DEVELOPMENTS
The appetite grows by what it feeds upon, says the proverb, and this is
indubitably true of extra work. No matter what the auxiliary business
may be, or how sorely it may press upon the over-burdened body and
mind, it gradually becomes a necessity, reckoned upon as an essential
part of the income, and impossible to be done without. That such work
is an evil of the first magnitude cannot be gainsaid by any thinking
man. Unless of course it be, as sometimes happens, in the nature of a
recreation, but even then what home life can the man have who is absent
at work from breakfast time until nearly midnight? And what justice can
he do his legitimate employer, who after all has the best right to his
chief energies.
It may be said that if men were only paid a sufficient wage for the
work they do during the day they would not seek evening employment,
but such a statement would be very difficult to prove, since what is
sufficient for one is not for another. And some men have a mania for
work, begrudge themselves necessary sleep and food time, not because
they _need_ the money, but because they _want_ it. The best that
can be said for the practice is that it is far better than spending
every evening in the vicious atmosphere of a saloon bar or public
billiard-room, as so many workers do under the plea of recreation. But
both are bad for the man practising them, making him prematurely old,
and robbing him of all real enjoyment of life.
And yet how great is the excuse for the poorly paid clerk, who, having
married and seeing his children coming all too quickly, is at his wit's
end to know how to meet his ever growing expenses upon a non-expanding
salary. I know for a fact that an enormous majority of the married
clerks and salesmen of London live the life of slaves to those
whom they love, toiling ever with one end in view, the comfortable
maintenance of their dear ones. In literature, save the mark, they are
held up to scorn and ridicule, the clerk and the "counter jumper" being
taken as fair game for every smart pen, and even giants of the quill
like Mr H. G. Wells do not scruple to draw such a hideous caricature of
a splendid solid class as Kipps. A monstrous exception if ever there
was one to the great rule that these hardly entreated workers are fit
to hold their own in any society, and as far as their work is concerned
need not fear comparison with any.
To resume, as far as I am personally concerned, I found that even the
trifling amount that I was able to add to my income by my infrequent
sales of fancy goods for monthly payments, became absolutely necessary
to me, and I craved too for some means of adding thereunto. I answered
many advertisements, but they were all of the canvassing or touting
order, and I felt that I could much easier starve than do that. Why, I
always found it a dreadful task to go on board a ship, and ask if they
wanted any hands, to offer myself for hire! and that compared to the
door to door canvassing is ridiculously easy. However, I was fortunate
enough to get a job now and then to write up some firm's advertisement
books, and so utilise the holidays I was allowed, but could not enjoy.
This, and addressing envelopes at 3s. 6d. per thousand (I believe it
is now done for 1s. 6d.), brought in a little valuable money, and
improved my handwriting too. And still I craved for more. For one
thing my seafaring habit of early rising clung to me so, that I simply
could not remain in bed even on the dark mornings of winter after six
o'clock, while in summer I was often out and about at three, enjoying
the freshness of the young day, but lamenting that I could not put this
leisure time to some presently profitable use. It was the same in the
evening. Beyond the open-air meetings on Sunday and Thursday, I had no
recreations, no places of amusement. I could not read _all_ the time,
and although I walked fully ten miles a day to and from my work I had
abundant energy still available.
Now among my many deficiencies I was always painfully conscious of a
lack of mechanical genius, or even aptitude. As before noted, I could
not drive a nail without bending it, or turn a screw without burring
the head. Yet one day it chanced that I stood in the shop of an
acquaintance of mine watching him make picture-frames, and the thought
occurred to me that I could learn to do likewise, and thus perhaps
utilise my spare time, and earn a little money into the bargain.
Thenceforward I was a frequent visitor to him, and my questions were
many, but, such was my shyness that I never asked for a practical
lesson.
While in this absorbent frame of mind a canvasser called at our office
with some rather good steel engravings for sale. They were in monthly
parts of three in paper portfolios with descriptive letterpress,
and were entitled the "Imperial Gallery of British Art." Price five
shillings per part, the series to be completed in sixteen parts. As
I looked at the beautiful pictures, for, in spite of worn plates and
retouching, many of them _were_ beautiful, a scheme sprang to being in
my brain. Why should I not subscribe for two sets of engravings, frame
them myself, and sell them on my monthly payment system? In about five
minutes I had decided that I would venture, and had signed a document
burdening me with the payment of ten shillings monthly for sixteen
months.
After this, I suppose it is useless for me to say that I have or had
no speculative instinct, since I thus determined upon so slight a
prospect to mortgage such a considerable sum out of my income. But I
think it must have been some long dormant _flair_ for business which
thus suddenly materialised. However that may be, I was for the time
being possessed by my scheme, and frequented the shop where my friend
was always making frames more assiduously than ever. I plied him with
questions innumerable, all of which he answered very readily, seeing in
me a good prospective customer for material in order to carry out my
hobby, as he supposed it to be, and never even dreaming that I might be
a possible business competitor.
I afterwards found that amateur picture frame-makers when properly
encouraged make exceedingly good clients to the professional, whose
aim it should be to encourage them by all the means in his power to
make their own frames. Because it is almost certain that the amateur
will spoil far more material than he uses, and that his friends to
whom he shows his work with pride will make mental notes of his great
inferiority to the work of the professional, and determine never to
have any home-made frames themselves. This attitude of the professional
towards the amateur is an exceedingly profitable one, and pervades a
great many trades, where it is recognised that the man with a hobby
is a sort of bubbling well from whence the judicious fosterer of his
client's most amiable weakness may draw an ever-increasing profit.
Of course I made mistakes at starting, which cost me far more than I
could afford, mistakes which I should not have made had I possessed any
mechanical genius whatever. But I had what was better, an imperative
necessity to succeed. You remember the story of the cow climbing the
tree? It was exactly my case. There was no question of my learning to
frame pictures, I had to. But for that I know should have flung down my
tools and upset my glue-pot early in the game, vowing solemnly that to
learn such a business was impossible at my time of life and as a side
issue. But I did not, because I dared not, and after spending about six
times their value in moulding, and forty times as much in hard, almost
despairing work, I at last emerged from the struggle with two framed
pictures.
Looking back now I am amazed at even that moderate measure of success.
For we only had three rooms, and I had two children. Consequently
my only workshop was the apartment which served us as kitchen,
dining-room, and living room. The Pembroke table, all rickety as those
abominations always are, was my bench, and not infrequently capsized
with all my litter of work upon it. Of the usual appliances for the
work I had scarcely any. For instance I have often, to their great
delight, used my two children for a press--that is to sit on the board
in order to keep newly pasted down engravings or photographs from
cockling up. And if when putting the back into a frame I accidentally
touched the glass with the point of a brad, hearing at once the ominous
click which told me I had lost sixpence, the price of the square of
cheap glass, my children's hilarity was hushed in a moment as they saw
the almost despairing look in my eyes, and the haggard expression on my
face.
But I am getting on too fast. So much depends upon the point of view,
so relative are our joys or sorrows to our circumstances that I doubt
whether Columbus upon first beholding that will-o'-the-wisp-like light
upon San Salvador was more elate than I when I first beheld the two
finished frames which were the work of mine own hands. True I had
bought the moulding, and the gold or gilt slip. True I had bought the
ready cut mount from another tradesman, and the squares of glass had
been cut to my measurements by another, but mine was the hand that
had, after much bungling and patching and besmearing of thick glue,
achieved those frames. I felt that I could not weary of looking at
them. Mine was the joy of creation, however lawlessly assumed. Upon
rising at five the next morning, before dressing I paid a visit to them
for another admiring survey, and a wondering retrospect as to whether
it was really I who had succeeded in producing two such works of art.
Of course I had nothing to compare them with, but that was the merest
detail, it troubled me not at all.
I was all impatience to get to the office with them, nor, although I
am the least optimistic person alive, could I feel any great amount of
trepidation as to whether they would be favourably received or not. It
was a long and weary walk across the park from Kilburn to Westminster,
and my hands were blue with the cramping cold through carrying my
precious pictures, but I cared nothing for that. I was for the time
being satisfied with myself. And yet as I drew near the office where
my amateur work would be submitted to the shrewd if not unkindly
judgment of my fellows, and I should learn once for all whether in the
city man's phrase there "was money in it," I had hard work to keep my
spirits up. Fortunately I did not know what the odds were against me,
a blissful ignorance which has saved many a struggler from collapse of
dread before the fight has begun.
It is just possible that my work of totalling and meaning massive
columns of figures, mechanical and monotonous as it had become,
suffered that morning from utter lack of any ability on my part to
think of what I was doing. But at last the luncheon interval of three
quarters of an hour came, and having bolted my usual dinner of bread
and cheese, I began my tour of the various rooms with my work. I sold
my pictures to the first man I showed them to at a good profit on the
usual terms of five shillings a month, but he very kindly allowed me
to tote them all round the office, by which means I secured orders
for six more. Better than that I heard words of praise to which I
had almost always been a stranger, praise of my work, at which I
was far too gratified to inquire whether those who uttered it were
competent critics, or were trying to get my wares a little cheaper,
or on a little easier terms. It was a day to be marked with a white
stone, and I find it impossible now to recall any definite idea of the
multitudinous schemes of infinite pettiness which that day's success
hatched in my brain. I can only say that in their prospective wealth
of a few shillings extra a week, they were just as important, I was
just as earnest in considering them, as any millionaire manipulator of
stocks and shares, even though he looks for more tens of thousands from
other people's labour than I looked for units from my own.
Behold me then launched as a (vide my cards printed soon after)
"Carver, gilder, and picture-frame maker. Clients visited at their
own residences. Advice upon all art subjects gratis; estimates free!"
Nevertheless I found it anything but plain sailing. At almost every
turn I came up against some problem that would have given me no trouble
had I served a year in a bona fide frame-maker's shop. Mostly I got
over or round the difficulty somehow by myself, for I grew more and
more diffident of asking for instruction at the shop where I bought
my moulding and et ceteras. But I was steadily improving in my work,
steadily learning more and more of the details of the business, and
gradually acquiring more tools suitable for the work. It is often
scornfully said to the amateur, who is lamenting his inability to do
better because of the want of proper tools, that a "bad workman always
blames his tools." That may be true, but it is certainly not truer
than that no regular workman would attempt to commence a job with the
tools that the average amateur possesses. Bad or good as the result
may be, that there is any result at all from amateur work proves the
possession of what all are agreed that the workman is always the better
for, a love of the work for its own sake, and not at all from any hope
of reward for his achievement outside of the satisfaction of his own
innate desire for perfection.
I was now much happier. I cannot conscientiously say that I loved the
new work for its own sake, but I had never enjoyed the possession of a
hobby except reading and open-air preaching, and I was as I have said
far too poor to indulge my tastes even in these pursuits to the full.
But I was certainly interested in pictures and their frames. I was both
surprised and delighted to find that I actually had some mechanical
skill after all, and I never felt quite satisfied that my work was as
well done as possible. By which of course I mean that I was always
striving to do it better; not only, I can safely declare, because of
pleasing a customer, but for the great delight of admiring the work of
my own hands before I delivered it over to its owner.
Moreover, I found to my deep gratification, that my circle of
acquaintances or I may say even, friends, which had been exceedingly
small, was now being constantly enlarged. Nearly every new customer
I obtained became interested in the man beyond his work, and this
intercourse though it undoubtedly took up a great deal of time was very
pleasant. Before long I was adding a few shillings regularly every
week to my income, every one of which represented a great deal of work
and scheming and persuasion; shillings that were well and faithfully
earned, if ever shillings were. I did most of my work in the morning
before going to the office, for after office hours I was handicapped by
the fact that I had to go to the city to buy my mouldings and mounts,
or to make long journeys with the finished product.
This gathering together of the material that I used was one of the
chief drawbacks to my progress. I could not of course lay in a stock;
first, because I had no capital; secondly, because I had no room to
store it; and thirdly, because, owing to the enormous variety of
patterns, I could never tell what I should want a stock of. Of course
I early learned to guide my client's taste in the direction of the
easily obtainable (and profitable to me) patterns for obvious reasons,
but if a customer had seen a certain pattern and required it, I never
tried to persuade him out of it, but did my very best to satisfy him.
Here I found another enormous difficulty. I did not know what to
charge! There was no one of whom I dared ask the question, for it will
be quite easily understood that in all trades there must be intense
jealousy and dislike of an outsider coming in by a side entrance and
cutting into the business. I got some help from the price-lists of the
great stores, finding that I could make a very respectable profit, as I
considered it, by charging about twenty-five per cent. less than they
did. But that only helped me a little way, because I was continually
confronted by the cheap frames made by the gross and sold by the
drapers and fancy goods people at a few pence and some farthings each,
less in fact than I could buy the materials for in the making of one
frame.
So I groped blindly along, sometimes making a fair profit on my labour,
sometimes after two or three days' hard work emerging with about what I
started with because of unforeseen difficulties. I may have undersold
the legitimate operators in the same line, but if so it was entirely
due to ignorance on my part--I would never willingly spoil any man's
market, unless of course as in some monopolies prices needed reduction
in the interests of truth and honesty.
The writing of the last three words of the preceding sentence
has suddenly brought before me the necessity of a word or two of
explanation. I have not the slightest intention in these chapters to be
dictative. Still less do I wish to write a clumsy tract. And yet I find
upon looking back upon the last few pages that I am in great danger of
being accused of a smug and disgustingly hypocritical trumpeting forth
of my virtues. From such a peril I desire to guard myself if possible.
And I feel that I can only do so by stating definitely that although of
course I claimed to be a Christian man, my actions with regard to my
work did not seem to me to spring from any desire to follow a certain
code of moral laws, but to do to others as I wished they would do to
me. At my proper work at the office I know I was often indolent and
careless, and pre-occupied with my own affairs when I ought to have
given my best abilities to the duties for which I was paid, the reason
(not the excuse) being, that I never could take the slightest interest
in it. But in my private business outside the office I did always try
to give the best possible value for the money I received, and I had an
absolute horror of overcharging anybody.
Moreover, on certain occasions when I had to pay others to do what I
could not do myself, and based my proposal for payment on the profit
I expected to make, I have several times, on finding that my profits
were larger than I had expected, voluntarily increased the payment
to my helper. Not, I affirm, because of any deep-seated desire to be
just as well as kind, but, because it was the easiest way to quiet
some inner impulse driving me in the direction of justice. This is
not a matter of virtue, it is a matter of temperament. There is to me
something diabolical, infernal, in the idea of "doing" anybody, of
getting the better of them in a business deal, of binding men down to
serve you for a pittance upon which they can hardly live, and making
yourself a fortune by their labour. And I believe that a faithful
servant who puts love for you as the employer into his or her work is
valuable beyond all payment, but that fact should never hinder the
recipient of such service from paying as liberally as he can, not
caring a hang for the laws of political economy.
Dear me, how far this kind of thing does lead one to be sure. But I
have the most vivid recollection of those reflections in that strenuous
time, and they gave point and edge to my remarks made on Sunday morning
at Kensal Green Cemetery Gates, to the immense audiences of men
waiting there for William the Fourth to open. I preached the doctrine
of Christian Socialism as I saw it, as different from the naked and
unabashed Socialism of the Keir Hardie type, as light is from darkness,
a social law of love and duty towards my neighbour, whether he be rich
or poor. And this was a great and splendid compensation, even when as
often happened, I, having laid out my last few shillings on Friday for
materials wherewith to make frames in the hope of getting paid for them
on Saturday, found that I was left with only a few pence to procure
that sacrament of the Londoner, the Sunday's dinner.
However hard those times now seem to look back upon, I can very
plainly see how much of pleasure and good training there was in them,
compensations of which I then thought little. But I cannot help seeing
also how helpful a few business-like habits would have been. I cannot
say that I had a rooted objection to keeping accounts, I only know
that I never did keep them except in my head. And consequently I grew
to trust my memory for everything, which in business, however small,
is I now know fatal. Yet I know, too, that had I been managing anybody
else's business, I should have been a scrupulous book-keeper. Blamable
in the last degree this constitutional aversion of mine from putting
down what I had spent and how much I had earned from that spending.
Also, for another confession, though I was in theory anything but an
optimist, in practice I acted optimism. I never could feel sure of my
monthly government pay, until I had actually cashed the cheque, yet
in the face of demands which it seemed miraculous that I should ever
be able to satisfy I was cheery, even confident, that, as Dickens so
scornfully puts it, "things would come round."
Now I must close this chapter, already overlong, but before I do so I
must just say that at this time I drank nothing but water or tea, did
not smoke, never paid a penny for recreation, and wore my clothes till
I dared wear them no longer. And yet I was, with a steady salary of £2.
2s. a week, abjectly poor!