ENGLAND AT WORK
A good proportion of young English manhood after having passed through
their course of education at home are claimed away from their country. The
Indian Civil Service, the Services of the Crown Colonies, the Navy, the
Army garrisons abroad, the immigration demand of the Overseas'
Dominions--all these make a tax on the numbers of adult England; and
unfortunately the tax is much more heavy upon the numbers of males than of
females. Thus there is a great disproportion of sexes in England. The
females far outnumber the males, especially in the cities. But after all
the demands have been met, there are still some millions of Englishmen
left. Let us see the work they do, the home life they lead.
[Illustration: HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT AND WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, LONDON]
First of all, if a young Englishman is of the well-to-do order, and is
ambitious, he will strive to take some part in politics. He may not be born
to be a member of the House of Lords: and only six hundred or so of him can
hope to become members of the House of Commons. But there are numerous
other avenues of political activity, such as County Councils and Committees
of all kinds. It is a wholesome aspiration of the best type of Englishmen
to take some part, not necessarily a paid part, in the government and
administration of their country. The supreme ambition, then, of the young
Englishman may be said to be to work in the House of Commons; and that
keeps "the Mother of Parliaments," in spite of all that pessimists may say,
the leading legislative body of the world.
In its vast membership the House of Commons includes experts on every
subject under the sun. There is no topic of debate imaginable on which some
member cannot speak as a past-master. And the House insists that if you
wish to engage its attention you must have something to say. You may halt
or stumble in your speech, but you must have something to say or you will
fail to get a hearing, no matter how charmingly you may talk. That helps
the debate to a high level, discouraging talk for mere talk's sake.
"Mr. Speaker," who presides over the House of Commons, seems to be always a
genius in the art of managing a deliberative assembly. At any rate, one
never hears of a weak "Mr. Speaker." The present one takes it to be his
duty to suppress all irrelevance and all tediousness in debate. He insists
that a member shall say his say without circumlocution or repetition. With
the vigilance of a ratting terrier he watches for discursiveness, and
pounces upon the offender at once. I recollect a debate on the Indian
question, arising out of the House of Lords' amendments in an Indian
governing Councils Bill. All the speakers in the debate were experts with
an inside knowledge of Indian affairs. They all spoke with terseness and
directness. But there were, nevertheless, four interruptions from Mr.
Speaker, that "the hon. member was not sticking to the point at issue." In
each case you recognised that Mr. Speaker was right. In one case, and one
case only, did the rebuked member attempt to argue the point. "I was only
going to point out, Mr. Speaker," he started. The whole House rose against
him. "'Vide, 'Vide," they called from front and cross and back benches. He
attempted again, and again the cries of "'Vide" drowned his voice; and he
had to submit without argument. The House clearly believed in its tyrant.
It requires a curious sort of genius to be so able to "proof-read" a
current debate and hit at once on the first divergence into redundancy.
If a "Mr. Speaker" is to become a tradition as one of the greatest of the
many great Mr. Speakers, then he must have a sense of humour as well as a
gift of prompt decision. The present Mr. Speaker has that qualification. He
does not say "funny" things. But in almost every ruling and reproof there
is a slight flavour of fun. A rule of the House was made after the
"Suffragettes" made trouble once or twice in the chamber, that the Women's
Gallery, a curious gilded bird-cage perched up in the roof of the House,
should be open only to "relatives of members." Mr. Speaker was asked to
define what closeness of relation justified admission. "That," said Mr.
Speaker, "I must leave to the individual consciences of hon. members." The
House chuckled and understood that any respectable person could be counted
as a feminine relative for purposes of admission to the gallery.
For the student of the origins of the English-race it is interesting--and
quite easy of accomplishment if you have an acquaintance who is a member of
Parliament--to see the quaint ceremony in the Lords of the Royal Assent
being given to Bills. On the occasion on which I attended, the Chancellor
and two Peers, acting as Commissioners for the King, sat in solemn state,
the Chancellor finding obvious difficulty in accommodating both a huge wig
and a cocked hat on his head. To them entered as far as the Bar of the
House, on summons, some of the Commons, heralded by Black Rod and led by
the Speaker. The titles of the Bills were recited by a clerk, and, with
much ritual of bowing, the Royal Assent was granted in Norman French: "Le
Roy le veult." It was rather a pity that the Bills were painfully prosaic
ones, dealing with tramways and the like. The elaborate medieval ceremony
would have been more fitting to some great measure of statecraft. Still it
did not seem incongruous. That is a characteristic of London. It is a
medieval city modernised, but without the flavour of the medievalism being
spoiled.
Of course it is well known that the present are not the original Houses of
Parliament; it may not be so familiar a fact that Westminster Hall covers
the old site, and that tablets, let into its walls, mark the limits,
curiously small, of the old House of Commons. The King is supposed by
tradition to open Parliament in the Hall of Westminster on the old site of
the Commons. But to do so he would have to stand exactly on the spot where
King Charles I. rose to receive a death sentence from his revolted Commons;
and I think that lately our monarchs have shown sentimental objections to
this and have let tradition in the matter go.
The House of Lords and the House of Commons are built in the one straight
line, with the lobbies intervening. The King, when seated on the throne,
can see right through (all the doors being open) to the Speaker on his
chair some four hundred yards away. The Lords have the finer debating hall;
but the Commons, it is complained, monopolise all the comfortable smoking
and lounge rooms. Evidently they think that the noble lords have enough
comfort in their own homes.
Lately a committee of the Houses of Parliament have been discussing the
question of redecorating the buildings, and have come practically to the
conclusion to do nothing. In some of the halls mural paintings of a rather
astonishing kind, betraying a time when artistic standards were a little
lower than now, cover the panels. To fill the gaps with paintings of this
epoch would make for incongruity. To imitate the old-fashioned and rather
bad-fashioned existing panels does not seem advisable. So probably the
difficulty will be solved by doing nothing, unless a daring wight suggests
the painting out of some old work to make room for a complete set of modern
frescoes. Probably, if there were just now an unquestionably pre-eminent
British artist offering for the work, that would be done. As it is, the
Mother of Parliaments remains with some of her halls a little patchy in
decoration; some of them, indeed, a good deal ugly.
But, of course, governing the country is the business of the few. Tempting
though it is to linger on at Westminster, let us see other classes of
England at work. The historic industry of England is agriculture, and it is
to this day one of the most important, though a dwindling one lately.
Still, however, the English are an agricultural people; though it is around
the agriculture of a century ago that their affections are entwined.
Modern agriculture, nevertheless, hardly exists in England, neither in the
production of grain nor of fruit. The average orchard seems better designed
to be an insectarium for the cultivation of pests than for the growth of
good fruit. Straggling unkempt trees, growing for the most part their own
wild way, naturally do not produce like the well-disciplined trees of the
modern orchardist. But the soil is wondrous kind. That anything at all
should come of such culture, or neglect of culture, is to be explained by a
great graciousness of Nature.
Fruit is the text I take, because fruit is at once the worst example, and
the most obvious one. But in no branch of agriculture is there anything
approaching to modern scientific farming. Wheat-farming represents the
crown of agricultural achievement in England, and very good yields per acre
are garnered, because the tillage is careful, the manuring generous, the
climate favourable. But what gross waste of labour is involved in the
cultivation of these tiny fields, laboriously ploughed, in many instances
with a single furrow plough; sown by hand and often reaped, yes reaped,
with scythe-men and picturesque but unthrifty gathering of haymakers!
But there is this to be said for the old-fashioned English agriculture,
that it is very, very picturesque. The tiny hedge-divided fields, the
orchards in which the trees grow to forest dimensions, are far more
pleasing to the eye than the great, bare, wire-fence-divided wheat-fields
of Canada and Australia; or their orchards with close-clipped trees kept
working with all their might for a living and not allowed the luxury of a
single vagrant branch or the sight of any green carpet of grass beneath.
And, withal, in England, farming is not a commercial speculation
altogether. If it relied upon its commercial success, it would die out
almost completely. But the old landholders love their estates: the newly
rich, if they are of the English spirit, aspire to become landholders. Both
are usually content if from their agricultural estates they are able to
make the products pay a slight profit only.
[Illustration: HARVESTING IN HEREFORDSHIRE]
The area under tillage shows, therefore, a tendency to dwindle, though
already it is very small, considering the thick population of the country.
Love of sport and love of seeing the woods in their wild state have always
set apart a great area of England for forest and for game preserve.
Nowadays we do not make a deer forest as roughly as did William the
Conqueror the New Forest for the sake of the deer "whom he loved as if he
had been their father." But somehow land passes out of cultivation to
become moorland or forest. These "waste lands" are far from being useless,
however. They graze ponies and cows; they are deer forests, grouse moors,
pheasant preserves, golf links. Land is more valuable for sport than for
agriculture, and therefore it drifts to the use of sport, and peasants make
way for pheasants.
A fine track of oak forest has been left at the Forest of Dean near the
borders of Wales--the finest forest tract probably in England. It is a wild
tract of steep hills covered with oaks, used for the building of the Navy
in the days before the wooden walls had given way to steel ramparts.
The fen areas alone are in course of reclamation from the wild to the
cultivated state. The work of bringing them back to usefulness was begun
under Charles I. by Dutch engineers. Now a great part of the old fen lands
are good productive meadows bounded by a network of dykes and drains, from
which the surplus of water is pumped into the channels of the Ouse and
other rivers, and so finds its way to the North Sea. Like the similar land
of Holland, these reclaimed fens are excellent for the culture of bulbs,
and Lincolnshire has made quite an industry of sending narcissi to the
London market.
Considering the Englishman at his work in other capacities, he is
iron-founder, pottery-maker, textile-weaver, miner, and of course sailor
and merchant. His work is characterised by a great solidness and honesty.
There is not much "gimcrack" work turned out in England. The spirit of her
workshops is to make things that will last, not short-life tools and
machines, such as some other peoples love. Indeed they do say that the
idols made at Birmingham--a large proportion of the idols for the heathens
of the world are made at Birmingham--are made so solidly as to suggest that
the manufacturers have grave doubts about Paganism being supplanted among
their customers for some generations.
Occasionally, indeed, one is tempted to believe that the Englishman loves
work for work's own sake. I concluded this on first landing at Liverpool,
when it took an hour's effort, on an average, for each passenger from the
mail steamer to sort out his luggage. At Euston at least another half-hour
was wasted in the same way. All that might have been avoided by a luggage
check system such as prevails in Australia, America, and other countries.
But evidently the English character for steady energy and stolid good
humour is built up partly by following the sport of luggage-hunting.
The English public and semi-public service, which gives to the visitor the
first view of the Englishman at work, is simply beyond praise. In the
railway service, the civility of the guards and porters, the neatness, the
quiet energy of the drivers and firemen, are notable. In most countries
railway engines seem always dirty and ill-kept. In England they are bright
and clean. That shows a workman's pride in his work and its instruments. It
is the man with the clean engines who is going to win through in the end.
I have a means of comparison of the public service in the United States and
in England. In New York a letter addressed to me at a newspaper office went
astray through a clerk refusing to take it in. I inquired for it at the New
York Central Post Office: was--not very civilly--referred to the
particular district post office which had attempted to deliver the letter.
A clerk there could not see that anything could be done--"the letter would
be opened, probably, and returned to the writer.... Perhaps if I applied at
the Washington Dead Letter Office it would do some good." I applied by
letter (unanswered), then personally, and was told in a tired way that the
matter would be looked into and I should be communicated with in London.
That is the last I ever heard of the matter.
Now in London one morning I left a small despatch case in a motor omnibus.
Reporting to Scotland Yard, I stated that the papers in the portfolio were
important and their recovery urgent. The police officer at once volunteered
to wire round to every police station in the metropolitan district (200 of
them), reporting the loss and asking that word should be at once sent if
the article were handed in. Before eleven that night a police officer
called at my house with a despatch from Scotland Yard that the case had
been found.
"The public good" depends largely on the efficiency of the public service.
It can never be real when the Government and the instruments of the
Government are careless of the people's convenience. The efficiency of the
Post Office, the police, and the park servants in England is great proof of
a sound national spirit.
When the Englishman is through with his work--whether it be the large and
dignified work of administering his Empire, or the smaller task of driving
a tram--he goes home; and he is not a really happy Englishman, whatever his
class, if his home has not at least the sight of a green tree. He is
willing, even if he is poor and condemned to work long hours, to travel
long distances each day so that he may have at the end of his work a home
to come to which will please his love of green England.
Having noted that the Englishman's home is, whenever possible, adorned with
a little bit of green garden, step over its threshold and consider its
domestic economy; that is to say, see the Englishwoman at her special work.
This must be done by classes.
In the wealthiest class the house is perfectly managed. It seems to run
like the fabled machine of perpetual motion. There is no sign of the
driving-power, no racket, no effort. Breakfast is a meal of charming
informality, which, I think, illustrates best the domestic ideals of the
Englishman. Self-help from amply furnished sideboards and from tea and
coffee urns is the rule. There is no fixed moment for coming to breakfast,
and, since you help yourself, no servants need to be in attendance. How
pleasantly thought-out is this idea! You have not the urging to an
inconvenient punctuality of the thought that you are keeping servants
waiting. Dinner is a ceremony of ritual. It is the social crown of the day.
You are expected to treat it with the considerateness due to its
importance. To be asked to dinner is the sign of the Englishman's complete
acceptance of you as a desirable person. (He may ask you to lunch without
admitting quite as much.) To be asked, casually, "to eat with us" at dinner
time shows a degree of friendliness which is willing to allow some
familiarity.
It is because the luxury of upper-class life in England is so suave and so
refined that it does not challenge antagonism as does the arrogant wealth
of other lands. An English manor house, such as Stoke Court--once upon a
time the house of the poet Grey--is, from its beautiful surroundings to the
last detail of a curtain, as fine a product as civilisation can show. And
the Englishman's home is for himself, his friends, and, in so far as it can
claim to be of any public interest, for the enjoyment also of the mass of
his fellow-countrymen.
The casual traveller through London may, on several days of the year, see a
great crowd of omnibuses and drags outside Buckingham Palace, and learn
that the grounds of the King's palace had been that day thrown open to the
public. To a large extent the royal palaces thus welcome the people as
guests; and the great houses of the nobility, which have fine collections
of paintings, are in very many cases treated as semi-public institutions.
This shows a fine public spirit and feeling of common patriotism between
classes.
The middle class fashions itself, as closely as it can, on the upper class.
Its home is often as admirably managed, though on a smaller scale. Its
observance of etiquette is more rigid, especially in the "lower middle
class." Smooth home-management is the Englishman's (or the Englishwoman's)
gift. The domestic economy of the country cottager seems generally good,
but the city worker often makes the mistake of trying to ape the standards
of richer people, sacrificing a good deal of material comfort to have, for
instance, his "drawing-room" or parlour.
But on the whole the Englishman's home proves as high a standard of taste
and good feeling as the twentieth century can offer. It is a fine reward
for the work-doer, a fine fortress from which to issue forth to work. Let
us now see England at play.
[Illustration: FOOTBALL AT RUGBY SCHOOL]