PLUTOCRACY.
"Constant at church and change; his gains were sure,
His givings rare, save farthings to the poor."
POPE. "Of the Use of Riches."
"Here you a muckworm of the town might see
At his dull desk, amid his ledgers stall'd,
Eat up with carking care."
THOMSON. "Castle of Indolence."
Everyone knows Pugsley, _the great Pugsley_, proprietor of Pugsley's
Pure Piquant Pickles. You have seen his gracefully alliterative
advertisements on the hoardings at the railway stations, and all
down the Great Turnover Line, glaring at you in pastoral scenes,
where Chloris led her lambkins in the pre-plutocratic days of "merrie
England," and even obtruding their hideous drawing of the pickle
bottles ("Ask for Pugsley's, Pure and Piquant") upon you in lonely
mountain inns of the Grampians. There is no escaping the all-pervading
Pugsley. Your grocer has foisted Pugsley's Pickles on you, and you
have had to taste them, willy-nilly. He had a good reason for sending
you Pugsley's Pickles. The firm are able to undersell all other
competitors in the drysaltery interest, because they pay low wages to
their workpeople.
But, though you are familiar with the name of the Great Pugsley,
and know the flavour of his relishes and condiments, you have never
troubled to learn how the man made his huge business. I will tell you
his history. It is very instructive.
Pugsley's father was a village grocer at Hookham Nooton. He sold
butter and cheese and tea for forty years, and left his son £500 at
his demise. Young Pugsley early developed shrewd commercial instincts.
At school he retailed his father's sugar to the boys, making a clear
halfpenny profit on each penny; and when he had made a little capital
by this huckstering, he launched out into bigger trading ventures, such
as the vending of knives and cricket bats, and cheap magic lanterns,
till he became a kind of "Universal Provider" at the select academy for
young gentlemen. This was good training for his after career of buying,
and selling, and exploiting. There is nothing like beginning these
things when you are young.
At fifteen, Pugsley, junior, was installed behind the parental counter
at Hookham Nooton, where he learned how to weigh tea with a bit of
paper under the scale pan, and other recognised dodges of the trade, so
that he soon became his father's right hand, and a great acquisition
to the business. When Pugsley, senior, departed hence, his son took
sole control of the shop. But the young man realised that he was born
to be a great merchant, and not a petty trader in a remote village.
One day he chanced upon an old book of practical recipes, which told
you how to make ketchup and sauces, and, by dint of messing with
vinegar and spices, he hit upon the famous blend that made his name
as a sauce maker. Bottles of the stuff sold readily in the village
and neighbouring small towns, for there is no denying that it was a
tasty relish. Then came small wholesale orders, and trade began "to
hum," as business slang has it. Five years later we find Pugsley the
owner of a pickle factory in Spitalfields, and the employer of fifty
hands, mostly girls and boys. Ten years after, his pickles are used in
every Respectable family in the kingdom, and their repute has reached
America and the Colonies; and so, before the prime of life, Pugsley is
a pursy citizen, with a fine house at Richmond, a horse and chaise, a
housekeeper, maidservants, and a gardener and coachman--all the proper
rewards of industry.
At thirty-six, Pugsley married money, and further extended his
business. His wife "received" local snobs, and gave "at homes,"
attended by inferior celebrities and "all the people who are likely to
be of use to us." At forty Pugsley was a Constitutional candidate for
Diddleham, the hope of the Respectables, the cynosure of the hide-bound
conventionalists in politics. You may remember that he was returned
by the imposing majority of six. Now came the zenith of his fame.
Pugsley's politics like his pickles, are notoriously piquant. He has
voted against every democratic measure, and prated about "the natural
leaders of the working class."
See him now, in his honoured old age, hated of his workpeople,
envied by Respectables, despised by the county gentry and feared by
almost everyone, a millionaire to-day, with a seat in Clodshire, a
house in Portland Terrace, a yacht at Brighton, and a deer forest in
Inverness-shire. I have met his son, the Master of the Slowcomb Hounds,
a good sort of Philistine, who would rather do his fellow-men a good
turn than an ill one, but a terrible ignoramus and deadweight for all
that; with far less real knowledge of men and books than my cobbler
round the corner. There are three daughters. One of them, Miss Evelyn,
is betrothed to Lord Durt, the young impoverished peer, who was lately
earning thirty shillings a week as society reporter to the "Gadabout."
I am glad for Durt. He has had a rough time, and Evelyn is an amiable,
even hopeful specimen of the Respectable girl. She has lately talked
about industrial questions, and I believe she is half ashamed already
that papa has women in his employment earning nine shillings a week
upon which to keep body and soul together.
Yes, it is with the sweat of women and children that Pugsley has become
a plutocrat. His wife is the Patroness of the Refuge for the Fallen.
How many of Pugsley's women have been forced to supplement their
wretched earnings by prostitution? Someone once put this question to
the pickleman. "Really, Mrs. ----," he said, "I am not responsible for
the morals of my working people." But I say that it is such fellows as
Pugsley who force girls to sell themselves in the street. I ask you, my
Respectable sister, could you live yourself and help to support your
widowed mother and two young children on a wage of seven shillings a
week? I have known one of Pugsley's women workers try to do this till
death came with its eternity of rest for that poor, semi-starved,
aching body. To me it is a constant source of wonder, and a matter
of profound respect for woman's moral courage that more of Pugsley's
ill-paid women helpers do not walk the streets for hire.
O! Great Pugsley, I would that I could be certain of a day of reckoning
betwixt you and an Almighty Judge! Sometimes, in dreams, I hear the
tramp, tramp, of thousands of feet, and see the white faces of toilers
gleam in the murk of a London night, a night of violent retribution.
Must we wait for this? Must hands be stained with men's blood ere the
rich will bestir themselves to render justice to the poor? I pray the
fates that it may not be so! But everywhere, in the great cities, and
out in the fields, I hear the murmur of deep, sullen discontent.
Think what such a man as Pugsley has wrought in the name of
Respectability. He has systematically lied, cheated, and crushed the
weaker to the wall. He has piled up wealth by defrauding the widow and
the orphan of bare human rights, turning them into worse than slaves
by his thrice-accursed lust for money. I have heard of old servants
being deposed in his warehouse, and put into subordinate positions to
make way for the young; of men dismissed for the expression of Liberal
political opinions; of hands threatened with discharge for professing
trades union principles; of fines wrung from hungry children for
trivial offences; and of bullying and insult and injustices without
number.
I hear my cut-and-dried economist calling me to account with his
formulas and expositions. Ah! I have listened to them; I have read
them; but they never have, and never will, persuade me that Pugsley,
the plutocrat, does what is right and humane and reasonable towards
those who have built up his fortune, and bought his mansions and his
yacht, and dowered his daughters. I know about competition, and the
law of demand and supply, and I take my stand on sound social science.
But no science that I have studied convinces me that this plutocracy
and plunder and monopoly are good for anyone but the plutocrats and
the plunderers. And not good for them, either, in any moral sense. Is
it moral to kill the social affections? I say that the professional
burglar is a model of virtue by the side of Pugsley. He does not pose
as a Christian philanthropist and a friend of the people when he goes
about his nefarious business. Pugsley, the great successful gambler,
fines poor country louts for playing pitch and toss with halfpence. The
next day he perpetrates a filthy fraud on 'Change. Shelley was right,
the true ruffian of a community is not the cutpurse who knocks you down
in the Gray's Inn Road, and gags you, while his accomplice grabs your
watch and valuables, but the "Respectable man--the smooth, smiling
villain whom all the City honours, whose very trade is lies and murder;
who buys his daily bread with the blood and tears of men." I want to
know why the big thief, Pugsley, is made a peer, and the man who steals
a handful of turnips is sent to the County gaol?
The other day, a labourer, out of work, wired a rabbit on Pugsley's
estate, and went to prison for a week for the misdemeanour. But Pugsley
annexed the very land that the rabbit was on, a good wide strip of it,
too, which belonged to the people. I used to walk on that same ground,
looking for the first primroses. Now I must ask Pugsley's permission
before I dare set a foot there, on this property which I own in common
with my neighbours! And you tell me that this sort of "law and order"
is good for my morals.
I am glad that my ethical-cum-philosophical friend is not at my elbow
just now, to suggest that I ought to be kind to Pugsley. Why, in the
name of reason, am I to flatter and applaud this commercial gamester?
I look upon him as a victim of morbid acquisitiveness induced by
Respectability. Pugsley thinks he must keep up his reputation among
the Respectables of his set, and to do this he is urged to plunder the
poor. He is a dangerous maniac; he ought to be detained and set to
hard labour to cure him of his derangement.
The stupidest farce played by the Pugsleys is when one of the girls
goes district visiting, and tells the wives of the peasants earning
twelve shillings a week, that they "ought to put by for a rainy day." I
wonder that the women can keep their patience with the ninny. If Miss
Clara Pugsley were to use her atrophied brain for five minutes, she
would know that no woman with a husband and five children to feed and
clothe, and a rent of eighteenpence a week to pay, can save a farthing
out of such wages. It is gross insolence of this over-fed, idle,
ignorant girl to talk in this fashion to the poor. But this fatuous
nonsense is preached all over the country every day in the week. Ladies
call it "helping the poor to be thrifty," "elevating the workers," etc.
O, Great Pugsley, it is not envy of your possessions that makes me dip
my pen in gall, though I know well that is what you will think should
you read these words of mine. I would be well content with the income
of your under-steward. You have measured human nature with your little
foot-rule, and come to the opinion that all men are naturally greedy
vampires like yourself. Believe me, Pugsley, you are sadly wrong in
this view. I know men and women who would not stain their fingers with
your wretched blood-money for their own usage, though they would gladly
employ it for the benefit of those from whom you filched it, drib and
drab, by underpayment of their hard, dull toil.
I wish, how I wish in malignant moments, that I had assurance of a
hereafter for Pugsley in a dark, noisome factory, where he would have
to work for ten hours a day on skilly. The parson tells me that there
is a mansion in the skies prepared for Pugsley. And another equally
sumptuous residence for the more honest Bill Brown, the poacher? Why
not?
London, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield--these are the paradises
of the Pugsleys; they batten in the rechy air of these gambling
centres. How do these dismal, over-crowded, smoke-blackened haunts of
Respectability impress "the intelligent foreigner?" "Send a philosopher
to London, but no poet," says Heine. "Everywhere we are stared down on
by wealth and Respectability, while, crammed away in retired lanes and
damp alleys, poverty dwells, with her rags and her tears." Heine, like
many another thinker, was struck by the wretchedness and poverty of
London, hiding away behind the mansions of plutocrats and Respectables.
He saw "gaunt hunger staring beseechingly at the rich merchant who
hurries along, busy and jingling gold, or at the lazy lord who, like
the surfeited god, rides by on his high horse, casting now and then
an aristocratically indifferent glance at the mob below, as though
they were swarming ants, or, at all events, a mass of baser beings,
whose joys and sorrows have nothing in common with his feelings;" and
the poet cried to poor Poverty, "Well art thou in the right when thou
alliest thyself to vice and crime. Outlawed criminals often bear more
humanity in their hearts than those cold, blameless citizens of virtue,
in whose white hearts the power of evil is quenched, but also the power
of good."
Mr. Grant White has written a book entitled "England Within and
Without," a very pungent and witty delineation of the English
character from an American point of view. He tells us that the British
Philistine is "perfect of his kind;" that "Philistinism pervades the
whole society of Great Britain south of the Tweed." Mr. Grant says
that this Philistinism is of late growth in England, a phenomenon
of the last hundred and fifty years. We cannot find traces of it
in the "spacious days," in the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben
Jonson, Ford, and Massinger, nor in all the comedies of Shakspere.
Master Ford and Master Page, the townsmen of Windsor, are neither
snobs nor Philistines. But now, in this wonderful nineteenth century,
the Philistines are as obvious as the poor; they swarm and teem
everywhere. The dense-minded middle-class man, rich, purse-proud,
vulgar, incapable of apprehending anything beyond the range of his
own personal experience, comes upon the stage. Enter Pugsley, with a
capacious abdomen, a red beef face, set off with cropped side whiskers,
a shiny pow, a big voice, and an imposing cough. "He is the butt, it
is true, of the courtier and of the travelled man; nevertheless, he is
represented as the type of a large class, and as one who is becoming a
power in the land, and who is recognised as one of the characteristic
elements of its society. He is conscious at once of his importance, and
of his social inferiority, and he submits, although with surliness, to
the snubbing of his superiors, which sometimes takes a very active and
aggressive shape."
One day they will be coming round to me for a subscription towards
erecting a statue of the Great Pugsley. You know the kind of
effigy--Pugsley in a pot-hat, beaming benevolence, on a granite
pedestal, that all who pass by may behold and envy the glory of this
apotheosis of the Successful Man. But why should not Pugsley have his
monument? Could one devise a better way of advertising his Piquant
Pickles? Yes, let us have a colossal bronze figure of Peter Pugsley,
M.P., in the market place of Diddleham, with raised pickle-bottles in
metal festooned around the pedestal, and the words, "Ask for Pugsley's"
graven in the polished stone. There is not much artistic beauty in
Diddleham in the way of statuary. The statue will supply a long-felt
want. Besides, there is a purely utilitarian aspect to the question
(they are very utilitarian at Diddleham). At six meetings of the Town
Council, the question of where to put the public fire-escape has been
discussed with great heat. Let me suggest that it should be stood
against the memorial to Pugsley.
If I had a son who began to develop the faculty of "getting on" upon
the Pugsley lines, I would do all I could to encourage the youngster.
He would earn success so easily that he would not care a rap for it. I
would go, unbeknown to him, and scatter pins on the ground in front of
the office where he intended to apply for a clerkship, so that he might
stoop to pick them up, thereby, like the youth in the story, convincing
the employer of his thrifty and methodical qualities. His library
should be stocked with the lives of self-made men, the biographies of
smart bagmen, and works on how to grow money. Portraits of successful
merchants should deck the walls of his bedroom, and he should be taught
to revere them as patron saints. I warrant such methods of fostering
the love of commercial success would have the desired effect. The boy
would run away to "a hollow tree, a crust of bread, and liberty."