Not long ago an apprentice — a fine, smart, intellectual youth — was asked by a junior mate to advise him as to a piece of work in the lathe and went to give the required assistance. While thus engaged he was sent for to the office and charged with idling by the overseer. He tried to explain that he was helping his mate, but the foreman would not listen to it. “Put him on the black list,” he roared to the clerk. The lad’s father, enraged at the treatment meted out to his son, promptly removed him from the works, and sacrificed four or five years of patient and studious toil at his trade. It is useless to continue in the shed when you have been stigmatised with the “black list.” You will never make any satisfactory progress; you had better seek out another place and make a fresh start[3] in life.
[3] I am told that the “Black List” has now been abolished. It
certainly existed down to several years ago.
A favourite plan of the overseer’s is to catch a man in a weak state and force him to undergo a strict medical test. As a matter of fact, the “medical test” is a farce; it is merely an examination by one of the staff. Even if the workman passes the test satisfactorily it is recorded and tells against him. Quite recently one of the forgers came to work with a black eye, as the result of a private encounter, and the overseer, after jesting with him concerning it, communicated with the examiner and hustled him off to pass the “medical test.”
“What have you been at with the hammer?” said I to little Jim one day, finding the lever working very stiffly.
“I dunno. The luminator’s broke,” answered he.
“The what broke?” I inquired.
“That there yu-bricator, the thing what you puts the oil in,” he replied.
Most of the articles stamped seemed to suggest something or other to Jim’s childish mind. One job, made three at a time, looked like “little bridges”; something else resembled great butterflies. This was like an air-gun, and that “just like little pistols.” Jim’s opinion of factory work is interesting — he is a little over fifteen years of age. Coming up to me one day, cap, waistcoat, everything cast aside, his shirt unbuttoned, his face soot black, and with the sweat streaming down his nose and chin, he said naively — “This is what I calls a weary life. This place is more like a prison than anything else.” After that he wished to know if I had any apples in my garden, or, failing that, would I bring him along some crabs in my pocket?
“Double Stoppage Charlie” was well-known at the works. He first of all used to keep his wife short of cash, telling her each pay-day it was “double stoppage this week.” He often figured in a public place, too, and invariably made the same excuse. It was always “double stoppage week“ with him, so he came to be honoured with the nickname of ”Double Stoppage Charlie.” There was also “Southampton Charlie,” who had seen service with the Marines, and who was for ever talking about the “gossoons” and telling monstrous yarns of things — chiefly of bloody fights and shipwrecks. He took pride in informing you that he had been told he would have made a capital speaker of French, by reason of his wonderful powers of “pronounciation.”
Jimmy Eustace — better known as “Jimmy Useless” — was full of poaching adventures and midnight tussles with the gamekeepers and police. He was delighted to tell you of how they dodged the men in blue and waded half a mile, up to their necks in water, along the canal in the dark hours in order to keep out of their clutches. This happened in his young days, in the neighbourhood of Uffington. He was always somewhat of a rake, though he was a very clever constructor of all kinds of iron work. Everyone called him “an old fool,” however, when Queen Victoria’s new Royal Train was made, and the workmen went out in the yard to see it. “He go to see that thing? Not he! He could make a better one than that standing on his head, any day.” His long grey hair hung down as straight as candles and his grey beard had the true lunar curve. He chewed half an ounce of tobacco at a time, and spat great mouthfuls of the juice about everywhere.