CHAPTER V IN TRAINING FOR A CRAFTSMAN
Three years in a Smithy—Provoking a Carman—Apprenticeship—Winning a Nickname—Activity of an Idle Apprentice—"Not Dead, but Drunk"—A Boisterous Celebration—The Workman's Pride in His Work.
The three years in the blacksmith's shop in Limehouse Causeway, that commenced at the age of eleven after the errand-boy period, were years of hard work and long hours. The lad's working day began at six in the morning and often did not close until eight at night. Working overtime meant ten and twelve midnight before the day's work was done. He was paid for the overtime at the rate of a penny an hour.
He was kept hard at it all the time. Once, in the excitement of a General Election, in the days of the old hustings, he stole away from the forge for an hour. The smith had returned in his absence, and inquired angrily where he had been.
"Only to see the state of the poll."
"You'll know the state of the poll on Saturday, young fellow."
He did. A shilling was taken from his week's wages.
It was a heavy blow. It delayed a promised pair of new trousers. The need for a new pair was constantly being brought to his notice in a more or less personal way. The biggest affront came from a tall boy at a shop he passed on the way home.
"Hi!" this youth would call after him. "Look at the kid wot's put his legs too far frew his trowsis!"
Nevertheless, the little chap in the short trousers was immensely proud to be at work. He would blacken his face before leaving for home so as to look like a working man.
Many a long day's search had he before getting that job. He spent hours one morning in calling at nearly all the shops in the two miles' length of Commercial Road between Poplar and the City. But nobody wanted so small a boy. On his way back, not yet wholly disheartened, he turned down Limehouse Causeway and peeped in at the smithy.
"Can you blow the bellows, little 'un?" he was asked.
Couldn't he; you just try him!
They tried him for an hour, then told him he was just the boy they wanted.
They got a lot of smiths' work in connection with the fitting out of small vessels in Limehouse Basin and the West India Docks. The first job at which Will assisted was on board the barque Violet.
The Causeway where the smithy stood was so narrow that carts could not pass each other. Two carmen driving in opposite directions met just outside the smithy door one afternoon. Neither would give way, and they filled the air with lurid fancies. Young Will came out of the smithy and took the part of the one whom he believed to have the right on his side.
Seizing the bridle of the other driver's horse, he commenced to back the cart down the lane. The man's flow of language increased as he tried to get at the lad with his whip. Will dodged first to one side and then to the other, then under the horse's nose, eluding the lash every time. At last he got the cart backed right out of the lane, allowing the other driver to pass in triumph.
The enraged carman sprang down and chased the lad back into the smithy. Will had just time to spring behind the big bellows out of sight before the other appeared foaming at the door. With many oaths the man swore he would have vengeance on the boy some day, come what would.
Some years afterwards Crooks found himself at work in the same yard as his burly enemy, but time, which had made little difference to the man, had transformed the boy out of all recognition. Crooks asked him if he remembered the event.
"Yes; and if I came across that youngster to-day I'd break every bone in his body."
"I don't think you would, Jack," Crooks replied, preparing to take off his coat.
Then the carman understood.
In his third year at the smithy Will was getting six shillings a week, with something more than a penny an hour for overtime. Small though the wages were, they were very welcome at home; and it meant a great deal to his mother when she sacrificed more than half this amount in the lad's best interest.
She was as determined that her boys should learn a trade as that they should learn to read and write. She took Will away from the smithy and his six shillings a week, when she found he was not to be taught the business but to be merely a smiths' labourer, and she apprenticed him to the trade of cooper at a weekly wage of half a crown.
"The sacrifice of a few shillings a week," says Crooks, "which mother made in order that I should learn a trade was only one of the many things she did for me as a boy for which I have blessed her memory in manhood many times. I really don't know now how she managed to feed us all, after losing my three-and-six a week. I know that she always put up a good dinner in a handkerchief for me to take to work. It may have got smaller towards the end of the week, like many of the men's. I remember one Monday dinner-time flopping down on a saw-tub and opening my handkerchief as the foreman passed.
"'That looks a good meal to begin the week on,' he said. 'I see how it is;—
It's Monday plenty,
Tuesday some,
Wednesday a little,
Thursday none,
Don't worry about Friday,
You get your money on Saturday.'"
Among the workmen was a thinker and reformer far ahead of his times. It was dangerous in those days for workmen to give expression to advanced views, and as he was a married man he made no display of his opinions. He seems to have seen promise in young Will, for he talked to him freely on social and political matters, encouraging him to read by lending him books and papers, and inspiring him with an enthusiasm for the teaching of John Bright.
So much so, that at home Will was nicknamed Young John Bright. An uncle, looking in on the eve of the General Election of 1868, said jokingly, "Now, young John Bright, tell us all about what is going to happen." Nothing loath, Will delivered a long speech on the political situation, and foretold, among other things, that the Liberals would sweep the country, and that one of their first acts would be to disestablish the Church of Ireland. The prophecy, needless to say, was fulfilled.
Will was one of half-a-dozen apprentices in the coopering establishment. While still the youngest among them he made his mark by acting as spokesman in a sudden emergency. The lads thought they had a grievance under the piece-rate system. They went in a body to the head of the firm, the eldest primed with a well-rehearsed speech stating their case.
If Will saved the situation, he began by nearly bringing disaster upon it. It happened that the spokesman's father was an undertaker in Stepney, and that on Sundays the lad, with becoming gravity, frequently walked as a mute at funerals.
Just as the solemn procession of aggrieved apprentices was about to enter the office, the employer's wondering eye upon them through the window, Will called out in a stage whisper:
"Now, Joe, put on your best Sunday face!"
The fearful tension was broken. All the boys burst into laughter. The lads tumbled over each other in their eagerness to get outside the passage. When the head of the firm opened his door Will alone remained.
"What's all this about, Crooks?"
The youngest apprentice thereupon briefly ran over the lads' grievances, and on being asked why the deputation fled in laughter, he explained the meaning of the Sunday face.
The employer laughed as boisterously as his boys. He told Crooks to go back to work, promising that the lads should have fair play. That very day he issued orders placing the apprentices under better conditions.
One of the lads, with an unconquerable liking for lying in bed, had not turned up by nine o'clock on a certain morning. The other apprentices stole out with a barrow and went to his house with the object of wheeling him to work.
Half an hour later the lad rushed into the cooperage panting and dishevelled, his clothes torn, his hat missing.
"Done 'em!" he gasped, after the manner of Alfred Jingle. "I rushed out o' the back door, got over the wall, over the next wall, fell on a flower-bed, man came out (such langwidge!), climbed his wall afore he could ketch me, landed clean on a dog kennel, dog tore me clothes, got over another wall—into the street at last—boys caught sight o' me, howling chase with barrow, woman let me run through her house, over another wall. Done 'em!"
Something more than laziness explained the occasional absence of others from work. Certain of the men would be missing for two or three days. During an unusually long absence of one of the older coopers, the men and lads rigged up a dummy figure, dressing it in whatever clothes of their own they could spare. They placed the dummy in an improvised coffin by the side of their missing comrade's bench, with an imitation tombstone at the head, bearing the inscription, "Not dead, but drunk."
The morning came when the delinquent turned up. A deep silence fell over the workshop as he entered. Men and apprentices alike suddenly appeared to be absorbed in work. The late-comer pretended not to see the effigy by his bench. With quiet deliberation he took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and lighted the furnace-fire. No one spoke. The old man brought two handfuls of shavings and piled them on the fire until it roared again. Then suddenly he seized the dummy figure and hurled it on the flames.
Everybody sprang forward to snatch his garments from the fire. One rescued his coat, another his vest, another his cap, another his muffler, another his pair of boots, the old man belabouring each in turn.
"Ah!" he cried with a chuckle, as the singed garments were dragged away. "I knew that would find you all out."
Quaint and boisterous customs were observed when an apprentice was out of his time. The greater part of the day was given up by men and boys alike to revelry and horse-play.
The ceremonies began at about eleven o'clock in the morning, to be kept up for the rest of the day. First, the apprentice was seized and put into a hot barrel. Round him stood some fifty men and boys checking every attempt he made to get out, tapping him with hammers on the head and fingers and shoulders every time he made an effort to escape. When his clothes—the last he was to wear as an apprentice—had been singed in the barrel out of all further use, he would be dragged out and tossed in the air by about a dozen of the strongest men.
Only once did the employer try to stop these boisterous interludes. He never tried again. The men laid hold of him, and for about five minutes treated him to a vigorous tossing.
It then became the bruised and singed apprentice's privilege to pay for bread and cheese and drink. In the afternoon the men turned the yard into an imitation fair. Flags and bunting were put up and side shows were improvised. One feature was to persuade the fattest men to walk the tight-rope.
On the whole, Will had a happy time as an apprentice, working hard and laughing hard, more than once threatened with dismissal because his spirit of fun led him into mischief. He became a good craftsman, and to this day boasts of being as skilful at his own trade as any man. He attributes this to the old spirit of craftsmanship that held good in his day. One incident during his apprenticeship helped to make him take a pride in what he made with his own hands. An old workman in the shop, after finishing a piece of work, set it in the middle of the floor and walked round it admiringly several times.
"'Pon my honour, one would think you'd made a thousand-horse-power engine," said the apprentice.
"Never you mind, sonny," replied the old workman. "Whether it's a thousand-horse-power engine or not, I made it myself!"
"That is the spirit I want to see revived among workmen to-day," Crooks told the Labour Co-partnership Association in 1905, relating the incident at their annual exhibition at the Crystal Palace. He went on to say:
I want to see workmen proud of what they make with their own hands. That is impossible in many workshops to-day because of the soulless way in which they are conducted. Many workmen have got the idea they only exist for what other people can get out of them. I blame employers as much as workmen for this state of things. There are in the country some excellent employers. Unfortunately, they are becoming fewer. The individual employer is going out, and the limited liability company coming in, having as its one object the making of profit, utterly regardless of the bodies or souls of the men or women from whom the profit is wrung. The result of running works and factories for company dividends only has destroyed the old school of masters and men, both of whom had a pride in their work, both of whom stamped their work with the mark of their own individuality.
To get back to a better state of things workmen must become their own masters, and the Co-Partnership Association is showing men the way. It is teaching them to live and work with and for each other. I want men who groan under the injustice of so much in our industrial system to understand that they can do much for themselves. By combination and co-operation they can run businesses of their own. But they must first take to the water before they can swim. It means discipline, but trade unionism has meant discipline. The administrative capacity of workmen can be developed to an enormous extent yet.
How are we going to train our men and women workers to take on the responsibilities of regulating their own lot in a better manner? Trade unionists are now learning that instead of spending money on strikes it is better to spend it in starting workshops of their own. The time has come when Labour leaders and others might well cease talking to the workers about their power and begin talking to them about their responsibilities.
The day after this speech he received the following letter from George Jacob Holyoake, a few months before that veteran co-operator passed away:—
"Against my will I was prevented from being present at the Crystal Palace, but that does not disqualify me from expressing my thanks for the wise and practical speech you made—in every way admirable."