William Morris and the Early Days of the Socialist Movement/9
CHAPTER IX
A PROPAGANDA OUTING
A FEW of us in Glasgow were accustomed on Saturday afternoons during the summer months to go to some neighbouring town or village, there to spread our 'glad tidings.' Learning of this on the occasion of one of his visits to Scotland, when he lectured at Edinburgh, Dundee, Glasgow, Hamilton, and Paisley, Morris at once volunteered to join our expedition in the afternoon. The place chosen for our outing was Coatbridge, one of the chief and most dismal iron-smelting, engineering, and coal-mining towns in Scotland. There were six of us in all, including Morris, and we took the train from the Buchanan Street Station about three o'clock.
Morris was in high spirits, and exhibited to the full that rare combination of boyishness and masterfulness, jollity, seriousness, and explosiveness that made so attractive his character and companionship. We had an amusing experience at the outset of our journey. Among our group was a builder's carpenter, who, though enrolled as a member of the League, rarely turned up except when Morris, Kropotkin, Edward Carpenter, or some other notable person was on the scene. On this occasion, hearing that Morris was to be with us, he decided to form one of the company. Unfortunately, it being 'Pay Saturday,' he had spent some of his earnings in a public-house, and was in an obviously disordered condition. As soon as we were planted in our seats he addressed Morris, sans cérémonie.
'I always like to come and hear you and the other bigwigs of the movement,' he said; 'but I can't be bothered listening to the small fry. But I don't look on you as a great orator—you don't mind me telling you that? As a speaker you are not in the same boat with John Burns. But you have a mighty sight more in your head than he has. I haven't read any of your poetry, but I expect it's uncommonly good. A man with a head like yours is bound to have great ideas in it. I'm a bit of a phrenologist, you see. Have you ever read Dr. George Combe's works?'
Morris, who listened to the carpenter's familiarities with amusement, replied that he had not.
'Then, sir, you've missed a treat. Combe was one of the greatest thinkers this country has produced. He beats your Bacon, Locke, and Berkeley altogether.'
Having delivered this judgment, the carpenter relapsed into a dozing condition in his corner. A few minutes later, observing through the carriage window the glowing cupola of the steel works and blast-furnaces of the Parkhead Forge, Morris remarked that the district reminded him of Middlesbrough, and said something about Sir Lothian Bell, the great ironmaster of that neighbourhood. At the mention of Sir Lothian Bell's name, our carpenter friend pricked up his ears.
'Sir Lothian Bell—Sir Lothian Bell,' he muttered, as if dimly recalling the name. Then after a pause, and looking hard at Morris, he asked, 'What do you know about Sir Lothian Bell?'
'Why,' replied Morris, 'I just happen to know a little about him. You see I worked for him once.'
The carpenter sat up astounded. 'What!' he exclaimed. 'You mean to say you have worked for Sir Lothian Bell? I don't believe it.'
'Well, believe it or not, my friend, it is a fact none the less,' said Morris, tickled at the man's absurdity. Scrutinising Morris' face to discover if he was in some way fooling him, the carpenter repeated his declaration: 'I don't believe it.'
'But why should you not believe it?' asked Morris, ignoring the incivility of the denial. 'You see, I am a workman, at any rate in my own way, though doubtless you do not reckon us artist sort of chaps as workmen. The truth is, I decorated Sir Lothian Bell's house for him. And I worked precious hard, too, I can tell you, at some parts of the job, as I think you would have allowed had you seen me at it, lathered from top to toe in plaster and paint.'
'You really mean to say you worked in Sir Lothian Bell's house!' cried the carpenter now fairly excited.
'I assure you I did, my friend,' replied Morris good-humouredly, but surprised at the carpenter's excitement.
'Well, I never! But do you really mean it?—you're not kidding me?'
'Of course not—why should I?'
'Well, that beats everything!' shouted the carpenter. 'Why,' he said, with almost solemn emphasis, I worked at Sir Lothian Bell's house myself!
'You did?' exclaimed Morris. 'Why, it's quite a remarkable coincidence, isn't it? You and I may therefore call ourselves workmates as well as comrades. Let us shake hands on it.'
The carpenter rather grudgingly extended his hand, and, looking with dull suspicion at Morris, kept muttering to himself: 'Well, I never—well, I never! But I only half believe it,' until he again dozed over in his corner. Later on our two miles' walk sobered him up, but conscious that he had been making rather a fool of himself he kept silent for the remainder of the day.
Morris was now about to display himself in one of his explosive moods. Our train instead of stopping at Coatbridge bowled ahead to the next station, Whifflets, about two miles farther on. We had, it appeared, boarded the wrong train at Glasgow. The mistake was mine; for noticing the name 'Airdrie' on the destination board, I had assumed that, as the train was a stopping train, it would stop at Coatbridge, as was customary with the Airdrie trains. I did not, at the moment, acquaint Morris with our misadventure, hoping that at Whifflets we might get a train back to Coatbridge with little or no delay. On our disembarking I spoke to the guard, complaining that no notice had been put up to warn passengers that the train would not stop at Coatbridge. Morris, who was waiting with our comrades a little farther up the platform, observing that I was having some little altercation with the guard, at once came along to enquire what was the matter. I told him, of course, what had happened, and that we should likely have to walk back two miles.
'Oh, that's it!' exclaimed Morris, flaring up instantly into an amazing state of indignation. 'I don't mind having to walk the two miles, but I do mind that these damned railway companies should treat the public in the shabby way they do. It's all because they won't pay wages to have sufficient men to look after the convenience of the public.' And thereupon he broke out into a terrific diatribe against railway companies in general, denouncing them as 'mean, lousy thieves and scoundrels,' saying all manner of dreadful things against them. He directed his abuse on the guard, who, standing with flag and whistle in hand, was too astounded at the wonderful apparition and infuriation of the blue-garmented sun-god or sea-god before him to say or do anything. I tried to persuade Morris to come away, but he would not. Meanwhile the passengers, hearing the disturbance on the platform, were looking out of the windows with mingled amusement and amaze. Thoroughly ashamed of my illustrious companion's misbehaviour, I left him in the midst of his expostulation, and, joining the rest of our company, we made over the footbridge to the other platform, where we ascertained that there would be no train back to Coatbridge until two hours later.
The train having moved off, Morris crossed over the bridge and came leisurely sauntering towards us, humming contentedly some tune to himself. He was already a transformed being. Observing that we all looked rather disconcerted, he asked if 'anything else was wrong.' I replied no, but ventured to upbraid him gently for his violent behaviour, pointing out that the guard was not in any way to blame either for the misdoings of railway companies or for our present misadventure.
'Of course not,' replied Morris, cheerfully. 'But we've got to blow up someone, don't you know. If we don't, nothing will be done to remedy matters. I hope, however, the guard didn't think I was bull-ragging him. Of course he didn't—he looked quite a sensible chap. Now, shan't we have a refreshment, and get our shanks on the road?' He looked so imperturbably good-humoured that it was incredible that only a minute before he had been a blazing pillar of Olympian wrath. It was as that instant change from storm to sunshine which never ceases to astonish us in the moods of children.
Proceeding on our way back to Coatbridge along the dry, coal-dusty road, with its dreary stretches of 'colliers' rows,' Morris' interest in everything he saw never flagged. He plied us with questions about the miners, their politics, their wages, and mode of spending their leisure. He noted (with many an imprecation) the effects of the ironworks on vegetation, and stopped occasionally to note the wayside flowers struggling for life here and there among the grimy hedgerows; and every now and then quoted some old saying, or told some amusing story illustrative of the subject on hand.
When we got to Coatbridge we had no little difficulty in deciding where we should hold our meeting. The police were exceedingly hostile to any sort of open-air meetings, religious or political, in the town, because of the frequent rows bordering on riots which they occasioned between the Orangemen and Roman Catholics, who formed a large part of the population. The street corners adjacent to public-houses, where the workmen were mostly congregated, were, I knew from past experience, forbidden us; and the few vacant pieces of ground elsewhere discernible gave no promise of our getting an audience. Eventually we fixed on a sort of cinder-heap underneath the Gartsherrie blast furnaces, near, I think, to where the present fountain stands. We borrowed a chair from a neighbouring cottage, spread out our Commonweals and tracts as showily as we could, and ranged ourselves round so as to make ourselves look as big a crowd as possible. (How familiar all these proceedings still are at our Socialist open-air meetings!)
We selected as our first speaker Pollack (a brass-finisher), on account of his having a powerful voice, hoping thereby to attract the passers-by and a few miners who were leaning against a neighbouring blank wall. But the stratagem did not succeed. The miners, finding they could hear what the speaker was saying without moving closer in, clung to their gable wall, giving no indication that they were in the least interested in what was being shouted in their ears; while the passers-by, hearing the words 'Socialism' and 'Labour,' were satisfied that the subject was of no interest to them, and passed unheedingly on. Experience, I may say, has long since taught us that the better way to begin an open-air meeting is to put up a speaker who will address only those close to him and do so as quietly as possible. Curiosity as to what he may be speaking about almost invariably draws the beginnings of a crowd, if crowd there is at all to be had.
Pollack's efforts proving fruitless, I then made a try; and eventually, after about twenty minutes' haranguing, drew into the ring about a dozen listeners by dwelling upon some of the more notorious facts concerning the firm of Baird & Co., the owners of the neighbouring blast furnaces and the then wealthiest iron and coal masters in Scotland.
I now introduced Morris, failing not, of course, to impress upon my scant audience the great favour which we were bestowing on them by bringing so illustrious a man to speak to them in Coatbridge. Morris, who had been fidgeting round the ring all the time, making audible assents to points in the speeches, and whose personality was evidently the object of much curiosity among those gathered round, seemed glad that his turn to speak had now come, partly, I think, because (as always) he wanted to be doing something, and partly because he felt a bit nervous about addressing meetings and was anxious 'to get the job done.'
The chair (as so often happens in the case of chairs borrowed for such a purpose) was rather a rickety one, and Morris, having mounted it and feeling his foothold somewhat unsafe, at once dismounted from it with a shrug and a suppressed expletive, declaring he would plant himself on a firmer foundation. He put together a few broken bricks, by way of a foothold on the cinder heap, and began by addressing his hearers as 'Friends and fellow-workers.' How superb he looked, with his broad, blue-clad sturdy figure and his fine tousled head!
I had suggested to him that he might speak on the better days of labour in the olden time, as being a topic likely to engage the interest and sympathy of the crowd a suggestion which he willingly adopted. But he began, as he often did, on a personal note.
'I have addressed you,' he said, 'as "friends and fellow-workers," and I do not do so merely in a complimentary way. You are, I hope, my friends, though I know none of you personally. At any rate I really don't know that I am the enemy of any man or woman in the world, unless they be sheer scoundrels seeking positively to harm other people. I want everybody to be friends and to behave towards one another as real friends always do; that is to say, trying to be happy with one another, and sharing as far as possible every means of making themselves happy. And that, as I shall explain later on if you will listen to me, is just the sum and substance of what Socialism means, which we have come here to preach to you this afternoon. And I call you "fellow workers" because, though I am, as you have just heard, a writer of poetry and such like, and what is called an artist or designer, I nevertheless do a great deal of work with my hands, hard work too, sometimes, not only for the pleasure of doing it, but actually, as you folk do here, as a means of livelihood. But I tell you frankly that I should not, even if I could, work at the kind of work and in the kind of way of working, that you do—not even though offered a thousand pounds a week for so doing, instead of the paltry one or two pounds a week which you are asked to be content with, and which I regret to think you so frequently are content with. Sooner than work in an ironworks or coal mine as you folks do for ten or twelve hours a day, every week day, year out and year in, all my life, I should rebel rather, and take whatever consequences my rebellion might bring upon me.
'But I shall tell you what kind of work I should like to do, and what conditions I should like to work under, and I should like you and all workers to have. And to show you that what I speak of is not a wholly impossible thing, as many people suppose Socialist conditions of work would be, I shall, if you will listen to me just a little while, tell of how working people used to live and work in this country—in England, at any rate—so far back as five hundred years ago, before there were any labour-saving inventions or any of the wonderful means of producing wealth easily and abundantly that we nowadays possess.'
With this characteristic opening, Morris proceeded with his story (retold by him so often in his lectures) of how the workers worked and fared in the fourteenth century, the 'Golden Age of English labour,' as it has been called, concluding his address with a warmly affectionate account (I can hardly think of a better phrase) of what work and life might again be under Socialism. He spoke in his accustomed conversational way, his voice fairly strong, though inclining to grow husky towards the end. The evening had grown dark while he was speaking, and huge gleams of flame from the furnaces darted across the sky. The audience had now augmented to some sixty or eighty, chiefly miners, who listened with marked attention and interest. There were, however, a sprinkling of 'drunks' among the listeners, who kept up a running fire of interjections, particularly an Irishman, who at intervals, as if seized with a recurrent spasm, shouted unintelligible threatenings about Home Rule, King William of Orange, and Socialism. But the crowd shouldered him off.
One elderly woman, who had stood by during the greater part of the address, listening with pathetic interest to every word, remarked as she was moving away: 'He's a guid man onyway; for he looks an honest man, and he speaks the guid truth. My ain father, who was a great Radical, used to say muckle the same thing as this gentleman here; but the working folk round aboot thocht he was cracked. The working folk noo-a-days hae awfu' little gumption in their heads, and I'm sorry to think a gentleman like this should waste his pains trying to put common sense into them.'
Questions were invited, and a gentleman—for such in style he evidently was—asked permission, not to put a question, but to say a few words. Morris nodded his head in assent, and the gentleman, who we learnt later was the cashier, or some other high-placed official in the neighbouring ironworks, without moving from his place, spoke to this effect:
'You people don't, I suppose, know who the gentleman is who has been addressing you. He is one of the leading men of literature and art of our day, and it is one of the greatest surprises of my life to find myself so unexpectedly listening to him address a meeting of this kind in Coatbridge. I am not a Socialist, and don't at all share his Utopian hopes of improving society—I wish I could, but all my experience denies them—but I greatly admire his works, both his poetry and his art, and I wish to say that I am sorry I did not know of his coming, for I am sure he is entitled to a much better meeting and to much more comfortable conditions for speaking than he has here at this cinder-heap.'
Morris in a reluctant sort of way thanked the gentleman for his friendly remarks, but assured him that he regarded it as an uncommon delight to come to Coatbridge, or elsewhere, with his comrades and share in their propaganda experiences.
'And after all, my friend,' he added, with a twinkle in his eye, 'I wish to remind you that this is just the sort of way that Diogenes and Christ and, for all we know, Homer, and your own Blind Harry the Minstrel used to get their audiences; so I am not so far out of the high literary conventions after all! And besides, what we Socialists are out for is not to win the support of the dilettante literary and art people (though we don't in the least degree exclude them from the hope of salvation), but of the working class, who suffer most by the present system and have the most to gain by upsetting it and putting Socialism in its stead.'
There were a number of questions. One particularly—it was put by a miner—Morris answered with evident pleasure: 'Does the lecturer propose to do away with coal-mining, and, if so, what would we do for fuel?'
'Our friend's question is quite a proper one,' replied Morris; 'but I must warn him that on some of these industrial matters I am regarded as somewhat of a heretic, even amongst Socialists. For myself, I should be glad if we could do without coal, and indeed without burrowing like worms and moles in the earth altogether; and I am not sure but we could do without it if we wished to live pleasant lives, and did not want to produce all manner of mere mechanism chiefly for multiplying our own servitude and misery, and spoiling half the beauty and art of the world to make merchants and manufacturers rich. In olden days the people did without coal, and were, I believe, rather more happy than we are to-day, and produced better art, poetry, and quite as good religion and philosophy as we do nowadays. But without saying we can do without coal, I will say that we could do with less than half of what we use now, if we lived properly and produced only really useful, good, and beautiful things. We could get plenty of timber for our domestic fires if we cultivated and cared for our forests as we might do; and with the water and wind power we now allow to go to waste, so to say, and with or without electricity, we could perhaps obtain the bulk of the motive power which might be required for the essential mechanical industries. And, anyway, we should, I hope, be able to make the conditions of mining much more healthy and less disagreeable than they are to-day, and give the miners a much higher reward for their labour; and also—and this I insist is most important—no one ought to be compelled to work more than a few hours at a time underground, and nobody ought to be compelled to work all their lives, or even constantly week by week, at mining, or indeed any other disagreeable job. Everybody ought to have a variety of occupation, so as to give him a chance of developing his various powers, and of making his work a pleasure rather than a dreary burden. I have tried to answer our friend's question fairly, but I can hardly hope that, not being, maybe, a bit of a dreamer like myself, he will be satisfied with it.'
'You have answered my question quite straight,' said the miner, 'and I believe there is much truth in what you say.'
With the advance of the evening the ground had now become thronged with people, and a cheap-jack and a Salvationist band had made their respective appearance in close proximity to our meeting. A lively competition for the favour of the crowd therefore took place between the oratory of the poet of the 'Earthly Paradise,' the drumming of the Salvationists, and the blatant vociferations of the cheap-jack, who, quite unconscious of the grim mockery of his performance, was displaying rolls of loud-coloured linoleum and wall-paper which he described as 'the newest and best designs on the market, fit to make the homes of the working class vie with the palaces of princes.' Morris did not appear to notice the nature of the fellow's wares, but the challenge of the situation roused his combative instincts, and he was loth to stand down. 'We've got to get the biggest crowd, let's have another pitch into them,' he said. But his voice was wearing out, so Stephen Downie mounted the chair and held on for another quarter of an hour.
We then ended our meeting with a final appeal to the audience to buy Commonweal and our Socialist pamphlets. We returned by train to Glasgow full of cheer in our adventure, except when Morris, watching the flare of furnaces and steel retorts through the carriage window—'putting out moon and stars,' as he said—fell into moments of saturnine gloom. On arriving in Glasgow we were hungry and thirsty, and Morris wished to stand us 'drinks round and something to eat' at the station restaurant, but two of our members being teetotallers, he, with a whimsical 'umph,' agreed we should go to a temperance place instead, and there we regaled ourselves on lemonade and sandwiches.
We accompanied Morris to his hotel door, and as he shook hands with us, our carpenter comrade, who had kept himself severely in the background since his misdemeanour in the afternoon, expressed to him the hope that he had not offended him by his behaviour in the train. 'I am much ashamed of myself, and hope you'll forgive me,' he said.
'I'm not the least offended, my friend,' Morris assured him cheerily. 'Why should I be? You didn't mean to offend me, and I admit it did look as if I was trying to pull your leg a bit. Besides you have seen how I can misbehave myself, and I ought to ask you all to forgive me. So goodnight and good luck to you all: 'I have enjoyed the outing hugely.'