CHAPTER VII ONE OF LONDON'S UNEMPLOYED
A Casual Labourer at the Docks—A Typical Day's Tramping for Work in London—Demoralising Effects of being Out of a Job—Emptying the Cupboard for a Starving Family—Work found at last—Doing the "Railway Tavern" a Bad Turn.
In Liverpool again the prospect was not what he had been led to believe. An odd job here and an odd job there still left him in want. At last, in response to the earnest entreaties of his wife, whom nothing could persuade to revisit Liverpool, he returned to take his chance again in London.
This time Crooks determined to try to find work outside his own trade. He went down to the Docks, where, by the aid of a friendly foreman, he got occasional jobs as a casual labourer.
The sight of so many other poor fellows struggling at the Dock Gates proved more than he could bear. He turned away from the eager mass of men one morning, resolved never to join in the demoralising scrimmage again. With a trade of his own he felt he had no right to take a job for which so many men, more helpless than himself, were daily striving.
The morning he turned away finally from the Docks was the very one on which his friend the foreman had promised him a job if he turned up at the gates by noon. The piteous appeals of the hundreds of other men for the half-dozen places offered so affected him that he hung back and sat down out of sight. He saw the foreman scan the crowd, looking for him, and then engage the number of men he wanted and go inside. Crooks went off to seek work in other quarters.
One typical day of tramping for work in London he described to me thus:—
"I first went down to the river-side at Shadwell. No work was to be had there. Then I called at another place in Limehouse. No hands wanted. So I looked in at home and got two slices of bread in paper and walked eight miles to a cooper's yard in Tottenham. All in vain. I dragged myself back to Clerkenwell. Still no luck. Then I turned towards home in despair. By the time I reached Stepney I was dead beat, so I called at a friend's in Commercial Road for a little rest. They gave me some Irish stew and twopence to ride home. I managed to walk home and gave the twopence to my wife. She needed it badly.
"That year I know I walked London until my limbs ached again. I remember returning home once by way of Tidal Basin, and turning into the Victoria Docks so utterly exhausted that I sank down on a coil of rope and slept for hours.
"Another day I tramped as far as Beckton, again to no purpose. I must have expressed keen disappointment in my face, for the good fellows in the cooperage there made a collection for me, and I came home that night with one and sevenpence.
"There are few things more demoralising to a man than to have a long spell of unemployment with day after day of fruitless searching for work. It turns scores of decent men into loafers. Many a confirmed loafer to-day is simply what he is because our present social system takes no account of a man being out of work. No one cares whether he gets a job or goes to the dogs. If he goes to the dogs the nation is the loser in a double sense. It has lost a worker, and therefore a wealth-maker. Secondly, it has to spend public money in maintaining him or his family in some kind of way, whether in workhouse, infirmary, prison or asylum.
"A man who is out of work for long nearly always degenerates. For example, if a decent fellow falls out in October and fails to get a job say by March, he loses his anxiety to work. The exposure, the insufficient food, his half-starved condition, have such a deteriorating effect upon him that he becomes indifferent whether he gets work or not. He thus passes from the unemployed state to the unemployable state. It ought to be a duty of the nation to see that a man does not become degenerate."
In his own unemployed days, he awoke every morning with the half-suppressed prayer: "God help me to-day. Where shall I look for work to-day? Where can I earn a bob?"
Actual starvation was only kept away by occasional help from his own and his wife's people and by the few shillings out-of-work pay which his Trade Union allowed him every week. Even in those days he was never so hard up as not to be ready to help others in greater privation. He was out one morning when he met a man whom he knew slightly near his own house. He could see that he looked ill and that he wanted to speak. So he went up to him and said:
"Well, mate, what's amiss?"
With tears in his eyes the man told his tale—his tale of starvation. He was afraid or ashamed to ask for relief, and there had been no food in his house for over twenty-four hours.
Crooks told the man to go home, promising to come to him presently. He himself went back to his own home and told his wife.
"Let's see what we've got," she said.
All she found was a portion of a packet of cocoa and a loaf of bread. She made a large jug of cocoa and gave her out-of-work husband that and the loaf to take round to the other man's family.
"It's all we have in the house," she said; "but we've had our breakfast, and they haven't."
Work came at last in an unexpected way. He was returning home after another empty day when he hailed a carman and asked for a lift.
"All right, mate, jump up," was the response.
As they sat chatting side by side, the carman learnt that his companion was seeking work.
"What's yer trade?" he inquired.
"A cooper."
"Why, the guv'nor wants a cooper."
So instead of dropping off at Poplar, Crooks accompanied the carman to the works, and he who had tramped the country and London so long in search of a job was at last driven triumphantly to work in a conveyance, "like a Lord Mayor or a judge," as he afterwards described it.
On the first pay day, glad at heart, he was about to start for home. The men stopped him.
"We always go to 'The Railway Tavern' on Saturdays. A decent chap keeps the 'Railway.' Come and join us."
"Not me."
"Won't the missus let you?"
"No, she won't."
Throughout the next week he was mercilessly "chipped" in the workshop and referred to as the man whose missus was waiting for him at the other end. At the close of the next week he was asked after pay-time—
"Did the missus meet you last week?"
"Yes, and she'll meet me this week too."
"Come along, old chap, no kid, have a parting glass."
"No, I can part without the glass."
At the end of the third week a fellow-workman whispered: "What time are you going home, Will?"
"Same time."
"Let me leave with you, will you?"
"Certainly. Your missus been at you?"
"Yes; the fact is, Will, I stayed drinking down here until I'd blown eight bob last week. It meant my two little girls had to go without their promised pairs of new boots."
"All right, Jim; I'll give you a whistle when it's time to go."
At the end of six weeks the "Railway" was without a customer from that shop.
That work was a stepping-stone to another and a better job at Wandsworth. His new employer urged him to leave Poplar and take a house near the works.
"But suppose you pay me off when the busy time passes?" said Crooks.
"I shan't do that," was the answer. "I like your work too well."
The day came when Crooks was offered work nearer Poplar. When he handed in his notice the Wandsworth employer became wrathful.
"Never mind, I'll come back here when I'm out of work again," said Crooks good-naturedly.
"Will you? I can promise you there'll be no more work for you here. Leaving me like this!"
"Oh, yes, there will. You haven't kept me on for love, you know. I like you, and I'll come here for another job directly I'm out of work again."
It was not to be. Crooks was never out of work again in his life.
Years later he found himself sitting next to his old Wandsworth employer at a public dinner.
"You never came back to claim that job," said the good-natured old man.
"I will when I'm out of work—as I promised."
"Ah! you don't know how often I wished you would come back. You may have talked to the men a good deal about the rights of Labour, but I never knew the rights of employers to be observed so honourably. You seemed to keep the men more sober and the work up to a higher level of efficiency than I had ever known before. That's why I wanted you to come and live near, thinking to make sure of you. That's why I was so angry when you handed in your notice."