Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (fiction novels to read .txt) 📕

these committee men were human beings and not devils, they would have

been glad to mitigate it if they could have done so without hurting

themselves: but the truth was that they did not know what to do!

These are the `practical’ men; the monopolists of intelligence, the

wise individuals who control the affairs of the world: it is in

accordance with the ideas of such men as these that the conditions of

human life are regulated.

This is the position:

It is admitted that never before in the history of mankind was it

possible to produce the necessaries of life in such abundance as at

present.

The management of the affairs of the world � the business of arranging

the conditions under which we live - is at present in the hands of

Practical, Level-headed, Sensible Business-men.

The result of their management is, that the majority of the people

find it a hard struggle to live. Large numbers exist in perpetual

poverty: a great many more periodically starve: many actually die of

want: hundreds destroy themselves rather than continue to live and

suffer.

When the Practical, Level-headed, Sensible Business-men are asked why

they do not remedy this state of things, they reply that they do not

know what to do! or, that it is impossible to remedy it!

And yet it is admitted that it is now possible to produce the

necessaries of life, in greater abundance than ever before!

With lavish kindness, the Supreme Being had provided all things

necessary for the existence and happiness of his creatures. To

suggest that it is not so is a blasphemous lie: it is to suggest that

the Supreme Being is not good or even just. On every side there is an

overflowing superfluity of the materials requisite for the production

of all the necessaries of life: from these materials everything we

need may be produced in abundance - by Work. Here was an army of

people lacking the things that may be made by work, standing idle.

Willing to work; clamouring to be allowed to work, and the Practical,

Level-headed, Sensible Business-men did not know what to do!

Of course, the real reason for the difficulty is that the raw

materials that were created for the use and benefit of all have been

stolen by a small number, who refuse to allow them to be used for the

purposes for which they were intended. This numerically insignificant

minority refused to allow the majority to work and produce the things

they need; and what work they do graciously permit to be done is not

done with the object of producing the necessaries of life for those

who work, but for the purpose of creating profit for their masters.

And then, strangest fact of all, the people who find it a hard

struggle to live, or who exist in dreadful poverty and sometimes

starve, instead of trying to understand the causes of their misery and

to find out a remedy themselves, spend all their time applauding the

Practical, Sensible, Level-headed Business-men, who bungle and

mismanage their affairs, and pay them huge salaries for doing so. Sir

Graball D’Encloseland, for instance, was a `Secretary of State’ and was

paid �5,000 a year. When he first got the job the wages were only a

beggarly �2,000, but as he found it impossible to exist on less than

�100 a week he decided to raise his salary to that amount; and the

foolish people who find it a hard struggle to live paid it willingly,

and when they saw the beautiful motor car and the lovely clothes and

jewellery he purchased for his wife with the money, and heard the

Great Speech he made - telling them how the shortage of everything was

caused by Over-production and Foreign Competition, they clapped their

hands and went frantic with admiration. Their only regret was that

there were no horses attached to the motor car, because if there had

been, they could have taken them out and harnessed themselves to it

instead.

Nothing delighted the childish minds of these poor people so much as

listening to or reading extracts from the speeches of such men as

these; so in order to amuse them, every now and then, in the midst of

all the wretchedness, some of the great statesmen made `great

speeches’ full of cunning phrases intended to hoodwink the fools who

had elected them. The very same week that Sir Graball’s salary was

increased to �5,000 a year, all the papers were full of a very fine

one that he made. They appeared with large headlines like this:

GREAT SPEECH BY SIR GRABALL D’ENCLOSELAND

Brilliant Epigram!

None should have more than they need, whilst any have less than

they need!

The hypocrisy of such a saying in the mouth of a man who was drawing a

salary of five thousand pounds a year did not appear to occur to

anyone. On the contrary, the hired scribes of the capitalist Press

wrote columns of fulsome admiration of the miserable claptrap, and the

working men who had elected this man went into raptures over the

`Brilliant Epigram’ as if it were good to eat. They cut it out of the

papers and carried it about with them: they showed it to each other:

they read it and repeated it to each other: they wondered at it and

were delighted with it, grinning and gibbering at each other in the

exuberance of their imbecile enthusiasm.

The Distress Committee was not the only body pretending to `deal’ with

the poverty `problem’: its efforts were supplemented by all the other

agencies already mentioned - the Labour Yard, the Rummage Sales, the

Organized Benevolence Society, and so on, to say nothing of a most

benevolent scheme originated by the management of Sweater’s Emporium,

who announced in a letter that was published in the local Press that

they were prepared to employ fifty men for one week to carry sandwich

boards at one shilling - and a loaf of bread - per day.

They got the men; some unskilled labourers, a few old, worn out

artisans whom misery had deprived of the last vestiges of pride or

shame; a number of habitual drunkards and loafers, and a non-descript

lot of poor ragged old men - old soldiers and others of whom it would

be impossible to say what they had once been.

The procession of sandwich men was headed by the Semidrunk and the

Besotted Wretch, and each board was covered with a printed poster:

`Great Sale of Ladies’ Blouses now Proceeding at Adam Sweater’s

Emporium.’

Besides this artful scheme of Sweater’s for getting a good

advertisement on the cheap, numerous other plans for providing

employment or alleviating the prevailing misery were put forward in

the columns of the local papers and at the various meetings that were

held. Any foolish, idiotic, useless suggestion was certain to receive

respectful attention; any crafty plan devised in his own interest or

for his own profit by one or other of the crew of sweaters and

landlords who controlled the town was sure to be approved of by the

other inhabitants of Mugsborough, the majority of whom were persons of

feeble intellect who not only allowed themselves to be robbed and

exploited by a few cunning scoundrels, but venerated and applauded

them for doing it.