Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli (book recommendations website TXT) 📕

him take two waistcoats. Now the question rises, what is a collier to do with waistcoats? Pawn ’em I s’pose to Diggs’ son-in-law, next door to his father’s shop, and sell the ticket for sixpence. Now there’s the question; keep to the question; the question is waistcoats and tommy; first waistcoats and then tommy.”2

“I have been making a pound a-week these two months past,” said another, “but as I’m a sinner saved, I have never seen the young Queen’s picture yet.”

“And I have been obliged to pay the doctor for my poor wife in tommy,” said another. “ ‘Doctor,’ I said, says I, ‘I blush to do it, but all I have got is tommy, and what shall it be, bacon or cheese?’ ‘Cheese at tenpence a pound,’ says he, ‘which I buy for my servants at sixpence. Never mind,’ says he, for he is a thorough Christian, ‘I’ll take the tommy as I find it.’ ”

“Juggins has got his rent to pay and is afeard of the bums,” said Nixon; “and he has got two waistcoats!”

“Besides,” said another, “Diggs’ tommy is only open once a-week, and if you’re not there in time, you go over for another seven days. And it’s such a distance, and he keeps a body there such a time⁠—it’s always a day’s work for my poor woman; she can’t do nothing after it, what with the waiting and the standing and the cussing of Master Joseph Diggs⁠—for he do swear at the women, when they rush in for the first turn, most fearful.”

“They do say he’s a shocking little dog.”

“Master Joseph is wery wiolent, but there is no one like old Diggs for grabbing a bit of one’s wages. He do so love it! And then he says you never need be at no loss for nothing; you can find everything under my roof. I should like to know who is to mend our shoes. Has Gaffer Diggs a cobbler’s stall?”

“Or sell us a penn-orth of potatoes,” said another. “Or a ha’porth of milk.”

“No; and so to get them one is obliged to go and sell some tommy, and much one gets for it. Bacon at ninepence a-pound at Diggs’, which you may get at a huckster’s for sixpence, and therefore the huckster can’t be expected to give you more than fourpence halfpenny, by which token the tommy in our field just cuts our wages atween the navel.”

“And that’s as true as if you heard it in church, Master Waghorn.”

“This Diggs seems to be an oppressor of the people,” said a voice from a distant corner of the room.

Master Nixon looked around, smoked, puffed, and then said, “I should think he wor; as bloody-a-hearted butty3 as ever jingled.”

“But what business has a butty to keep a shop?” inquired the stranger. “The law touches him.”

“I should like to know who would touch the law,” said Nixon; “not I for one. Them tommy shops is very delicate things; they won’t stand no handling, I can tell you that.”

“But he cannot force you to take goods,” said the stranger; “he must pay you in current coin of the realm, if you demand it.”

“They only pay us once in five weeks,” said a collier; “and how is a man to live meanwhile. And suppose we were to make shift for a month or five weeks, and have all our money coming, and have no tommy out of the shop, what would the butty say to me? He would say, ‘do you want e’er a note this time’ and if I was to say ‘no,’ then he would say, ‘you’ve no call to go down to work any more here.’ And that’s what I call forsation.”

“Ay, ay,” said another collier; “ask for the young Queen’s picture, and you would soon have to put your shirt on, and go up the shaft.”

“It’s them long reckonings that force us to the tommy shops,” said another collier; “and if a butty turns you away because you won’t take no tommy, you’re a marked man in every field about.”

“There’s wus things as tommy,” said a collier who had hitherto been silent, “and that’s these here butties. What’s going on in the pit is known only to God Almighty and the colliers. I have been a consistent methodist for many years, strived to do well, and all the harm I have ever done to the butties was to tell them that their deeds would not stand on the day of judgment.”

“They are deeds of darkness surely; for many’s the morn we work for nothing, by one excuse or another, and many’s the good stint that they undermeasure. And many’s the cup of their ale that you must drink before they will give you any work. If the Queen would do something for us poor men, it would be a blessed job.”

“There ayn’t no black tyrant on this earth like a butty, surely,” said a collier; “and there’s no redress for poor men.”

“But why do not you state your grievances to the landlords and lessees,” said the stranger.

“I take it you be a stranger in these parts, sir,” said Master Nixon, following up this remark by a most enormous puff. He was the oracle of his circle, and there was silence whenever he was inclined to address them, which was not too often, though when he spoke, his words, as his followers often observed, were a regular ten-yard coal.

“I take it you be a stranger in these parts, sir, or else you would know that it’s as easy for a miner to speak to a mainmaster, as it is for me to pick coal with this here clay. Sir, there’s a gulf atween ’em. I went into the pit when I was five year old, and I count forty year in the service come Martinmas, and a very good age, sir, for a man what does his work, and I knows what I’m speaking about. In forty year, sir, a man sees