From Workhouse to Westminster Part 5

It's Monday plenty, Tuesday some, Wednesday a little, Thursday none, Don't worry about Friday, You get your money on Sat.u.r.day.'"

Among the workmen was a thinker and reformer far ahead of his times. It was dangerous in those days for workmen to give expression to advanced views, and as he was a married man he made no display of his opinions.

He seems to have seen promise in young Will, for he talked to him freely on social and political matters, encouraging him to read by lending him books and papers, and inspiring him with an enthusiasm for the teaching of John Bright.

So much so, that at home Will was nicknamed Young John Bright. An uncle, looking in on the eve of the General Election of 1868, said jokingly, "Now, young John Bright, tell us all about what is going to happen."

Nothing loath, Will delivered a long speech on the political situation, and foretold, among other things, that the Liberals would sweep the country, and that one of their first acts would be to disestablish the Church of Ireland. The prophecy, needless to say, was fulfilled.

Will was one of half-a-dozen apprentices in the coopering establishment.

While still the youngest among them he made his mark by acting as spokesman in a sudden emergency. The lads thought they had a grievance under the piece-rate system. They went in a body to the head of the firm, the eldest primed with a well-rehea.r.s.ed speech stating their case.

If Will saved the situation, he began by nearly bringing disaster upon it. It happened that the spokesman's father was an undertaker in Stepney, and that on Sundays the lad, with becoming gravity, frequently walked as a mute at funerals.

Just as the solemn procession of aggrieved apprentices was about to enter the office, the employer's wondering eye upon them through the window, Will called out in a stage whisper:

"Now, Joe, put on your best Sunday face!"

The fearful tension was broken. All the boys burst into laughter. The lads tumbled over each other in their eagerness to get outside the pa.s.sage. When the head of the firm opened his door Will alone remained.

"What's all this about, Crooks?"

The youngest apprentice thereupon briefly ran over the lads' grievances, and on being asked why the deputation fled in laughter, he explained the meaning of the Sunday face.

The employer laughed as boisterously as his boys. He told Crooks to go back to work, promising that the lads should have fair play. That very day he issued orders placing the apprentices under better conditions.

One of the lads, with an unconquerable liking for lying in bed, had not turned up by nine o'clock on a certain morning. The other apprentices stole out with a barrow and went to his house with the object of wheeling him to work.

Half an hour later the lad rushed into the cooperage panting and dishevelled, his clothes torn, his hat missing.

"Done 'em!" he gasped, after the manner of Alfred Jingle. "I rushed out o' the back door, got over the wall, over the next wall, fell on a flower-bed, man came out (such langwidge!), climbed his wall afore he could ketch me, landed clean on a dog kennel, dog tore me clothes, got over another wall--into the street at last--boys caught sight o' me, howling chase with barrow, woman let me run through her house, over another wall. Done 'em!"

Something more than laziness explained the occasional absence of others from work. Certain of the men would be missing for two or three days.

During an unusually long absence of one of the older coopers, the men and lads rigged up a dummy figure, dressing it in whatever clothes of their own they could spare. They placed the dummy in an improvised coffin by the side of their missing comrade's bench, with an imitation tombstone at the head, bearing the inscription, "Not dead, but drunk."

The morning came when the delinquent turned up. A deep silence fell over the workshop as he entered. Men and apprentices alike suddenly appeared to be absorbed in work. The late-comer pretended not to see the effigy by his bench. With quiet deliberation he took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and lighted the furnace-fire. No one spoke. The old man brought two handfuls of shavings and piled them on the fire until it roared again. Then suddenly he seized the dummy figure and hurled it on the flames.

Everybody sprang forward to s.n.a.t.c.h his garments from the fire. One rescued his coat, another his vest, another his cap, another his m.u.f.fler, another his pair of boots, the old man belabouring each in turn.

"Ah!" he cried with a chuckle, as the singed garments were dragged away.

"I knew that would find you all out."

Quaint and boisterous customs were observed when an apprentice was out of his time. The greater part of the day was given up by men and boys alike to revelry and horse-play.

The ceremonies began at about eleven o'clock in the morning, to be kept up for the rest of the day. First, the apprentice was seized and put into a hot barrel. Round him stood some fifty men and boys checking every attempt he made to get out, tapping him with hammers on the head and fingers and shoulders every time he made an effort to escape. When his clothes--the last he was to wear as an apprentice--had been singed in the barrel out of all further use, he would be dragged out and tossed in the air by about a dozen of the strongest men.

Only once did the employer try to stop these boisterous interludes. He never tried again. The men laid hold of him, and for about five minutes treated him to a vigorous tossing.

It then became the bruised and singed apprentice's privilege to pay for bread and cheese and drink. In the afternoon the men turned the yard into an imitation fair. Flags and bunting were put up and side shows were improvised. One feature was to persuade the fattest men to walk the tight-rope.

On the whole, Will had a happy time as an apprentice, working hard and laughing hard, more than once threatened with dismissal because his spirit of fun led him into mischief. He became a good craftsman, and to this day boasts of being as skilful at his own trade as any man. He attributes this to the old spirit of craftsmanship that held good in his day. One incident during his apprenticeship helped to make him take a pride in what he made with his own hands. An old workman in the shop, after finishing a piece of work, set it in the middle of the floor and walked round it admiringly several times.

"'Pon my honour, one would think you'd made a thousand-horse-power engine," said the apprentice.

"Never you mind, sonny," replied the old workman. "Whether it's a thousand-horse-power engine or not, _I made it myself_!"

"That is the spirit I want to see revived among workmen to-day," Crooks told the Labour Co-partnership a.s.sociation in 1905, relating the incident at their annual exhibition at the Crystal Palace. He went on to say:

I want to see workmen proud of what they make with their own hands.

That is impossible in many workshops to-day because of the soulless way in which they are conducted. Many workmen have got the idea they only exist for what other people can get out of them. I blame employers as much as workmen for this state of things. There are in the country some excellent employers. Unfortunately, they are becoming fewer. The individual employer is going out, and the limited liability company coming in, having as its one object the making of profit, utterly regardless of the bodies or souls of the men or women from whom the profit is wrung. The result of running works and factories for company dividends only has destroyed the old school of masters and men, both of whom had a pride in their work, both of whom stamped their work with the mark of their own individuality.

To get back to a better state of things workmen must become their own masters, and the Co-Partnership a.s.sociation is showing men the way. It is teaching them to live and work with and for each other.

I want men who groan under the injustice of so much in our industrial system to understand that they can do much for themselves. By combination and co-operation they can run businesses of their own. But they must first take to the water before they can swim. It means discipline, but trade unionism has meant discipline.

The administrative capacity of workmen can be developed to an enormous extent yet.

How are we going to train our men and women workers to take on the responsibilities of regulating their own lot in a better manner?

Trade unionists are now learning that instead of spending money on strikes it is better to spend it in starting workshops of their own. The time has come when Labour leaders and others might well cease talking to the workers about their power and begin talking to them about their responsibilities.

The day after this speech he received the following letter from George Jacob Holyoake, a few months before that veteran co-operator pa.s.sed away:--

"Against my will I was prevented from being present at the Crystal Palace, but that does not disqualify me from expressing my thanks for the wise and practical speech you made--in every way admirable."

CHAPTER VI

TRAMPING THE COUNTRY FOR WORK

Marriage--Dismissed as an Agitator--Home broken up--"On the Road"--Timely Help at Burton--Finding Work at Liverpool--Bereavement--Back in London--A Second Tramp to Liverpool--Feelings of an "Out-of-Work."

On a grey morning in the December of 1871 two young people came out of St. Thomas's Church, Bethnal Green, man and wife. Both were only nineteen years of age. The husband was Will Crooks; his wife the daughter of an East London shipwright named South.

They set up their home in Poplar, near the coopering yard where Will was employed. At first they had to be content with apartments; then came a small tenement; soon after a little house of their own.

It was fair and pleasant sailing for the first two or three years. He got a journeyman's full wages the first week he was out of his apprenticeship. It seemed as though he were to have an unbroken run of good fortune. The bright hopes soon collapsed.

Good craftsmanship and trade unionism, blended as they were in Crooks, made him rebel against certain conditions of his work. Finally he refused to use inferior timber on a job, and objected to excessive overtime. Although the youngest among them, he addressed the workmen on the subject. A few days afterwards he was dismissed.

He took his notice lightly enough, confident that as master of his trade he could soon secure work again.

It was not to be. Every shop and yard in London was closed to him. Word had gone round that he was an agitator.

Try as he did, he could not break through the barrier that had been raised against him. Wherever he applied, whether in Rotherhithe, Battersea, Hackney, or Clerkenwell, he was known as the young fellow who would not work with shoddy material and talked other men into the same view.

The experience was the same at every place of call.