"And do your workmen," asked a London visitor of a Lancashire mill-owner--"do your workmen really live in those hovels?"
"Certainly not," replied the master. "They only sleep there. They live in my mill."
This was forty years ago. Neither question nor answer would now be possible. For the hovels are improved into cottages; the factory hands no longer live only in the mill; and the opinion, which was then held by all employers of labour, as a kind of Fortieth Article, that it is wicked for poor people to expect or hope for anything but regular work and sufficient food, has undergone considerable modification. Why, indeed, they thought, should the poor man look to be merry when his betters were content to be dull? We must remember how very little play went on even among the comfortable and opulent cla.s.ses in those days.
Dulness and a serious view of life seemed inseparable; recreations of all kinds were so many traps and engines set for the destruction of the soul; and to desire or seek for pleasure, reprehensible in the rich, was for the poor a mere accusation of Providence and an opening of the arms to welcome the devil. So that our mill-owner, after all, may have been a very kind-hearted and humane creature, in spite of his hovels and his views of life, and anxious to promote the highest interests of his employes.
A hundred years ago, however, before the country became serious, the people, especially in London, really had a great many amus.e.m.e.nts, sports, and pastimes. For instance, they could go baiting of bulls and bears, and nothing is more historically certain than the fact that the more infuriated the animals became, the more delighted were the spectators; they "drew" badgers, and rejoiced in the tenacity and the courage of their dogs; they enjoyed the n.o.ble sport of the c.o.c.k-pit; they fought dogs and killed rats; they "squalled" fowls--that is to say, they tied them to stakes and hurled cudgels at them, but only once a year, and on Shrove Tuesday, for a treat; they boxed and fought, and were continually privileged to witness the most stubborn and spirited prize-fights; every day in the streets there was the chance for everybody of getting a fight with a light-porter, or a carter, or a pa.s.senger--this prospect must have greatly enhanced the pleasures of a walk abroad; there were wrestling, cudgelling, and quarter-staff; there were frequent matches made up and wagers laid over all kinds of things: there were bonfires, with the hurling of squibs at pa.s.sers-by; there were public hangings at regular intervals and on a generous scale; there were open-air floggings for the joy of the people; there were the stocks and the pillory, also free and open-air exhibitions; there were the great fairs of Bartholomew, Charlton, Fairlop Oak, and Barnet; there were also lotteries. Besides these amus.e.m.e.nts, which were all for the lower orders as well as for the rich, they had their mug-houses, whither the men resorted to drink beer, spruce, and purl; and for music there was the street ballad-singer, to say nothing of the bear-warden"s fiddle and the band of marrow-bones and cleavers. Lastly, for those of more elevated tastes, there was the ringing of the church bells. Now, with the exception of the last named, we have suppressed every single one of these amus.e.m.e.nts. What have we put in their place? Since the working cla.s.ses are no longer permitted to amuse themselves after the old fashions--which, to do them justice, they certainly do not seem to regret--how do they amuse themselves?
Everybody knows, in general terms, how the English working cla.s.ses do amuse themselves. Let us, however, set down the exact facts, so far as we can get at them, and consider them. First, it must be remembered as a gain--so many other things having been lost--that the workman of the present day possesses an accomplishment, one weapon, which was denied to his fathers--_he can read_. That possession ought to open a boundless field; but it has not yet done so, for the simple reason that we have entirely forgotten to give the working man anything to read. This, if any, is a case in which the supply should have preceded and created the demand. Books are dear; besides, if a man wants to buy books, there is no one to guide him or tell him what he should get.
Suppose, for instance, a studious working man anxious to teach himself natural history, how is he to know the best, latest, and most trustworthy books? And so for every branch of learning. Secondly, there are no free libraries to speak of; I find, in London, one for Camden Town, one for Bethnal Green, one for South London, one for Notting Hill, one for Westminster, and one for the City; and this seems to exhaust the list. It would be interesting to know the daily average of evening visitors at these libraries. There are three millions of the working cla.s.ses in London: there is, therefore, one free library for every half-million, or, leaving out a whole three-fourths in order to allow for the children and the old people and those who are wanted at home, there is one library for every 125,000 people. The accommodation does not seem liberal, but one has as yet heard no complaints of overcrowding. It may be said, however, that the workman reads his paper regularly. That is quite true. The paper which he most loves is red-hot on politics; and its readers are a.s.sumed to be politicians of the type which consider the Millennium only delayed by the existence of the Church, the House of Lords, and a few other inst.i.tutions. Yet our English working man is not a firebrand, and though he listens to an immense quant.i.ty of fiery oratory, and reads endless fiery articles, he has the good sense to perceive that none of the destructive measures recommended by his friends are likely to improve his own wages or reduce the price of food. It is unfortunate that the favourite and popular papers, which might instruct the people in so many important matters--such as the growth, extent, and nature of the trades by which they live, the meaning of the word Const.i.tution, the history of the British Empire, the rise and development of our liberties, and so forth--teach little or nothing on these or any other points.
If the workman does not read, however, he talks. At present he talks for the most part on the pavement and in public-houses, but there is every indication that we shall see before long a rapid growth of workmen"s clubs--not the tea-and-coffee make-believes set up by the well-meaning, but honest, independent clubs, in every respect such as those in Pall Mall, managed by the workmen themselves, who are not, and never will become, total abstainers, but have shown themselves, up to the present moment, strangely tolerant of those weaker brethren who can only keep themselves sober by putting on the blue ribbon.
Meantime, there is the public house for a club, and perhaps the workmen spends, night after night, more than he should upon beer. Let us remember, if he needs excuse, that his employers have found him no better place and no better amus.e.m.e.nt than to sit in a tavern, drink beer (generally in moderation), and talk and smoke tobacco. Why not? A respectable tavern is a very harmless place; the circle which meets there is the society of the workman: it is his life: without it he might as well have been a factory hand of the good old time--such as hands were forty years ago; and then he would have made but two journeys a day--one from bed to mill, and the other from mill to bed.
Another magnificent gift he has obtained of late years--the excursion train and the cheap steamboat. For a small sum he can get far away from the close and smoky town, to the seaside perhaps, but certainly to the fields and country air; he can make of every fine Sunday in the summer a holiday indeed. Is not the cheap excursion an immense gain?
Again, for those who cannot afford the country excursion, there is now a Park accessible from almost every quarter. And I seriously recommend to all those who are inclined to take a gloomy view concerning their fellow-creatures, and the mischievous and dangerous tendencies of the lower cla.s.ses, to pay a visit to Battersea Park on any Sunday evening in the summer.
As regards the working man"s theatrical tastes, they lean, so far as they go, to the melodrama; but as a matter of fact there are great ma.s.ses of working people who never go to the theatre at all. If you think of it, there are so few theatres accessible that they cannot go often. For instance, there are for the accommodation of the West-end and the visitors to London some thirty theatres, and these are nearly always kept running; but for the densely populous districts of Islington, Somers Town, Pentonville, and Clerkenwell, combined, there are only two; for Hoxton and Haggerston, there is only one; for the vast region of Marylebone and Paddington, only one; for Whitechapel, "and her daughters," two; for Sh.o.r.editch and Bethnal Green, one; for Southwark and Blackfriars, one; for the towns of Hampstead, Highgate, Camden Town, Kentish Town, Stratford, Bow, Bromley, Bermondsey, Camberwell, Kensington, or Deptford, not one. And yet each one of these places, taken separately, is a good large town. Stratford, for instance, has 60,000 inhabitants, and Deptford 80,000. Only half a dozen theatres for three millions of people! It is quite clear, therefore, that there is not yet a craving for dramatic art among our working cla.s.ses. Music-halls there are, certainly, and these provide shows more or less dramatic, and, though they are not so numerous as might have been expected, they form a considerable part of the amus.e.m.e.nts of the people; it is therefore a thousand pities that among the "topical" songs, the break-downs, and the comic songs, room has never been found for part-songs or for music of a quiet and somewhat better kind. The proprietors doubtless know their audience, but wherever the Kyrle Society have given concerts to working people, they have succeeded in interesting them by music and songs of a kind to which they are not accustomed in their music-halls.
The theatre, the music-hall, the public-house, the Sunday excursion, the parks--these seem almost to exhaust the list of amus.e.m.e.nts. There are, also, however, the suburban gardens, such as North Woolwich and Rosherville, where there are entertainments of all kinds and dancing; there are the tea-gardens all round London; there are such places of resort as Kew and Hampton Court, Bushey, Burnham Beeches, Epping, Hainault and Rye House. There are also the harmonic meetings, the free-and-easy evenings, and the friendly leads at the public-houses.
Until last year there was one place, in the middle of a very poor district, where dancing went on all the year round. And there are the various clubs, debating societies, and local parliaments which have been lately springing up all over London. One may add the pleasure of listening to the stump orator, whether he exhorts to repentance, to temperance, to republicanism, to atheism, or to the return of Sir Roger. He is everywhere on Sunday in the streets, in the country roads, and in the parks. The people listen, but with apathy; they are accustomed to the white-heat of oratory; they hear the same thing every Sunday: their pulses would beat no faster if Peter the Hermit himself or Bernard were to exhort them to a.s.sume the Cross. It is comic, indeed, only to think of the blank stare with which a British workman would receive an invitation to take up arms in order to drive out the accursed Moslem.
As regards the women, I declare that I have never been able to find out anything at all concerning their amus.e.m.e.nts. Certainly one can see a few of them any Sunday walking about in the lanes and in the fields of northern London, with their lovers; in the evening they may also be observed having tea in the tea-gardens. These, however, are the better sort of girls; they are well dressed, and generally quiet in their behaviour. The domestic servants, for the most part, spend their "evening out" in taking tea with other servants, whose evening is in.
On the same principle, an actor when he has a holiday goes to another theatre; and no doubt it must be interesting for a cook to observe the _differentiae_, the finer shades of difference, in the conduct of a kitchen. When women are married and the cares of maternity set in, one does not see how they can get any holiday or recreation at all; but I believe a good deal is done for their amus.e.m.e.nt by the mothers"
meetings and other clerical agencies. There is, however, below the shop girls, the dressmakers, the servants, and the working girls whom the world, so to speak, knows, a very large cla.s.s of women whom the world does not know, and is not anxious to know. They are the factory hands of London; you can see them, if you wish, trooping out of the factories and places where they work on any Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and thus get them, so to speak, in the lump. Their amus.e.m.e.nt seems to consist of nothing but walking about the streets, two and three abreast, and they laugh and shout as they go so noisily that they must needs be extraordinarily happy. These girls are, I am told, for the most part so ignorant and helpless, that many of them do not know even how to use a needle; they cannot read, or, if they can, they never do; they carry the virtue of independence as far as they are able, and insist on living by themselves, two sharing a single room; nor will they brook the least interference with their freedom, even from those who try to help them. Who are their friends, what becomes of them in the end, why they all seem to be about eighteen years of age, at what period of life they begin to get tired of walking up and down the streets, who their sweethearts are, what are their thoughts, what are their hopes--these are questions which no man can answer, because no man could make them communicate their experiences and opinions.
Perhaps only a Bible-woman or two know the history, and could tell it, of the London factory girl. Their pay is said to be wretched, whatever work they do; their food, I am told, is insufficient for young and hearty girls, consisting generally of tea and bread or bread-and-b.u.t.ter for breakfast and supper, and for dinner a lump of fried fish and a piece of bread. What can be done? The proprietors of the factory will give no better wage, the girls cannot combine, and there is no one to help them. One would not willingly add another to the "rights" of man or woman; but surely, if there is such a thing at all as a "right," it is that a day"s labour shall earn enough to pay for sufficient food, for shelter, and for clothes. As for the amus.e.m.e.nts of these girls, it is a thing which may be considered when something has been done for their material condition. The possibility of amus.e.m.e.nt only begins when we have reached the level of the well fed. Great Gaster will let no one enjoy play who is hungry. Would it be possible, one asks in curiosity, to stop the noisy and mirthless laughter of these girls with a hot supper of chops fresh from the grill? Would they, if they were first well fed, incline their hearts to rest, reflection, instruction, and a little music? The cheap excursions, the school feasts, the concerts given for the people, the increased brightness of religious services, the Bank holidays, the Sat.u.r.day half-holiday, all point to the gradual recognition of the great natural law that men and women, as well as boys and girls, must have play. At the present moment we have just arrived at the stage of acknowledging this law; the next step will be that of respecting it, and preparing to obey it, just now we are willing and anxious that all should play; and it grieves us to see that in their leisure hours the people do not play because they do not know how.
Compare, for instance, the young workman with the young gentleman--the public schoolman, one of the kind who makes his life as "all round" as he can, and learns and practises whatever his hand findeth to do. Or, if you please, compare him with one of the better sort of young City clerks; or, again, compare him with one of the lads who belong to the cla.s.ses now held in the building of the old Polytechnic; or with the lads who are found every evening at the cla.s.ses of the Birkbeck. First of all, the young workman cannot play any game at all, neither cricket, football, tennis, racquets, fives, or any of the other games which the young fellows in the cla.s.s above him love so pa.s.sionately: there are, in fact, no places for him where these games can be played; for though the boys may play cricket in Victoria Park, I do not understand that the carpenters, shoemakers, or painters have got clubs and play there too. There is no gymnasium for them, and so they never learn the use of their limbs; they cannot row, though they have a splendid river to row upon; they cannot fence, box, wrestle, play single-stick, or shoot with the rifle; they do not, as a rule, join the Volunteer corps; they do not run, leap, or practise athletics of any kind; they cannot swim; they cannot sing in parts, unless, which is naturally rare, they belong to a church choir; they cannot play any kind of instrument--to be sure the public schoolboy is generally grovelling in the same shameful ignorance of music; they cannot dance; in the whole of this vast city there is not a single place where a couple, so minded, can go for an evening"s dancing, unless they are prepared to journey as far as North Woolwich. Not one. Ought it not to be felt and resented as an intolerable grievance that grandmotherly legislation actually forbids the people to dance? That the working men themselves do not seem to feel and resent it is really a mournful thing. Then, they cannot paint, draw, model, or carve. They cannot act, and seemingly do not care greatly about seeing others act; and, as already stated, they never read books. Think what it must be to be shut out entirely from the world of history, philosophy, poetry, fiction, essays, and travels! Yet our working cla.s.ses are thus practically excluded. Partly they have done this for themselves, because they have never felt the desire to read books; partly, as I said above, we have done it for them, because we have never taken any steps to create the demand. Now, as regards these arts and accomplishments, the public schoolman and the better cla.s.s City clerk have the chance of learning some of them at least, and of practising them, both before and after they have left school. What a poor creature would that young man seem who could do none of these things!
Yet the working man has no chance of learning any. There are no teachers for him; the schools for the small arts, the accomplishments, and the graces of life are not open to him; one never hears, for instance, of a working man learning to waltz or dance, unless it is in imitation of a music-hall performer. In other words, the public schoolman has gone through a mill of discipline out of school as well as in. Law reigns in his sports as in his studies. Whether he sits over his books or plays in the fields, he learns to be obedient to law, order, and rule: he obeys, and expects to be obeyed; it is not himself whom he must study to please: it is the whole body of his fellows. And this discipline of self, much more useful than the discipline of books, the young workman knows not. Worse than this, and worst of all, not only is he unable to do any of these things, but he is even ignorant of their uses and their pleasures, and has no desire to learn any of them, and does not suspect at all that the possession of these accomplishments would multiply the joys of life. He is content to go on without them. Now contentment is the most mischievous of all the virtues; if anything is to be done, and any improvement is to be effected, the wickedness of discontent must first be explained away.
Let us, if you please, brighten this gloomy picture by recognising the existence of the artisan who pursues knowledge for its own sake. There are many of this kind. You may come across some of them botanizing, collecting insects, moths and b.u.t.terflies in the fields on Sundays; others you will find reading works on astronomy, geometry, physics, or electricity: they have not gone through the early training, and so they often make blunders; but yet they are real students. One of them I knew once who had taught himself Hebrew; another, who read so much about co-operation, that he lifted himself clean out of the co-operative ranks, and is now a master; another and yet another and another, who read perpetually, and meditate upon, books of political and social economy; and there are thousands whose lives are made dignified for them, and sacred, by the continual meditation on religious things. Let us make every kind of allowance for these students of the working cla.s.s; and let us not forget, as well, the occasional appearance of those heaven-born artists who are fain to play music or die, and presently get into orchestras of one kind or another, and so leave the ranks of daily labour and join the great clan or caste of musicians, who are a race or family apart, and carry on their mystery from father to son.
But, as regards any place or inst.i.tution where the people may learn or practise or be taught the beauty and desirability of any of the commoner amus.e.m.e.nts, arts, and accomplishments, there is not one, anywhere in London. The Bethnal Green Museum certainly proposed unto itself, at first, to "do something," in a vague and uncertain way, for the people. n.o.body dared to say that it would be first of all necessary to make the people discontented, because this would have been considered as flying in the face of Providence; and there was, besides, a sort of nebulous hope, not strong enough for a theory, that by dint of long gazing upon vases and tapestry everybody would in time acquire a true feeling for art, and begin to crave for culture. Many very beautiful things have, from time to time, been sent there--pictures, collections, priceless vases; and I am sure that those visitors who brought with them the sense of beauty and feeling for artistic work which comes of culture, have carried away memories and lessons which will last them for a lifetime. On the other hand, to those who visit the Museum chiefly in order to see the people, it has long been painfully evident that the folk who do not bring that sense with them go away carrying nothing of it home with them. Nothing at all. Those gla.s.s cases, those pictures, those big jugs, say no more to the crowd than a cuneiform or a Hitt.i.te inscription. They have now, or had quite recently, on exhibition a collection of turnips and carrots beautifully modelled in wax: it is perhaps hoped that the contemplation of these precious but homely things may carry the people a step farther in the direction of culture than Sir Richard Wallace"s pictures could effect. In fact, the Bethnal Green Museum does no more to educate the people than the British Museum. It is to them simply a collection of curious things which is sometimes changed. It is cold and dumb. It is merely a dull and unintelligent branch of a department; and it will remain so, because whatever the collections may be, a Museum can teach nothing, unless there is someone to expound the meaning of the things. Why, even that wonderful Museum of the House Beautiful could teach the pilgrims no lessons at all until the Sisters explained to them what were the rare and curious things preserved in their gla.s.s cases.
Is it possible that, by any persuasion, attraction, or teaching, the walking men of this country can be induced to aim at those organized, highly skilled, and disciplined forms of recreation which make up the better pleasure of life? Will they consent, without hope of gain, to give the labour, patience, and practice required of every man who would become master of any art or accomplishment, or even any game?
There are men, one is happy to find, who think that it is not only possible, but even easy, to effect this, and the thing is about to be transferred from the region or theory to that of practice, by the creation of the People"s Palace.
The general scheme is already well known. Because the Mile End Road runs through the most extensive portion of the most dismal city in the world, the city which has been suffered to exist without recreation, it has been chosen as the fitting site of the Palace. As regards simple absence of joy, Hoxton, Haggerston, Pentonville, Clerkenwell, or Kentish Town, might contend, and have a fair chance of success, with any portion whatever of the East-end proper. But, then, around Mile End lie Stepney, Whitechapel, Bethnal Green, the Cambridge Road, the Commercial Road, Bow, Stratford, Shadwell, Limehouse, Wapping, and St. George"s-in-the-East. Without doubt the real centre, the [Greek: omphalos] of dreariness, is situated somewhere in the Mile End Road, and it is to be hoped that the Palace may be placed upon the very centre itself.
Let me say a few words as to what this Palace may and may not do. In the first place, it can do nothing, absolutely nothing, to relieve the great starvation and misery which lies all about London, but more especially at the East-end. People who are out of work and starving do not want amus.e.m.e.nt, not even of the highest kind; still less do they want University extension. Therefore, as regards the Palace, let us forget for a while the miserable condition of the very poor who live in East London; we are concerned only with the well fed, those who are in steady work, the respectable artisans and _pet.i.ts commis_, the artists in the hundred little industries which are carried on in the East-end; those, in fact, who have already acquired some power of enjoyment because they are separated by a sensible distance from their hand-to-mouth brothers and sisters, and are pretty certain to-day that they will have enough to eat to-morrow. It is for these, and such as these, that the Palace will be established. It is to contain: (1) cla.s.s-rooms, where all kinds of study can be carried on; (2) concert rooms; (3) conversation-rooms; (4) a gymnasium; (5) a library; and lastly, a winter garden. In other words, it is to be an inst.i.tution which will recognise the fact, that for some of those who have to work all day at, perhaps, uncongenial and tedious labour, the best form of recreation may be study and intellectual effort; while for others--that is to say, for the great majority--music, reading, tobacco, and rest will be desired. Let us be under no illusions as to the supposed thirst for knowledge. Those who desire to learn are even in youth always a minority. How many men do we know, among our own friends, who have ever set themselves to learn anything since they left school? It is a great mistake to suppose that the working man, any more than the merchant-man or the clerk-man, or the tradesman, is ardently desirous of learning. But there will always be n few; and especially there are the young who would fain, if they could, make a ladder of learning, and so, as has ever been the goodly and G.o.dly custom in this realm of England, mount unto higher things. The Palace of the People would be incomplete indeed if it gave no a.s.sistance to ambitious youths. Next to the cla.s.ses in literature and science come those in music and painting. There is no reason whatever why the Palace should not include an academy of music, an academy of arts, and an academy of acting, in a few months after its establishment it should have its own choir, its own orchestra, its own concerts, its own opera, and its own theatre, with a company formed of its own _alumni_. And in a year or two it should have its own exhibition of paintings, drawings, and sculpture. As regards the simpler amus.e.m.e.nts, there must be rooms where the men can smoke, and others where the girls and women can work, read, and talk; there must be a debating society for questions, social and political, but especially the former; there must be a dancing school, and a ball once every week, all the year round; it should be possible to convert the great hall into either theatre, concert-room, or ball-room; there must be a bar for beer as well as for coffee, and at a price calculated so as to pay just the bare expenses; there must be a library and writing-room, and the winter garden must be a place where the women and children can come in the daytime while the men are at work. One thing must be kept out of the place: there must not be allowed to grow up in the minds even of the most suspicious the least jealousy that religious influences are at work; more than this, the inst.i.tution must be carefully watched to prevent the rise of such a suspicion; religious controversy must be kept out of the debating-room, and even in the conversation-rooms there ought to be power to exclude a man who makes himself offensive by the exhibition and parade of his religious or irreligious opinions.
As for the teaching of the cla.s.ses, we must look for voluntary work rather than to a great endowment. The history of the College in Great Ormond Street shows how much may be done by unpaid labour, and I do not think it too much to expect that the Palace of the People may be started by unpaid teachers in every branch of science and art: moreover, as regards science, history and language, the University Extension Society will probably find the staff. There must be, however, volunteers, women as well as men, to teach singing, music, dancing, sewing, acting, speaking, drawing, painting, carving, modelling, and many other things. This kind of help should only be wanted at the outset, because, before long, all the art departments ought to be conducted by ex-students who have become in their turn teachers, they should be paid, but not on the West-end scale, from fees--so that the schools may support themselves. Let us not _give_ more than is necessary; for every cla.s.s and every course there should be some kind of fee, though a liberal system of small scholarships should encourage the students, and there should be the power of remitting fees in certain cases. As for the difficulty of starting the cla.s.ses, I think that the a.s.sistance of Board School masters, foremen of works, Sunday schools, the political clubs, and debating societies should be invited; and that besides small scholarships, substantial prizes of musical and mathematical instruments, books, artists"
materials, and so forth, should be offered, with the glory of public exhibition and public performances. After the first year there should be nothing exhibited in the Palace except work done in the cla.s.ses, and no performances of music or of plays should be given but by the students themselves.
There has been going on in Philadelphia for the last two years an experiment, conducted by Mr. Charles Leland, whose sagacious and active mind is as pleased to be engaged upon things practical as upon the construction of humorous poems. He has founded, and now conducts personally, an academy for the teaching of the minor arts; he gets shop girls, work girls, factory girls, boys and young men of all cla.s.ses together, and teaches them how to make things, pretty things, artistic things. "Nothing," he writes to me, "can describe the joy which fills a poor girl"s mind when she finds that she, too, possesses and can exercise a real accomplishment." He takes them as ignorant, perhaps--but I have no means of comparing--as the London factory girl, the girl of freedom, the girl with the fringe--and he shows them how to do crewel-work, fretwork, bra.s.s work; how to carve in wood; how to design; how to draw--he maintains that it is possible to teach nearly every one to draw; how to make and ornament leather work, boxes, rolls, and all kinds of pretty things in leather. What has been done in Philadelphia amounts, in fact, to this: that one man who loves his brother man is bringing purpose, brightness, and hope into thousands of lives previously made dismal by hard and monotonous work; he has put new and higher thoughts into their heads; he has introduced the discipline of methodical training; he has awakened in them the sense of beauty. Such a man is nothing less than a benefactor to humanity.
Let us follow his example in the Palace of the People.
I venture, further, to express my strong conviction that the success of the Palace will depend entirely upon its being governed, within limits at first, but these limits constantly broadening, by the people themselves. If they think the Palace is a trap to catch them, and make them sober, good, religious and temperate, there will be an end. In the first place, therefore, there must be a real element of the working man upon the council; there must be real working men on every sub-committee or branch; the students must be wholly recruited from the working cla.s.ses; and gradually the council must be elected by the people who use the Palace. Fortunately, there would be no difficulty at the outset in introducing this element, because the great factories and breweries in the neighbourhood might be asked each to elect one or more representatives to sit upon the council of the new University. It "goes without saying" that the police work, the maintenance of order, the out-kicking of offenders, must be also entirely managed by a voluntary corps of efficient working men. Rows there will undoubtedly be, since we are all of us, even the working man, human; but there need be no scandals.
I must not go on, though there is so much to be said. I see before us in the immediate future a vast University whose home is in the Mile End Road; but it has affiliated colleges in all the suburbs, so that even poor, dismal, uncared-for Hoxton shall no longer be neglected; the graduates of this University are the men and women whose lives, now unlovely and dismal, shall be made beautiful for them by their studies, and their heavy eyes uplifted to meet the sunlight; the subjects or examination shall be, first, the arts of every kind: so that unless a man have neither eyes to see nor hand to work with, he may here find something or other which he may learn to do; and next, the games, sports, and amus.e.m.e.nts with which we cheat the weariness of leisure and court the joy of exercising brain and wit and strength.
From the crowded cla.s.s-rooms I hear already the busy hum of those who learn and those who teach. Outside, in the street, are those--a vast mult.i.tude to be sure--who are too lazy and too sluggish of brain to learn anything: but these, too, will flock into the Palace presently to sit, talk, and argue in the smoking-rooms; to read in the library; to see the students" pictures upon the walls; to listen to the students" orchestra, discoursing such music as they have never dreamed of before; to look on while His Majesty"s Servants of the People"s Palace perform a play, and to hear the bright-eyed girls sing madrigals.
[1884.]
THE a.s.sOCIATED LIFE. [The substance of this paper was delivered as the presidential speech at the opening of the Hoxton Library and Inst.i.tute.]
It has seemed to me--for reasons which I hope to make clear to you--that the present occasion, the opening of our newly-acquired Place of Gathering, is one on which something may be said upon the subject of the a.s.sociated Life--that is to say, on the union, or combination of men, or of men and women, in order to effect by collective action objects--objects worthy of effort--impossible for the individual to attempt.
It would seem at first sight that combination should be the very simplest thing in the world. It is self-evident that those who want anything have a much better chance of getting it if they join together in order to demand it, or to work for it. Like one or two other simple laws of human nature, this, though the simplest, is the hardest to get people to understand and to accept. Nothing is so difficult as to persuade people to trust each other, even to the extent of standing together and sticking together and working together in order to get what they want.
The first a.s.sociation of men was forced upon them for protection, I wonder how many ages--hundreds of thousands of years--it took to teach men to join together in order to protect themselves against starvation, wild beasts, and each other. The necessity of self-preservation first made men a.s.sociate, and changed hunters into soldiers, and turned the whole world into a camp. It was war, which brought men together; it was war which taught men the necessity of order, discipline, and obedience; without the necessity for fighting, without the military spirit, no a.s.sociation at all would now be possible. A vast number of men practically use modern safety at this day for the purpose of being fighters, every man against his neighbour. Just as no one would, even now, do any work but for the necessity of finding food for himself and his family, so no one would ever have begun to stand side by side with his neighbour but for the absolute certainty that he would be killed if he did not.
Let us, however, consider a more advanced kind of a.s.sociation, that of men united for purposes of trade and profit. The craftsman of the town, who made things and sold them, found out by the experience of some generations that his only chance, if he would not become a slave, was to combine with others who made the same things for the same purposes. He therefore formed--here in London, as early as the Saxon times an a.s.sociation for the protection of his craft--a rough-and-ready a.s.sociation at first, a religious guild or fraternity, something which should persuade men to come together as friends, not rivals, what we should now call a benefit society, gradually developing into an a.s.sociation of officers, a const.i.tution, and rules; growing by slow degrees into a powerful and wealthy body, having its period of birth, development, vigour, and decay. In ill.u.s.tration of such an a.s.sociation, I will sketch out for you the history of a certain London Company--what was called a Craft Company; a society of working-men who were engaged upon the same craft; who all made the same thing: as the Company of Bowyers who made bows, or of Fletchers who made arrows. The society began first of all with a Guild of the Craft, such as I have just mentioned; that is to say, all those who belonged to the Craft--according to the custom of the time, they all lived in the same quarter and were well known to each other--were persuaded or compelled to belong to the Guild. Here religion stepped in, for every Guild had its own patron saint, and if a craftsman stood aloof, he lost the protection and incurred the displeasure of that saint, so that, apart from considerations of the common weal, terror of how the offended saint might punish the blackleg forced men to join. Thus, St. George protected the armourers; St. Mary and St.
Thomas the Martyr, the bowyers; St. Catharine the Virgin, the haberdashers; St. Martin, the sadlers; the Virgin Mary, the cloth-workers, and so on. On the saint"s day they marched in procession to the parish church and heard Ma.s.s; every year each man paid his fees of membership; the Guild looked after the sick and maintained the aged of the Craft. The next step, which was not taken until after many years, and was not at first contemplated, was to obtain for the Guild--_i.e._, for the Craft--a Royal Charter. This favour of the Sovereign conferred certain powers of regulating their trade; and, this once obtained, we hear no more of the Guild--it became absorbed into the Company. The religious observances remained, but they were no longer put forward as the chief "articles" of a.s.sociation. The powers granted by Royal Charter were very strong. The Company was empowered to prohibit anyone from working at that trade within the jurisdiction of the City who was not a member of the Company; it could prevent markets from being held within a certain distance of the City; it could oblige all the youth of the City to be apprenticed to some Company; it could regulate wages and hours of work; it could examine the work before it could be sold; and it could limit the number of the workmen. The Company, in fact, ruled its own trade with an authority from which there was no appeal. On the other hand, the Company exercised a paternal care over its members. When they were sick, the Company provided for them; when they became old, the Company maintained them; if any became dishonest, the Company turned them out of the City. You, who think yourselves strong with your Trades Unions (things as yet undeveloped and with all their history before them), have never yet succeeded in getting a tenth part of the power and authority over your own men that was excercised by a City Company in the time of Richard II. over its Livery.
Then, in order to maintain the dignity of the Craft, a livery was chosen, the colours of which were worn by every member. On their saint"s day, as in the old days of the Guild, the Company marched in great magnificence, with music and flags and new liveries, with their wardens, officers, schoolboys, almsmen, and priests, to church. After church they banqueted together in the Company"s Hall, a splendid building, where a great feast was served, and where the day was honoured by the presence of guests--great n.o.bles, city worthies, even the Lord Mayor, perhaps, or some of the Aldermen, or the Bishop, or one of the Abbots of the City Religious Houses. Every man was bidden to bring his wife to the feast of the Company"s grand day--if not his wife, then his sweetheart, for all were to feast together. During dinner the musicians in their gallery made sweet music. After dinner, actors and tumblers came in, and they had pageants and shows, and marvellous feats of skill and legerdemain.
Ask yourselves, at this point, whether it is possible to conceive of an inst.i.tution more purely democratic than such a company as originally designed. All the craftsmen of every craft combining together, not one allowed to stand out, electing their own officers, obeying rules for the general good, building halls, holding banquets, and creating a spirit of pride in their craft. What more could be desired? Why do we not imitate this excellent example?
Yet, when we look at the City Companies, what do we find? The old Craft Companies, it is true, still exist; they have an income of many thousands a year, and a livery, or list of members, in number varying from twenty to four hundred, and not one single craftsman left among them. What has become, then, or the a.s.sociation? Well, that remains, the shadow remains, but the substance has long since gone. Even the craft itself, in many cases, has disappeared. There are no longer in existence, for instance, Armourers, Bowyers, Fletchers, or Poulterers.
What has happened, then? Why did this essentially democratic Company--in which all were subject to rules for the general good, and none should undersell his brother, and the rate of wages and the hours of labour were regulated--so completely fail?
For many reasons, some of which concern ourselves: it failed, because the members themselves forgot the original reason of their combination, and neglected to look after their own interests; it failed, because the members were too ignorant to remember, or to know, that the Company was founded for the interests of the Craft itself, and not for those of the masters alone or the men alone. Now every a.s.sociation must needs, of course, have wardens or masters; it must needs elect to those posts of dignity and responsibility such men as could understand law and maintain their privileges if necessary before the dread Sovereign, his Highness the King. The men they necessarily elected were therefore those who had received some education, master-workmen--their own employers--not their fellows. It speedily came about, therefore, that the masters, not the men, ruled the hours of work, the wages of work, the quant.i.ty and quality of work: the masters, not the craftsmen, admitted members and limited their number.
Do you now understand? The officers ruled the Company of the Craftsmen for the benefit of the masters and not the men. Nay, they did more.
Since in some trades the men showed a disposition, on dimly perceiving the reality, to form a union within a union, the masters were strong enough to put down all combinations for the raising of wages as illegal; to attempt such combinations was ruled to be conspiracy. And conspiracy all unions of working men have remained down to the present day, as the founders of the first Trades Unions in this country discovered to their cost. So the men were gagged; they were silenced; they were enslaved by the very inst.i.tution that they had founded for the insurance of their own freedom. The thing was inevitable because they were ignorant, and because, if you put into any man"s hands the power of robbing his neighbour with impunity, that man will inevitably sooner or later rob his neighbour. I fear that we must acknowledge the sorrowful fact that not a single man in the whole world, whatever his position, can be trusted with irresponsible and absolute power--with the power of robbery coupled with the certainty of immunity.
Well, in this way came about the first enslavement of the working man.
It lasted for three hundred years. Then followed a time of comparative freedom, when, the wealth and population of the city increasing, the craftsmen found themselves pushed out beyond the walls, and taking up their quarters beyond the power of the Companies. But it was a freedom without knowledge, without order, without forethought. It was the freedom of the savage who lives only for himself. For they were now unable to combine. In the long course of centuries they had lost the very idea of combination; they had forgotten that in an age we call rude and rough they possessed the power and perceived the importance of combination. The great-grandchildren of the men who had formed this union of the trade had entirely forgotten the meaning, the reason, the possibility, of the old combination. In this way, then, the Companies gradually lost their craftsmen, but retained their property.
One very remarkable result may be noticed. Formerly, the Lord Mayor of London was elected by the whole of the commonalty. All the citizens a.s.sembled at Paul"s Cross, and there, sometimes with tumult and sometimes with fighting, they elected their mayor for the next year.
But since every man in the City was compelled to belong to his own Company, to speak of the commonalty meant to speak of the Companies.
Every man who voted for the election of Lord Mayor was therefore bound to be a liveryman--_i.e_., a member of a Company. This restriction is still in force; that is to say, the City of London, the richest and the greatest city in the world, now allows eight thousand liverymen, or members of the Companies, to elect their chief magistrate.
Why do I tell over again this old threadbare tale? Perhaps, however, it is not old or threadbare to you: perhaps there are some here who learn for the first time that a.s.sociation, trade union, combination, is a thousand years old in this ancient city. I have told it chiefly, however, because the history should be a warning to you of London; because it shows that a.s.sociation itself may be made the very weapon with which to destroy its own objects; in other words, because you must find in this history an ill.u.s.tration or the great truth that the forms of liberty require the most unceasing vigilance to prevent them from becoming the means of destroying liberty. The Companies failed because they could be, and were, used to destroy the freedom of the very men for whose benefit they were founded. At present, as you know, some of them are very poor indeed: those which are rich are probably doing far more good with their wealth in promoting all kinds of useful work than ever they did in all their past history.
There followed, I said, a long period in which a.s.sociation among working men was absolutely unknown. The history of this period, from a craftsman"s point of view, has never been written. It is, indeed, a most terrible chapter in the history of industry.
Imagine, if you can, crowded districts in which there were no schools, or but one school for a very few, no churches, no newspapers or books, a place in which no one could read; a place in which every man, woman and child regarded the Government of the country, in which they had not the least share, as their natural enemy and oppressor. Among them lurked the housebreaker, the highway robber, and the pickpocket. Along the riverside, where many thousands of working men lived--at St.
Katherine"s, Wapping, Shadwell, and Ratcliff--all the people together, high and low, were in league with the men who loaded and unloaded the ships in the river and robbed them all day long. What could be expected of people left thus absolutely to themselves, without any power of action, without the least thought that amendment was possible or desirable? Can we wonder if the people sank lower and lower, until, by the middle of the last century, the working men of London had reached a depth of degradation that terrified everyone who knew what things meant? Listen to the following words, written in the year 1772: