by a motor, and they tried to make out as ’e put ’isself in the way on purpose; but ’e got some money out of the swell it belonged to; a ’underd pound I think it was.’

  ‘I only wish as one of their motors would run inter me,’ said Philpot, making a feeble attempt at a joke. ‘I lay I’d get some o’ me own back out of ’em.’

  The others laughed, and Harlow was about to make some reply but at that moment a cyclist appeared coming down the hill from the direction of the job. It was Nimrod, so they resumed their journey once more and presently Hunter shot past on his machine without taking any notice of them…

  When they arrived they found that Rushton had not been there at all, but Nimrod had. Crass said that he had kicked up no end of a row because they had not called at the yard at six o’clock that morning for the ladder, instead of going for it after breakfast – making two journeys instead of one, and he had also been ratty because the big gable had not been started the first thing that morning.

  They carried the ladder into the garden and laid it on the ground along the side of the house where the gable was. A brick wall about eight feet high separated the grounds of ‘The Refuge’ from those of the premises next door. Between this wall and the side wall of the house was a space about six feet wide and this space formed a kind of alley or lane or passage along the side of the house. They laid the ladder on the ground along this passage, the ‘foot’ was placed about half-way through; just under the centre of the gable, and as it lay there, the other end of the ladder reached right out to the front railings.

  Next, it was necessary that two men should go up into the attic – the window of which was just under the point of the gable – and drop the end of a long rope down to the others who would tie it to the top of the ladder. Then two men would stand on the bottom rung, so as to keep the ‘foot’ down, and the three others would have to raise the ladder up, while the two men up in the attic hauled on the rope.

  They called Bundy and his mate Ned Dawson to help, and it was arranged that Harlow and Crass should stand on the foot because they were the heaviest. Philpot, Bundy, and Barrington were to ‘raise’, and Dawson and Sawkins were to go up to the attic and haul on the rope.

  ‘Where’s the rope?’ asked Crass.

  The others looked blankly at him. None of them had thought of bringing one from the yard.

  ‘Why, ain’t there one ’ere?’ asked Philpot.

  ‘One ’ere? Of course there ain’t one ’ere!’ snarled Crass. ‘Do you mean to say as you ain’t brought one, then?’

  Philpot stammered out something about having thought there was one at the house already, and the others said they had not thought about it at all.

  ‘Well, what the bloody hell are we to do now?’ cried Crass, angrily.

  ‘I’ll go to the yard and get one,’ suggested Barrington. ‘I can do it in twenty minutes there and back.’

  ‘Yes! and a bloody fine row there’d be if Hunter was to see you! ’Ere it’s nearly ten o’clock and we ain’t made a start on this gable wot we ought to ’ave started first thing this morning.’

  ‘Couldn’t we tie two or three of those short ropes together?’ suggested Philpot. ‘Those that the other two ladders was spl
iced with?’

  As there was sure to be a row if they delayed long enough to send to the yard, it was decided to act on Philpot’s suggestion.

  Several of the short ropes were accordingly tied together but upon examination it was found that some parts were so weak that even Crass had to admit it would be dangerous to attempt to haul the heavy ladder up with them.

  ‘Well, the only thing as I can see for it,’ he said, ‘is that the boy will ’ave to go down to the yard and get the long rope. It won’t do for anyone else to go: there’s been one row already about the waste of time because we didn’t call at the yard for the ladder at six o’clock.’