THE LESSON OF THE STREET
'Child,' said the Master, 'it is time that you should take another
lesson.'
'I am ready. Let us begin.' She crossed her hands in her lap and looked
up obedient.
'Not a lesson this time from books. A practical lesson from men and
women, boys and girls, children and infants in arms. Let us go forth and
hear the teaching of the wrecks and the slaves. I will show you
creatures who are men and women mutilated in body and mind--mutilated by
the social order. Come, I will show you, not by words, but by sight, why
Property must be destroyed.'
It was seven o'clock, when Mr. Dering ought to have been thinking of his
dinner, that Mr. Edmund Gray proposed this expedition. Now, since that
other discourse on the sacredness of Property, a strange thing had
fallen upon Elsie. Whenever her Master spoke and taught, she seemed to
hear, following him, the other voice speaking and teaching exactly the
opposite. Sometimes--this is absurd, but many true things are
absurd--she seemed to hear both voices speaking together: yet she heard
them distinctly and apart. Looking at Mr. Dering, she knew what he was
saying: looking at Mr. Edmund Gray, she heard what he was saying. So
that no sooner had these words been spoken, than, like a response in
church, there arose the voice of Mr. Dering. And it said: 'Come. You
shall see the wretched lives and the sufferings of those who are
punished because their fathers or themselves have refused to work and
save. Not to be able to get Property is the real curse of labour. It is
no evil to work provided one chooses the work and creates for one's self
Property. The curse is to have to work for starvation wages at what can
never create property, if the worker should live for a thousand years.'
Of the two voices she preferred the one which promised the abolition of
poverty and crime. She was young: she was generous: any hope of a return
of the Saturnian reign made her heart glow. Of the two old men--the mad
man and the sane man--she loved the mad man. Who would not love such a
man? Why, he knew how to make the whole world happy! Ever since the time
of Adam we have been looking and calling out and praying for such a man.
Every year the world runs after such a man. He promises, but he does not
perform. The world tries his patent medicine, and is no better. Then,
the year after, the world runs after another man.
Elsie rose and followed the Master. It was always with a certain anxiety
that she sat or talked with him. Always she dreaded lest, by some
unlucky accident, he should awaken and be restored to himself suddenly
and without warning--say in his Lecture Hall. How would he look? What
should she say? 'See--in this place for many years past you have in
course of madness preached the very doctrines which in hours of sanity
you have most reprobated. These people around you are your disciples.
You have taught them by reason and by illustration with vehemence and
earnestness to regard the destruction of property as the one thing
needful for the salvation of the world. What will you say now? Will you
begin to teach the contrary? They will chase you out of the Hall for a
madman. Will you go on with your present teaching? You will despise
yourself for a madman.' Truly a difficult position. Habit, however, was
too strong. There was little chance that Edmund Gray among his own
people, and at work upon his own hobby, would become Edward Dering.
They went out together. He led her--whither? It mattered not. North and
South and East and West you may find everywhere the streets and houses
of the very poor hidden away behind the streets of the working people
and the well-to-do.
The Master stopped at the entrance of one of those streets--it seemed to
Elsie as if she was standing between two men both alike, with different
eyes. At the corner was a public-house with swinging doors. It was
filled with men talking, but not loudly. Now and then a woman went in or
came out, but they were mostly men. It was a street long and narrow,
squalid to the last degree, with small two-storied houses on either
side. The bricks were grimy; the mortar was constantly falling out
between them: the woodwork of doors and windows was insufferably grimy:
many of the panes were broken in the windows. It was full of children:
they swarmed: they ran about in the road, they danced on the pavement,
they ran and jumped and laughed as if their lot was the happiest in the
world and their future the brightest. Moreover, most of them, though
their parents were steeped in poverty, looked well fed and even rosy.
'All these children,' said Mr. Edmund Gray, 'will grow up without a
trade: they will enter life with nothing but their hands and their legs
and their time. That is the whole of their inheritance. They go to
school, and they like school: but as for the things they learn, they
will forget them, or they will have no use for them. Hewers of wood and
drawers of water shall they be: they are condemned already. That is the
system: we take thousands of children every year, and we condemn them to
servitude--whatever genius may be lying among them. It is like throwing
treasures into the sea, or burying the fruits of the earth. Waste!
Waste! Yet, if the system is to be bolstered up, what help?'
Said the other Voice: 'The world must have servants. These are our
servants. If they are good at their work, they will rise and become
upper servants. If they are good upper servants, they may rise higher.
Their children can rise higher still, and their grandchildren may join
us. Service is best for them. Good service, hard service, will keep them
in health and out of temptation. To lament because they are servants is
foolish and sentimental.'
Standing in the doorways, sitting on the door-steps, talking together,
were women--about four times as many women as there were houses. This
was because there were as many families as rooms, and there were four
rooms for every house. As they stood at the end of the street and looked
down, Elsie observed that nearly every woman had a baby in her arms, and
that there were a great many types or kinds of women. That which does
not surprise one in a drawing-room, where every woman is expected to
have her individual points, is noticed in a crowd, where, one thinks,
the people should be like sheep--all alike.
'A splendid place, this street, for such a student as you should be, my
Scholar.' The Master looked up and down--he sniffed the air, which was
stuffy, with peculiar satisfaction: he smiled upon the grubby houses.
'You should come often; you should make the acquaintance of the people:
you will find them so human, so desperately human, that you will
presently understand that these women are your sisters. Change dresses
with one of them: let your hair fall wild: take off your bonnet----'
'Shall I then be quite like them?' asked Elsie. 'Like them, Master? Oh!
not quite like them.'
'Not quite like them,' he said. 'No; you could never talk like them.'
He walked about among the people, who evidently knew him, because they
made way for him, nodded to him, and pretended, such was their
politeness, to pay no attention to the young lady who accompanied him.
'Every one of them is a study,' he continued. 'I could preach to you on
every one as a text. Here is my young friend Alice Parden, for
instance'--he stopped before a pale girl of seventeen or so, tall and
slender, but of drooping figure, who carried a baby in her arms. 'Look
at her. Consider. Alice is foolish, like all the Alices of this street.
Alice must needs marry her chap a year ago, when she was sixteen and he
was eighteen. Alice should be still at her club in the evening and her
work in the daytime. But she must marry, and she is a child mother.--Is
he out of work still?' Alice nodded, and hugged her baby closer. Mr.
Edmund Gray shook his head in admonition, but gave her a coin, and went
on. 'Now look at this good woman'--he stopped before a door where an
Amazon was leaning--a woman five feet eight in height, with brawny arms
and broad shoulders and a fiery furnace for a face--a most terrible and
fearful woman.--'How are you this evening, Mrs. Moss? And how is your
husband?'
Long is the arm of coincidence. Mrs. Moss was just beginning to repose
after a row royal; she was slowly simmering and slowly calming. There
had been a row royal, a dispute, an argument, a quarrel, and a fight
with her husband. All four were only just concluded. All four had been
conducted on the pavement, for the sake of coolness and air and space.
The residents stood around: the controversy was sharp and animated: the
lady bore signs of its vehemence in a bruise, rapidly blackening, over
one eye, and abrasions on her knuckles. The husband had been conducted
by his friends from the spot to the public-house at the corner, where he
was at present pulling himself together, and forgetting the weight of
his consort's fists, and solacing his spirit with strong drink.
'How is my husband?' the lady repeated. 'Oh! I'll tell you. I'll tell
you, Mr. Gray, how my husband is. Oh! how is he? Go, look for him in the
public-house. You shall see how he is and what he looks like.' She
descended two steps, still retaining the advantage of the lowest. Then,
describing a semicircle with her right arm, she began an impassioned
harangue. The residents fled, right and left, not knowing whether in her
wrath she might not mistake the whole of them, collectively, for her
husband. The men in the public-house hearing her voice, trembled, and
looked apprehensively at the door. But Mr. Gray stood before her without
fear. He knew her better than to run away. The lady respected his
courage, and rejoiced in a sympathetic listener. Presently she ran down:
she paused: she gasped: she caught at her heart: she choked: she wept.
She sat down on the doorstep, this great strong woman, with the brawny
arms and the fiery face, and she wept. The residents crept timidly back
again and gathered round her, murmuring sympathy: the men in the
public-house trembled again. Mr. Gray grasped her by the hand and
murmured a few words of consolation; for indeed there were great wrongs,
such as few wives even in this street expect, and undeniable
provocations. Then he led his Scholar away.
At the next house he entered, taking Elsie with him to a room at the
back where a woman sat making garments. She was a middle-aged woman, and
though very poorly dressed, not in rags: the room was neat except for
the garments lying about. She looked up cheerfully--her eyes were
bright, her face was fine--and smiled. 'You here, Mr. Gray?' she said.
'Well, I was only thinking yesterday how long it is since you came to
see me last. I mustn't stop working, but you can talk.'
'This is a very special friend of mine,' said the Master. 'I have known
her for ten years, ever since I began to visit the street. She is always
cheerful: though she has to live on sweating work and sweating pay. She
never complains. She lives like the sparrows, and eats about as much as
a sparrow: she is always respectable. She goes to church on Sundays: she
is always neat in her dress. Yet she must be always hungry.'
'Ah!' said the woman, 'you'd wonder. Miss, if you knew how little a
woman can live upon.'
'Oh! but,' said Elsie, 'to have always to live on that little!'
'She is the daughter of a man once thought well to do.'--'He was most
respectable,' said the woman.--'He died, and left nothing but debts. The
family were soon scattered, and--you see--this street contains some of
those who have fallen low down as well as those who are born low down.
It is Misfortune Lane as well as Poverty Lane. To the third and fourth
generation, misfortune, when it begins--the reason of its beginning is
the wickedness of one man--still persecutes and follows the family.'
'Thank you, Miss,' said the woman. 'And if you will come again
sometimes---- Oh! you needn't be afraid. No one would hurt a friend of
Mr. Gray.' So they went out.
On the next doorstep and the next and the next, there sat women old and
young, but all of these had the same look and almost the same
features--they were heavy-faced, dull-eyed, thick-lipped, unwashed, and
unbrushed. 'These,' said the Master, 'are the women who know of nothing
better than the life they lead here. They have no hope of rising: they
would be unhappy out of this street. They bear children: they bring them
up, and they die. It is womanhood at its lowest. They want warmth, food,
and drink, and that is nearly all. They are the children and
grandchildren of women like themselves, and they are the mothers of
women like themselves. Savage lands have no such savagery as this, for
the worst savages have some knowledge, and these women have none. They
are mutilated by our system. We have deprived them of their souls. They
are the products of our system. In a better order these people could not
exist: they would not be allowed parents or birth. The boy would still
be learning his trade, and the girl would be working at hers. That
little woman who meets her troubles with so brave a heart has been
sweated all her life--ever since her misfortunes began: she takes it as
part of the thing they call life: she believes that it will be made up
to her somehow in another world. I hope it will.'
'All these people,' said the other Voice, 'are what they are because of
the follies and the vices of themselves and their fathers. The
boy-husband has no trade. Whose fault is that? The rickety boy and the
rickety girl bring into the world a rickety baby. Whose fault is that?
Let them grow worse instead of better until they learn by sharper
suffering that vice and folly bring their punishment.'
'You see the children,' continued the Master, 'and the mothers. You do
not see any old men, because this sort mostly die before they reach the
age of sixty. Those who are past work and yet continue to live go into
the House. The girls you do not see, because those who are not forced to
work all the evening as well as all the day are out walking with their
sweethearts. Nor the men, because they are mostly in the public-house.
They are all hand-to-mouth working men: they live by the job when they
can get any. When they are out of work, they live upon each other. We
hide this kind of thing away in back streets like this, and we think it
isn't dangerous. But it is. Formerly, the wreckage huddled together bred
plagues and pestilences, which carried off rich and poor with equal
hand, and so revenged itself. In other ways, the wreckage revenges
itself still.'
'This kind of people,' said the other Voice, 'may be dangerous. We have
a Police on purpose to meet the danger. They would be quite as dangerous
if you were to give them free dinners and house them without rent. The
class represents the untameable element. They are always a danger. To
cry over them is silly and useless.'
They walked down the street. Everybody knew Mr. Edmund Gray. He had a
word for all. It was evident that he had been a visitor in the street
for a long time: he had the air of a proprietor: he entered the houses
and opened doors and sat down and talked, his disciple standing beside
him and looking on. He asked questions and gave advice--not of a
subversive Socialistic kind, but sound advice, recognising the order
that is, not the order that should be.
All the rooms in this street were tenanted, mostly a family to each. In
many of them work was going on still, though it was already eight
o'clock. Sometimes it would be a woman sitting alone in her room like a
prisoner in a cell, stitching for dear life: sometimes three or four
women or girls sitting all together, stitching for dear life: sometimes
a whole family, little children and all, making matches, making canvas
bags, making paper bags, making card-boxes, all making--making--making
for dear life. And the fingers did not stop and the eyes were not
lifted, though the visitors opened the door and came in and asked
questions, to which one replied in the name of all the rest.
It is an old, old story--everybody knows the slum: people go to gaze
upon it; it is one of the chief sights of Victorian London, just as a
hundred and fifty years ago it was one of the sights to see the women
flogged at Bridewell. Not such a very great advance in civilisation,
perhaps, after all.
'It is a hive--the place is swarming with life,' said the girl, who had
never before seen such a street.
'Life means Humanity. All these people are so like you, my Scholar, that
you would be surprised. You would not be like them if you were dressed
in these things, but they are like you. They want the same things as
you--they have the same desires--they suffer the same pains. What makes
your happiness? Food--warmth, sufficiency, not too much work. These are
the elements for you as well as for them. In my system they will have
all these--and then perhaps they will build up, as you have done, an
edifice of Knowledge, Art, and Sweet Thoughts. But they are all like
you. And most in one thing. For all women of all classes, there is one
thing needful. These girls, like you, want love. They all want love. Oh,
child! they are so like you, so very like you--these poor women of the
lowest class. So very like their proud sisters.' He paused for a moment.
Elsie made no reply. 'You see,' he continued, 'they are so hard at work
that they cannot even lift their eyes to look at you--not even at you,
though they seldom see a girl among them so lovely and so well dressed.
One would have thought--but there is the Whip that drives--that
dreadful Whip--it hangs over them and drives them all day long without
rest or pause. Their work pays their rent and keeps them alive. It just
keeps them alive, and that is all. No more. It must be hard to work all
day long for another person--if you come to think of it. Happily, they
do not think. And all this grinding poverty--this terrible work, that
one family may be able to live in a great house and to do nothing.'
'They are working,' said the other Voice, 'because one man has had the
wit to create a market for their work. His thrift, his enterprise, his
clearness of sight, have made it possible for these girls to find the
work that keeps them. If they would have the sense not to marry
recklessly, there would be fewer working girls, and wages would go up.
If their employer raised their wages only a penny a day, he would
benefit them but little and would ruin himself. They must learn--if they
can--the lesson of forethought by their own sufferings. No one can help
them.'
As Mr. Edmund Gray walked into the houses and out again Elsie went with
him, or she waited outside while he went in. Sometimes she heard the
chink of coin: sometimes she heard words of thanks. The Socialist,
whatever he taught, practised the elementary form of charity possible
only for those who have money. Elsie remarked this little point, but
said nothing.
'What you see here,' said the Master, 'is the lowest class of all--if
one ever gets to the lowest level. For my own part, I have seen men and
women so wretched that you would have called them _miserrimi_--of all
created beings the most wretched. Yet have I afterwards found others
more wretched still. In this street are those who make the lowest
things: those who can make nothing, and have no trade, and live on odd
jobs: and those who can neither make nor work, but thieve and lie
about.'
'I see all that; but, dear Master, what will your new order do for such
people? Will it make those who will not work industrious?'
'It will give every producer the fruits of his own labour: it will teach
a trade to every man, and find men work. And those who cannot work, it
will kill, or lock up until they die. They shall have no children.
Perhaps it will kill them all. It might be better. We will have no human
failures in our midst. That street is full of lessons, all calling
aloud for the destruction of Property.'
Then the other Voice spoke: 'The presence of the human failure is a
lesson always before us--a warning and a lesson to rich and poor alike.
As he is, so all may be. None are so rich but they may be brought to
poverty: none so poor but they may be poorer. So far from hiding away
the wreckage, it is always in our sight. It prowls about the streets: we
can never escape it. And it fills all hearts with terror: it spurs all
men to industry and invention and perseverance. The human failure
inspires a never-ending hymn in praise of Property.'
Elsie's guide stopped to greet a woman whom he knew. She had the usual
baby on her arm. She was a sad-faced woman, with some refinement in her
looks: she was wretchedly dressed, thin, pale, and dejected.
'The same story?'
'Yes, sir. It's always the same,' she sighed hopelessly. 'But he would
work if he could get anything to do. Nobody will employ a man who's had
a misfortune. It's hard--because such a thing may happen to anybody.
It's like measles, my husband says. He can't get drunk because there's
no money. That's my only comfort.'
He gave her some money, and she passed on her way.
'Her husband was a clerk,' Mr. Gray explained, 'who took to drink and
robbed his employer. His father was a barrister, who died young. His
grandfather was a well-known--almost a great lawyer. I know the whole
family history. I learned it----' He stopped for a moment, as if his
memory suddenly failed him--'somehow--a long time ago. It is a story
which shows how our sins and follies fall upon our own children. This
family sprang from the gutter. First, the working man: then his son the
shopkeeper: then his grandson, who became a great lawyer: then his
great-grandson, not so great a lawyer. He, you see, is the first of the
family who begins life as a gentleman and is brought up among gentlemen:
he inherited money: he had a practice: he married in the class called
gentle, and had children. But he lost all his money, and in despair he
killed himself. Cousinly affection is a cold thing at best. It helped
the widow to a pittance, and sent her boys to a cheap school. At fifteen
they had to take whatever employment they could get. Observe that this
branch of the family was now going downhill very fast. The future of a
boy who has been taught no trade and has entered no profession is black
indeed. One of the boys went out to New Zealand, which has little to
give a friendless boy: another enlisted, served three years, and has
never got any work since. I believe he carries boards about the street.
Another became a tenth-rate actor, and now starves on fifteen shillings
a week, paid irregularly. Another--the youngest--was put into a
merchant's office. He rose to a hundred and twenty pounds a year: he
married a girl of the clerkly class--that woman you saw: he took to
drink: he embezzled his master's money: he went to prison: he is now
hopelessly ruined. He cannot get any lower in the social scale. What
will his children do? They have no friends. They will grow up like the
children around them: they will join the hopeless casuals: they will be
hewers of wood. Property, my child, Property--has done this. He stole.
In our society nobody will be tempted to steal. He drank--with us he
would be kept judiciously under control until he could be trusted again.
That would be the care of the State. He is another victim of Property.
When his grandfather was framing Acts of Parliament for the protection
of Property, he did not dream that he was making another engine for the
oppression of his grandchildren.'
Said the other Voice: 'We rise by our virtues. We sink by our vices. Let
these people suffer. Their sufferings should make the rest of us wiser.
Teach the children to rise again as their great-grandfather rose. Do not
contend against the great Law which metes out suffering in return for
vice.'
'Those,' continued the Socialist Professor, 'who do most to make a few
men rich are the real enemies of what they suppose themselves to be
defending. Given a thousand women sweated for one man, and there
presently arises indignation either among the women or among the
bystanders. From indignation we get revolution, because the employer
never gives way. He cannot. He would lose, if he did, his wealth, which
is his Heaven. If you divide the thousand women into companies of ten,
each company under its own sweater, and all the sweaters under other
sweaters, you make a hierarchy of sweaters, culminating in one at the
top. That was the old state of things. The man at the top was a Chief,
a Patriarch: he knew his people: he sweated them, but kindly: he tossed
them crumbs: he looked after the sick and the old. Now all this is
changing. The old family tie--such as it was--is dissolved. The man at
the top has disappeared: a Board of Directors has taken his place: there
is nothing left but the Board and its employees. The men who work are no
longer interested in the business of the firm, except so far as their
pay is concerned. Their pay will go up and the dividends will go down.
And with every increase of wages so much Property is destroyed. Let
every thing--everything--be turned into Companies to help the
destruction of Property.'
Said the other Voice: 'Property is strengthened by being diffused.
Companies organise labour: they give capital its proper power: they are
not easily intimidated: they interest all who can save anything. Let us
turn into Companies every industrial and distributive business in the
country.'
'All times of change,' the Master went on, 'are times of interest. We
are living at a time when great changes are impending--the greatest
changes possible. Before great changes there is always a period of
unconscious preparation. The minds of people are being trained. Without
any perception of the fact, old ideas are dying out and new ones are
coming into existence. When the Revolution actually arrives, everybody
is ready for it and nobody is surprised. It was so with the Reformation.
For a hundred years and more the idea of the Great Revolt had been
slowly growing in men's minds. When it came at last, there was no
surprise and there were few regrets. For a hundred years and more the
ideas of the French Revolution had been talked about by philosophers:
these ideas sank down among the people. Nobody was surprised, not even
the nobles themselves, when the end came. So with our Revolution. It is
coming--it is coming--its ideas are no longer timidly advanced--here and
there--by a fanatic here or a philosopher there: they are lying in the
hearts of the people ready to spur them into action: they are helping on
the cause by successive steps, every one of which means nothing less
than the abolition of Property. These things are new to you, child. You
were only born yesterday or the day before. I was born a hundred years
ago or thereabouts. Consider again'--he leaned against a lamp-post for
greater ease, and discoursed as one addressing an audience--'Consider, I
say, this great question of Companies and their results. Formerly, one
man made things which he took to market--sold or exchanged, and went
home again. He, by himself, did everything. Then one man made and
another man sold. The next improvement was for twenty men to work, for
one to receive and to collect their work, and for another to sell it. In
this way the twenty remained poor, and the two became rich. So they went
on, and trade flourished, and the twenty producers more and more fell
into the power of the two, who were now very rich and strong. Now the
merchants are forming themselves into companies, and the companies are
amalgamating with each other, and the small people may contemplate ruin.
For these--now merchants, shopkeepers, manufacturers, workmen--there
will be nothing but service in the companies; no possibility of
acquiring Property, nothing but service all their lives. Now do you see
how that helps the cause? They will become accustomed to work, but not
for themselves: they will grow accustomed to work for a bare living and
no more: they won't like either: but they will ask why the second should
go with the first: the two great obstacles to Socialism will be removed.
Then--either the step I spoke of just now--the abolition of the
dividends--or, which is just as likely, a revolution, when the servants
of the companies shall make the State take over all and work them for
the good of all. Some there are who think that the workman will have
hope and power for union crushed out of him. I think not; but if so--woe
to the rich! The Jacquerie and the French Revolution will be spoken of
as mild ebullitions of popular feeling compared with what will happen
then. But I think not. I do not believe that the working man will sink
again. He has got up so far. But he needs must climb higher.
'You think it would be impossible'--by this time a small crowd had got
round them, but the speaker still addressed his disciple as if no one
else at all was listening--'for the State to take over the great
producing and distributing companies. But it has been done already. The
State has the Post and the Telegraph Services. They will deal with
railways, steamers, coaches, cabs, omnibuses, trams, canals, water, gas,
electric light, breweries, bakeries, factories, shops, just as they have
dealt with these two. The State can take it all. The State will take the
management of all. But, you say, the shares of the company will become
Funds. They will, and the Funds will pay interest--but the interest
will become rapidly lower and lower, so that what was once five per
cent. is now but two and a half, and before long shall be two--one and a
half--one--and nothing at all. There will be no cry of spoliation,
because the holders of stock will be forced gradually into looking more
and more to their own efforts, and because widows and sick people and
old people, to whom the stocks were once so useful, will be all provided
for by the State as a matter of right, and without any of the old
humiliation of pauperdom. Pauper! Oh, heavenly word! Child, in the world
of the future--the world which you will help to mould, we shall all be
paupers,--every one.'
He spoke with fine enthusiasm, his face lit up, his eyes bright. The
girl was almost carried away, until the other Voice began coldly and
judicially:
'Nothing is so good for man as to be ruled and kept in discipline,
service, and subjection. It is a foolish and a mischievous dream which
supposes all men eager for advance. The mass of mankind asks for no
advancement. It loves nothing and desires nothing but the gratification
of the animal. Give it plenty of animalism and it is satisfied. That
condition of society which keeps the mass down and provides for the rise
of the ambitious few is the only condition which is reasonable and
stable. Base your social order on the inertness of the mass. Make the
workman do a good day's work: pay him enough, so that he shall have some
of the comforts he desires: educate the clever boy and make him foreman,
headman, manager, or artist, journalist, dramatist, novelist. Give him
the taste for wealth. Let him have some. Then he, too, will be ready to
fight if necessary in the army of order.'
While the other Voice was speaking, there came slouching around the
corner into the street where he held the fifth--perhaps the tenth part
of a room, a really excellent specimen of the common or London thief,
the habitual criminal. He was a young man--the habitual criminal is
generally young, because in middle and elderly life he is doing long
sentences--he had a furtive look, such as that with which the jackal
sallies forth on nocturnal adventures: he had a short slight figure, a
stooping and slouching gait, and narrow shoulders. His eyes were bright,
but too close together: his mouth was too large and his jowl too heavy:
his face was pale, his hair was still short, though growing rapidly: his
hands were pendulous: his round hat was too big for his little head: he
wore a long loose overcoat. His face, his figure, his look proclaimed
aloud what he was.
He stopped at the corner and looked at the little crowd. Everybody, for
different reasons, is attracted by a crowd. Professionals sometimes find
in crowds golden opportunities. This crowd, however, was already
dispersing. The speaker had stopped. Perhaps they had heard other and
more fervid orators on the Socialist side. Perhaps they were not in the
least interested in the subject. You see, it is very difficult to get
the hand-to-mouth class interested in anything except those two organs.
'This street,' said the Master, observing him with professional
interest, 'is full--really full--of wealth for the observer. Here is a
case now--an instructive though a common case.' The fellow was turning
away disappointed, perhaps, at the melting of the crowd and any little
hope he might have based upon their pockets. 'My friend'--he heard
himself called, and looked round suspiciously--'you would like, perhaps,
to earn a shilling honestly, for once.'
He turned slowly: at the sight of the coin held up before him, his sharp
eyes darted right and left to see what chance there might be of a grab
and a bolt. Apparently, he decided against this method of earning the
shilling. 'What for?' he asked.
'By answering a few questions. Where were you born?'
'I dunno.'
'Where were you brought up? Here?--In this street? Very well. You went
to school with the other children: you were taught certain subjects up
to a certain standard. What trade were you taught?'
'I wasn't taught no trade.'
'Your father was, I believe, a thief?'--The lad nodded--'And your
mother, too?'--He nodded again, and grinned.--'And you yourself and your
brothers and sisters are all in the same line, I suppose?'--He nodded
and grinned again.--'Here is your shilling.' The fellow took it, and
shambled away.
'Father--mother--the whole family, live by stealing. Where there is no
Property there can be no theft. In our world, such a creature would be
impossible. He could not be born: such parents as his could not exist
with us: he could not be developed: there would be no surroundings that
would make such a development possible. He would be what, I believe, men
of science call a Sport: he would be a deformity. We should put him in a
hospital and keep him there until he died.'
'In that world,' said the other Voice, 'there would be deformities of
even a worse kind than this--the deformities of hypocrisy and shams. By
a thousand shifts and lies and dishonesties the work of the world would
be shifted on the shoulders of the weak. The strong man has always used
his strength to make the weak man work for him, and he always will. The
destruction of Property would be followed by the birth of Property on
the very self-same day. There is the power of creation--of
invention--which is also a kind of Property. Laws cannot destroy that
power. Laws cannot make men industrious. Laws cannot make the strong man
work for the weak. Laws cannot prevent the clever man from taking
advantage of the stupid man. When all the failures--all the
deformities--have been killed off, the able man will still prey upon the
dull-witted. Better let the poor wretch live out his miserable life,
driven from prison to prison, an example for all the world to see.'
It was at this point that Elsie discovered the loss of her purse. Her
pocket had been picked by one of the intelligent listeners in the crowd.
She cried out on finding what had happened, in the unphilosophic
surprise and indignation with which this quite common accident is always
received.
'Child,' said the Master, 'when there is no longer any Property, money
will vanish: there will be no purses; even the pocket will disappear,
because there will no longer be any use for a pocket.--Did the purse
contain much? Suppose you had nothing to lose and nothing to gain. Think
of the lightness of heart, the sunshine on all faces, which would
follow. I fear you are rich, child. I have observed little signs about
you which denote riches. Your gloves are neat and good; your dress seems
costly. Better far if you had nothing.'
'Master, if I were like that girl on the other side, would you like me
better? Could I be more useful to the cause if I dressed like her?'
The girl was of the common type--they really do seem, at first, all
alike--who had on an ulster and a hat with a feather and broken boots.
'If I were like her,' Elsie went on, 'I should be ignorant--and obliged
to give the whole day to work, so that I should be useless to you--and
my manners would be rough and my language coarse. It is because I am not
poor that I am what I am. The day for poverty is not come yet, dear
Master.'
'In the future, dear child, there shall be no poverty and no riches. To
have nothing will be the common lot. To have all will be the common
inheritance. Oh! there will be differences: men shall be as unlike then
as now: we shall not all desire the same things. You and such as you
will desire Art of every kind. You shall have what you desire. In our
world, as in this, like will to like. You shall have the use for
yourselves of pictures, of musical instruments, of everything that you
want. The rest of the world will not want these things. If they do, more
can be made. You shall have dainty food--the rest of the world will
always like coarse and common fare. Think not that we shall level up or
level down. All will be left to rise or to sink. Only they shall not
starve, they shall not thieve, they shall not be sweated. Oh! I know
they paint our society as attempts to make all equal. And they think
that we expect men no longer to desire the good things in the world.
They will desire them--they will hunger after them--but there will be
enough for all. The man who is contented with a dinner of herbs may go
to a Carthusian convent, which is his place, for we shall have no place
for him in a world which recognises all good gifts and assigns to every
man his share.'
Then spoke the other Voice, but sadly: 'Dreams! Dreams! There are not
enough of the good things to go round--good things would become less
instead of more. Without the spur there is no work. Without the desire
of creating Property, all that is worth anything in life will
perish--all but the things that are lowest and the meanest and the
commonest. Men will not work unless they must. By necessity alone can
the finest work be ordered and executed. As men have been, so will men
always be. The thing that hath been, that shall be again.'
'You have learned some of the lessons of Poverty Lane, Scholar,' said
the Master.--'Let us now go home.'