A NEW JOB
"The more you do, the more you get to do."
--_Cold Clay Philosophy._
When we arrived in Glasgow I parted company with Moleskin Joe. I told
him that I was going to work on the railway if I got an opening, but my
mate had no liking for a job where the pay could be only lifted once a
fortnight; he wanted his sub. every second day at least. He set out for
the town of Carlisle. There was a chance of getting a real job there, he
said.
"Mind you, if there's a chance goin' for another man, I'll let you know
about it," he added. "I would like you to come and work along with me,
matey, for me and you get on well together. Keep clear of women and
always stand up to your man until he knocks you out--that's if you're
gettin' the worst of the fight."
We parted without a handshake, as is the custom with us navvy men. He
never wrote to me, for I had no address when he left, and he did not
know the exact model to which he was going. Once out of each other's
sight, the link that bound us together was broken, and being homeless
men we could not correspond. Perhaps we would never meet again.
I got a job on the railway and obtained lodgings in a dismal and crooked
street, which was a den of disfigured children and a hothouse of
precocious passion, in the south side of Glasgow. The landlady was an
Irishwoman, bearded like a man, and the mother of several children. When
indoors, she spent most of her time feeding one child, while swearing
like a carter at all the others. We slept in the one room, mother,
children and myself, and all through the night the children yelled like
cats in the moonshine. The house was alive with vermin. The landlady's
husband was a sailor who went out on ships to foreign parts and always
returned drunk from his voyages. When at home he remained drunk all the
time, and when he left again he was as drunk as he could hold. I had no
easy job to put up with him at first, and in the end we quarrelled and
fought. He accused me of being too intimate with his wife when he was
away from home. I told him that my taste was not so utterly bad, for
indeed I had no inclination towards any woman, let alone the hairy and
unkempt person who was my landlady. I struck out for him on the stair
head. Three flights of stairs led from the door of the house down to the
ground floor. I threw the sailor down the last flight bodily and
headlong; he threw me down the middle flight. Following the last throw
he would not face up again, and I had won the fight. Afterwards the
woman came to her husband's aid. She scratched my face with her fingers
and tore at my hair, clawing like an angry cat. I did not like to strike
her back so I left her there with her drunken sailor and went out to the
streets. Having no money I slept until morning beside a capstan on
Glasgow quay. Next day I obtained lodgings in Moran's model, and I
stopped there until I went off to London eleven months afterwards.
I did not find much pleasure in the company of my new railway mates.
They were a spineless and ignorant crowd of men, who believed in
clergycraft, psalm-singing, and hymn-hooting. Not one of them had the
pluck to raise his hands in a stand-up fight, or his voice in protest
against the conditions under which he laboured. Most of them raised
their caps to the overseers who controlled their starved bodies and to
the clergy who controlled their starved souls. They had no rational
doctrine, no comprehension of a just God. To them God took on the form
of a monstrous and irritable ganger who might be pacified by prayers
instead of by the usual dole of drink.
Martin Rudor was the name of my new ganger. He was very religious and
belonged to the Railway Mission (whatever that is). He read tracts at
his work, which he handed round when he finished perusing them. These
contained little stories about the engine-driver who had taken the wrong
turning, or the signalman who operated the facing points on the running
line leading to hell. Martin took great pleasure in these stories, and
he was an earnest supporter of the psalm-singing enthusiasts who raised
a sound of devilry by night in the back streets of Glasgow. Martin said
once that I was employed on the permanent way that led to perdition. I
caught Martin by the scruff of the neck and rubbed his face on the slag.
He never thought it proper to look out my faults afterwards. Martin
ill-treated his wife, and she left him in the end. But he did not mind;
he took one of his female co-religionists to his bosom and kept her in
place of his legal wife, and seemed quite well pleased with the change.
Meanwhile he sang hymns in the street whenever he got two friends to
help and one to listen to him.
What a difference between these men and my devil-may-care comrades of
Kinlochleven. I looked on Martin Rudor and his gang with inexpressible
contempt, and their talk of religion was a source of almost unendurable
torment. I also looked upon the missions with disgust. It is a paradox
to pretend that the thing called Christianity was what the Carpenter of
Galilee lived and died to establish. The Church allows a criminal
commercial system to continue, and wastes its time trying to save the
souls of the victims of that system. Christianity preaches contentment
to the wage-slaves, and hob-nobs with the slave drivers; therefore, the
Church is a betrayer of the people. The Church soothes those who are
robbed and never condemns the robber, who is usually a pillar of
Christianity. To me the Church presents something unattainable, which,
being out of harmony with my spiritual condition, jars rather than
soothes. To me the industrial system is a great fraud, and the Church
which does not condemn it is unfaithful and unjust to the working
people. I detest missions, whether organised for the betterment of South
Sea Islanders or unshaven navvies. A missionary canvasses the working
classes for their souls just in the same manner as a town councillor
canvasses them for their votes.
I have heard of workers' missions, railway missions, navvies' missions,
and missions to poor heathens, but I have never yet heard of missions
for the uplifting of M.P.'s, or for the betterment of stock exchange
gamblers; and these people need saving grace a great deal more than the
poor untutored working men. But it is in the nature of things that piety
should preach to poverty on its shortcomings, and forget that even
wealth may have sins of its own. Clergymen dine nowadays with the
gamblers who rob the working classes; Christ used the lash on the
gamblers in the Temple.
I heard no more of Norah Ryan. I longed to see her, and spent hours
wandering through the streets, hoping that I would meet her once again.
The old passion had come back to me; the atmosphere of the town
rekindled my desire, and, being a lonely man, in the midst of many men
and women, my heart was filled with a great longing for my sweetheart.
But the weary months went by and still there was no sign of Norah.
When writing home I made enquiries about her, but my people said that
she had entirely disappeared; no Glenmornan man had seen Norah Ryan for
many years. My mother warned me to keep out of Norah's company if ever I
met her, for Norah was a bad woman. My mother was a Glenmornan woman,
and the Glenmornan women have no fellow-feeling for those who sin.
Manual labour was now becoming irksome to me, and eight shillings a week
to myself at the end of six days' heavy labour was poor consolation for
the danger and worry of the long hours of toil. I did not care for
money, but I was afraid of meeting with an accident, when I might get
maimed and not killed. It would be an awful thing if a man like me got
deprived of the use of an arm or leg, and an accident might happen to me
any day. In the end I made up my mind that if I was to meet with an
accident I would take my own life, and henceforth I looked at the future
with stoical calm.
I have said before that I am very strong. There was no man on the
railway line who could equal me at lifting rails or loading ballast
waggons. I had great ambitions to become a wrestler and go on the stage.
No workman on the permanent way could rival me in a test of strength.
Wrestling appealed to me, and I threw the stoutest of my opponents in
less than three minutes. I started to train seriously, bought books on
physical improvement, and spent twelve shillings and sixpence on a pair
of dumb-bells. During meal hours I persuaded my mates to wrestle with
me. Wet weather or dry, it did not matter! We went at it shoulder and
elbows in the muddy fields and alongside the railway track. We threw one
another across point-rods and signal bars until we bled and sweated at
our work. I usually took on two men at a time and never got beaten. For
whole long months I was a complete mass of bruises, my skin was torn
from my arms, my clothes were dragged to ribbons, and my bones ached so
much that I could hardly sleep at night owing to the pain. I attended
contests in the music-halls, eager to learn tips from the professionals
who had acquired fame in the sporting world.
The shunter of our ballast train was a heavy-shouldered man, and he had
a bad temper and an unhappy knack of lifting his fists to those who were
afraid of him. He was a strong rung of a man, and he boasted about the
number of fights in which he had taken part. He was also a lusty liar
and an irrepressible swearer. Nearly everyone in the job was afraid of
him, and to the tune of a wonderful vocabulary of unprintable words he
bullied all Martin Rudor's men into abject submission. But that was an
easy task. He felt certain that every man on the permanent way feared
him, and maybe that was why he called me an Irish cur one evening. We
were shovelling ashes from the ballast waggons on one line into the
four-foot way of the other, and the shunter stood on the foot-board of
the break-van two truck lengths away from me. I threw my shovel down,
stepped across the waggons, and taking hold of the fellow by the neck
and waist I pulled him over the rim of the vehicle and threw him
headlong down the railway slope. I broke his coupling pole over my knee,
and threw the pieces at his head. The breaking of the coupling pole
impressed the man very much. Few can break one over their knees. When
the shunter came to the top of the slope again, he was glad to apologise
to me, and thus save himself further abuse.
That evening, when coming in from my work, I saw a printed announcement
stating that a well-known Japanese wrestler was offering ten pounds to
any man whom he could not overcome in less than five minutes in a
ju-jitsu contest. He was appearing in a hall on the south side of the
city, and he was well-known as an exponent of the athletic art.
I went to the hall that evening, hoping to earn the ten pounds. The
shunter was four stone heavier than I was, yet I overcame him easily,
and the victory caused me to place great reliance on myself.
I took a threepenny seat in the gallery, and waited breathless for the
coming of the wrestler. Several artists appeared, were applauded or
hissed, then went off the stage, but I took very little heed of their
performances. All my thoughts were centred on the pose which I would
assume when rising to accept the challenge.
Sitting next to me was a fat foreigner, probably a seller of
fish-suppers or ice-cream. I wondered what he would think of me when he
saw me rise to my feet and accept the challenge. What would the girl who
sat on the other side of me think? She kept eating oranges all the
evening, and giggling loudly at every indecent joke made by the actors.
She was somewhat the worse for liquor, and her language was far from
choice. She was very pretty and knew it. A half-dressed woman sang a
song, every stanza of which ended with a lewd chorus. The girl beside me
joined in the song and clapped her hands boisterously when the artiste
left the stage.
The wrestler was the star turn of the evening, and his exhibition was
numbered two on the programme. When the number went up my heart
fluttered madly, and I felt a great difficulty in drawing my breath.
The curtain rose slowly. A man in evening dress, bearing a folded paper
in his hand, came out to the front of the stage. One of the audience
near me applauded with his hands.
"That's nae a wrestler, you fool!" someone shouted. "You dinna ken what
you're clappin' about."
"Silence!"
The audience took up the word and all shouted silence, until the din was
deafening.
"Ladies and gentlemen," began the figure on the stage, when the noise
abated.
Everyone applauded again. Even the girl beside me blurted out "Hear!
hear!" through a mouthful of orange juice. Those who pay threepence for
their seats love to be called ladies and gentlemen.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I have great pleasure in introducin' U---- Y----,
the well-known exponent of the art of ju-jitsu."
A little dark man with very bright eyes stepped briskly on the stage,
and bowed to the audience, then folded his arms over his breast and
gazed into vacancy with an air of boredom. He wore a heavy overcoat
which lay open at the neck and exposed his chest muscles to the gaping
throng.
"Everybody here has heard of U---- Y----, no doubt." The evening dress
was speaking again. "He is well known in America, in England, and on the
continent. At the present time he is the undefeated champion of his
weight in all the world. He is now prepared to hand over the sum of ten
pounds to any man in the audience who can stand against him for five
minutes. Is there any gentleman in the audience prepared to accept the
challenge?"
"I could wrestle him mysel'," said the girl of the orange-scented breath
in a whisper. Apart from that there was silence.
"Is any man in the audience prepared to accept the offer and earn the
sum of ten pounds?" repeated the man on the stage.
"I am."
Somehow I had risen to my feet, and my words came out spasmodically.
Everyone in front turned round and stared at me. My seat-mate clapped
her hands, and the audience followed her example.
There is no need to give an account of the contest. Suffice to say that
I did not collar the ten-pound note, and that I had not the ghost of a
chance in the match. It only lasted for forty-seven seconds. The crowd
hissed me off the stage, and I got hurriedly into the street when I
regained my coat in the dressing-room. I went out into the night, sick
at heart, a defeated man, with another of my illusions dashed to pieces.
I took no interest in wrestling afterwards.