Now A Seamstress, For Example, Might
Slip Away From Her Work And No One Be The Wiser; But If These
Fellows Adjourned, The Tapping Of The Mallets Would Cease, And Thus
The Neighbourhood Be Advertised Of Their Defection.
Hence the
career of the tapper.
He has to do the tapping and keep up an
industrious bustle on the housetop during the absence of the
slaters. When he taps for only one or two the thing is child's-
play, but when he has to represent a whole troop, it is then that
he earns his money in the sweat of his brow. Then must he bound
from spot to spot, reduplicate, triplicate, sexduplicate his single
personality, and swell and hasten his blows., until he produce a
perfect illusion for the ear, and you would swear that a crowd of
emulous masons were continuing merrily to roof the house. It must
be a strange sight from an upper window.
I heard nothing on board of the tapper; but I was astonished at the
stories told by my companions. Skulking, shirking, malingering,
were all established tactics, it appeared. They could see no
dishonesty where a man who is paid for an bones work gives half an
hour's consistent idling in its place. Thus the tapper would
refuse to watch for the police during a burglary, and call himself
a honest man. It is not sufficiently recognised that our race
detests to work. If I thought that I should have to work every day
of my life as hard as I am working now, I should be tempted to give
up the struggle. And the workman early begins on his career of
toil. He has never had his fill of holidays in the past, and his
prospect of holidays in the future is both distant and uncertain.
In the circumstances, it would require a high degree of virtue not
to snatch alleviations for the moment.
There were many good talkers on the ship; and I believe good
talking of a certain sort is a common accomplishment among working
men. Where books are comparatively scarce, a greater amount of
information will be given and received by word of mouth; and this
tends to produce good talkers, and, what is no less needful for
conversation, good listeners. They could all tell a story with
effect. I am sometimes tempted to think that the less literary
class show always better in narration; they have so much more
patience with detail, are so much less hurried to reach the points,
and preserve so much juster a proportion among the facts. At the
same time their talk is dry; they pursue a topic ploddingly, have
not an agile fancy, do not throw sudden lights from unexpected
quarters, and when the talk is over they often leave the matter
where it was. They mark time instead of marching. They think only
to argue, not to reach new conclusions, and use their reason rather
as a weapon of offense than as a tool for self-improvement. Hence
the talk of some of the cleverest was unprofitable in result,
because there was no give and take; they would grant you as little
as possible for premise, and begin to dispute under an oath to
conquer or to die.
But the talk of a workman is apt to be more interesting than that
of a wealthy merchant, because the thoughts, hopes, and fears of
which the workman's life is built lie nearer to necessity and
nature. They are more immediate to human life. An income
calculated by the week is a far more human thing than one
calculated by the year, and a small income, simply from its
smallness, than a large one. I never wearied listening to the
details of a workman's economy, because every item stood for some
real pleasure. If he could afford pudding twice a week, you know
that twice a week the man ate with genuine gusto and was physically
happy; while if you learn that a rich man has seven courses a day,
ten to one the half of them remain untasted, and the whole is but
misspent money and a weariness to the flesh.
The difference between England and America to a working man was
thus most humanly put to me by a fellow-passenger: 'In America,'
said he, 'you get pies and puddings.' I do not hear enough, in
economy books, of pies and pudding. A man lives in and for the
delicacies, adornments, and accidental attributes of life, such as
pudding to eat and pleasant books and theatres to occupy his
leisure. The bare terms of existence would be rejected with
contempt by all. If a man feeds on bread and butter, soup and
porridge, his appetite grows wolfish after dainties. And the
workman dwells in a borderland, and is always within sight of those
cheerless regions where life is more difficult to sustain than
worth sustaining. Every detail of our existence, where it is worth
while to cross the ocean after pie and pudding, is made alive and
enthralling by the presence of genuine desire; but it is all one to
me whether Croesus has a hundred or a thousand thousands in the
bank. There is more adventure in the life of the working man who
descends as a common solder into the battle of life, than in that
of the millionaire who sits apart in an office, like Von Moltke,
and only directs the manoeuvres by telegraph. Give me to hear
about the career of him who is in the thick of business; to whom
one change of market means empty belly, and another a copious and
savoury meal. This is not the philosophical, but the human side of
economics; it interests like a story; and the life all who are thus
situated partakes in a small way the charm of Robinson Crusoe; for
every step is critical and human life is presented to you naked and
verging to its lowest terms.
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