"Various reasons, old fellow," I said. "For one thing I don't happen to
know a fellow who knows a chap who lives next door to a woman whose
husband works in the Scotch Education Department.
"Again, I'm not qualified; I never took the Education Class at Oxford."
"Finally, I don't want the job."
"I suppose," said Lawson, "that lots of 'em get in by wire-pulling."
"Very probably, but some of them probably get in straight. Naturally,
you cannot get geniuses by wire-pulling; the chap who uses influence to
get a job is a third-rater always."
Lawson reddened.
"I pulled wires to get into my job," he said.
"That's all right," I said cheerfully, "I've pulled wires all my days."
"But," I added, "I wouldn't do it again."
"Caught religion?"
"Not quite. The truth is that I have at last realised that you never get
anything worth having if you've got to beg for it."
"It's about the softest job I know, whether you have to beg for it or
not. The only job that beats it for softness is the kirk," he said.
"I wouldn't exactly call it a soft job, Lawson; a rotten job, yes, but a
soft job, no. Inspecting schools is half spying and half policing. It
isn't supposed to be you know, but it is. You know as well as I do that
every teacher starts guiltily whenever the inspector shoves his nose
into the room. Nosing, that's what it is."
"You would make a fairly decent inspector," said Lawson.
"Thanks," I said, "the insinuation being that I could nose well, eh?"
"I didn't mean that. Suppose you had to examine my school how would you
do it?"
"I would come in and sit down on a bench and say: 'Just imagine I am a
new boy, and give me an idea of the ways of the school. I warn you that
my attention may wander. Fire away! But, I say, I hope you don't mind my
finishing this pie; I had a rotten breakfast this morning.'"
"Go on," said Lawson laughing.
"I wouldn't examine the kids at all. When you let them out for minutes I
would have a crack with you. I would say something like this: 'I've got
a dirty job, but I must earn my screw in some way. I want to have a wee
lecture all to myself. In the first place I don't like your discipline.
It's inhuman to make kids attend the way you do. The natural desire of
each boy in this room was to watch me put myself outside that pie, and
not one looked at me.
"'Then you are far too strenuous. You went from Arithmetic to Reading
without a break. You should give them a five minutes chat between each
lesson. And I think you have too much dignity. You would never think of
dancing a ragtime on this floor, would you? I thought not. Try it, old
chap. Apart from its merits as an antidote to dignity it is a first-rate
liver stimulator.' Hello! Where are you going? Time to take 'em in
again?
"'O, I say, I'm your guest, uninvited guest, I admit, but that's no
reason why you should take advantage of me. Man, my pipe isn't half
smoked, and I have a cigarette to smoke yet. Come out and watch me play
footer with the boys.'"
"You think you would do all that," said Lawson slowly, "but you wouldn't
you know. I remember a young inspector who came into my school with a
blush on his face. 'I'm a new inspector,' he said very gingerly, 'and I
don't know what I am supposed to do.' A year later that chap came in
like whirlwind, and called me 'young man.' Man, you can't escape
becoming smug and dignified if you are an inspector."
"I'd have a darned good try, anyway," I said. "Getting any eggs just
now?"
* * *
To-night I have been glancing at _The Educational News_. There is a
letter in it about inspectors, it is signed "Disgusted." That pseudonym
damns the teaching profession utterly and irretrievably. Again and again
letters appear, and very seldom does a teacher sign his own name.
Naturally, a letter signed with a pseudonym isn't worth reading, for a
moral coward is no authority on inspectors or anything else. It sickens
me to see the abject cringing cowardice of my fellow teachers.
"Disgusted" would no doubt defend himself by saying, "I have a wife and
family depending on me and I simply can't afford to offend the
inspector."
I grant that there is no point in making an inspector ratty, or for that
matter making anyone ratty. I don't advise a man to seize every
opportunity for a scrap. There is little use in arguing with an
inspector who has methods of arithmetic different to your methods; it is
easier to think over his advice and reject it if you are a better
arithmetician than he. But if a man feels strongly enough on a subject
to write to the papers about it, he ought to write as a man not as a
slave. Incidentally, the habit of using a pseudonym damns the
inspectorate at the same time. For this habit is universal, and teachers
must have heard tales of the victimising of bold writers. Most
educational papers suggest by their contributed articles that the
teachers of Britain are like a crowd of Public School boys who fear to
send their erotic verses to the school magazine lest the Head flays
them. No wonder the social status of teachers is low; a profession that
consists of "Disgusted" and "Rural School" and "Vindex" and their kind
is a profession of nonentities.
* * *
Once in my palmy days I told a patient audience of Londoners that the
Post Office was a Socialist concern.
"Any profits go to the State," I said.
A postman in the crowd stepped forward and told me what his weekly wage
was, and I hastily withdrew my statement. To-day I should define it as a
State Concern run on the principles of Private Profiteering, _i.e._, it
considers labour a commodity to be bought.
The School Board here is theoretically a Socialistic body. Its members
are chosen by the people to spend the public money on education. No
member can make a profit out of a Board deal. Yet this board perpetrates
all the evils of the private profiteer.
Mrs. Findlay gets ten pounds a year for cleaning the school. To the best
of my knowledge she works four or five hours a day, and she spends the
whole of each Saturday morning cleaning out the lavatories. This sum
works out at about sixpence a day or three ha'pence an hour. Most of her
work consists of carrying out the very considerable part of the
playground that the bairns carry in on their boots. Yet all my requests
for a few loads of gravel are ignored.
The members do not think that they are using sweated labour; they say
that if Mrs. Findlay doesn't do it for the money half a dozen widows in
the village will apply for the job. They believe in competition and the
market value of labour.
A few Saturdays ago I rehearsed a cantata in the school, and I offered
Mrs. Findlay half a crown for her extra trouble in sweeping the room
twice. She refused it with dignity, she didn't mind obliging me, she
said. And this kindly soul is merely a "hand" to be bought at the lowest
price necessary for subsistence.
Sometimes I curse the Board as a crowd of exploiters, but in my more
rational moments I see that they could not do much better if they tried.
If Mrs. Findlay had a pound a week the employees of the farmers on the
Board would naturally object to a woman's getting a pound a week out of
the public funds for working four hours a day while they slaved from
sunrise to sunset for less than a pound. A public conscience can never
be better than the conscience of the public's representatives. Hence I
have no faith in Socialism by Act of Parliament; I have no faith in
municipalisation of trams and gas and water. Private profit disappears
when the town council takes over the trams, but the greater
evil--exploitation of labour remains.
Ah! I suddenly recollect that Mrs. Findlay has her old age pension each
Friday. She thus has eight and six a week. I wonder did Lloyd George
realise that his pension scheme would one day prevent fat farmers from
having conscience qualms when they gave a widow sixpence a day?
* * *
As I came along the road this morning I saw half a dozen carts
disgorging bricks on one of Lappiedub's fields. Lappiedub himself was
standing by, and I asked him what was happening.
"Man," he cried lustily, "they've fund coal here and they're to sink
pits a' ower the countryside."
When I reached the school the bairns were waiting to tell me the news.
"Please, sir," said Willie Ramsay, "they're going to build a town here
bigger than London."
"Bigger than Glasgow even," said Peter Smith.
A few navvies went past the school.
"They're going to build huts for thousands of navvies," said a lassie.
"Please, sir, they'll maybe knock down the school and have a mine here,"
suggested Violet Brown.
"They won't," I said firmly, "this ugly school will stand until the
countryside becomes as ugly as itself. Poor bairns! You don't know what
you're coming to. In three years this bonny village will be a smoky blot
on God's earth like Newcastle. Dirty women will gossip at dirty doors.
You, Willie, will become a miner, and you will walk up that road with a
black face. You, Lizzie, will be a trollop of a wife living in a brick
hovel. You can hardly escape."
"Mr. Macnab of Lappiedub will lose all his land," said a boy.
"He didn't seem sad when I saw him this morning," I remarked.
"Maybe he's tired of farming," suggested a girl.
"Perhaps," I said, "if he is he doesn't need to worry about farming. He
will be a millionaire in a few years. He will get a royalty on every ton
of coals that comes up from the pit, and he will sit at home and wait
for his money. Simply because he is lucky he will be kept by the people
who buy the coals. If he gets sixpence a ton your fathers will pay
sixpence more on every ton. I want you to realise that this is sheer
waste. The men who own the mines will take big profits and keep up big
houses with servants and idle daughters. Then Mr. Macnab will have his
share. Then a man called a middleman will buy the coals and sell them to
coal merchants in the towns, and he will have his share. And these men
will sell them to the householders. When your father buys his ton of
coals he is paying for these things:--the coalowner's income, Mr.
Macnab's royalty, the middleman's profit, the town coal merchant's
profit, and the miners' wages. If the miners want more wages and strike,
they will get them, but these men won't lose their profits; they will
increase the price of coals and the householders will pay for the
increase.
"Don't run away with the idea that I am calling Mr. Macnab a scoundrel.
He is a decent, honest, good-natured man who wouldn't steal a penny from
anyone. It isn't his fault or merit that he is to be rich, it is the
system that is bad."
Thomas Hardy somewhere talks about "the ache of modernism." I adapt the
phrase and talk about the ache of industrialism. I look out at my wee
window and I see the town that will be. There will be gin palaces and
picture houses and music-halls--none of them bad things in themselves,
but in a filthy atmosphere they will be hideous tawdry things with
horrid glaring lights. I see rows of brick houses and acres of clay land
littered with bricks and stones thrown down any way. Stores will sell
cheap boots and frozen meat and patent pills, packmen will lug round
their parcels of shoddy and sheen. And education! They will erect a new
school with a Higher Grade department, and the Board will talk of
turning out the type of scholar the needs of the community require.
They will have for Rector a B.Sc., and technical instruction will be of
first importance. When that happens I shall trek inland and shall seek
some rural spot where I can be of some service to the community. I might
be able to stand the smoke and filth, but before long there would be a
labour candidate for the burgh, and I couldn't stand hearing him spout.