"I've hit on something at last," cried Charles exultantly, throwing himself
down on my second-best armchair.
"I wish you wouldn't hit on it so hard," I complained; "the springs are
half-broken already. What's the trouble?"
"Have you ever heard," he inquired, "of the black-coated salariat?"
"The egg of the greater green-backed woodpecker--"
"It isn't a bird," he said; "it's a class of people that works with its
brains. And the hand of Labour, according to my evening paper, is being
held out to it."
"But suppose one wears a pepper-and-salt suit," I said, "and writes
'Society Gossip.' What about that?"
"That's just my point. All these accepted lines of distinction are
absolutely wrong. It isn't what people work at that divides them, it's the
way they travel to their work. Sir THOMAS MALORY knew that. When _Lancelot_
was going to rescue _Guinevere_ he had his white horse badly punctured by a
bushment of archers and had to finish the journey in a woodcutter's cart.
And that was a great disgrace to him and made the _Queen's_ ladies laugh.
It would be just the same with the typists of a rich employer if his
motor-car broke down and he had to arrive in a bus. How do you get to town
in the morning yourself?"
"I am a Tuber," I said sadly. "Every bright morning I say I will go by bus,
but when I reach the Tube station the draught sucks me in through the door,
the man grabs me by the collar, throws me into the sink, lifts up the plug
and down we go into the drain-pipe together. I think I have the brand of
Tubal Cain on my brow. It is a kind of perpetual crease--"
"I too Tube," said Charles; "but I know many eminently respectable bus
people as well. Especially bus-women. They ride about, they tell me, on the
most fantastically labelled vehicles and are always seeing new suburbs swim
into their ken, and gazing--
'Out over London with a wild surmise,
Silent upon a seat of No. 10,'
or whatever the bally thing may be. But I never join their rash adventures.
I belong to a different _milieu_. I move in a sort of social underworld.
Not that I can deny, of course, that there is a certain amount of
overlapping."
"I overlapped twice to-day myself," I said, "and as the second one was
knitting a jumper--"
"And then there are the Tram-ites," he went on. "I don't understand their
world either. The tram, I am told, suddenly plunges with a loud roar like a
walrus under the streets of Holborn and emerges on the Embankment. The
hansom cabs were called the gondolas of London. The trams, I suppose, are
the submarines. But they are not of my life. I do not mingle with them."
"I mingled with a tram once," I said. "I clasped it warmly by the rail as
it was going by, but I missed the step with my foot. It spurned me rather
badly. But kindly explain what you're driving at."
"All these classes," said Charles, "have their own friendships, their own
jolts and jars, their own way of being bullied by conductors and thrown
into the mud and squeezed into cages and arranged upon straps. But they
have one great thing in common, distinct though they may be. They are all
passengers, all takers of tickets. There is going to be a Bus Union, a Tube
Union, and a Tram Union, and when necessary they will combine."
"Against what?"
"Against the motorists, first and foremost," said Charles. "The opulent
people who ride a-wallop to their offices in cars. Suppose that Ethelinda
Bellairs, who is a trifle absent-minded, has got the sack for typing a
letter like this: 'I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your communication
of the 25th ult., and ask you to note that a sudden sense of indefinable
yearning seized Hephzibah. She closed her eyes and slowly swayed towards
him. Awaiting the favour of an early reply, etc.'--what happens? There is
an immediate strike of the Bus Union until she is reinstated. If necessary
the two other branches of the Amalgamated Society of Passengers are called
out. No case of hardship will be too insignificant for the A.S.P. We shall
all carry a symbol in the shape of a secret season ticket. When the strike
occurs nobody will go to work in the morning. All the stations and
starting-places will be picketed; business will be paralysed."
"Except for the stout fellows who walk," I suggested.
"They will find it very lonely at their offices," said Charles. "Nobody
wants to work if there's any excuse to avoid it, and the beauty of the
thing is that we can strike not only against ordinary employers, but
against the raising of fares, and against the N.U.R. or the Vehicle and
Transport Workers Union itself. That will be the quickest strike that has
ever been struck. You can't go on banging lifts and gates and rushing about
in empty buses without anybody to shove into the dirt or any thumbs to snip
bits out of. It takes all the enjoyment out of life."
"And where exactly do you come in?" I asked.
"I intend to be the Organising Secretary of the A.S.P.," he said. "It will
be hard work, but very meritorious."
"Rather a nuisance won't it be on strike days," I inquired, "going round
and visiting a few thousand pickets on foot in your black coat, with the
brain waves working on top?"
"The O.S. of the A.S.P.," answered Charles magnificently, "will not move
about on foot. He will be provided with a handsome motor-car."