In the schooner that he had sighted there was such a man, though the King did not know it—a man of great wealth, a newspaper proprietor, a keen politician—Mr Lechworthy, who manufactured the leather goods. The circumstances that brought Mr Lechworthy to Faloo must now be recorded.
CHAPTER III
The factories of Lechworthy & Co. covered many acres at Setton Park, and the large village adjoining was inhabited almost solely by those employed in the factories.
In the factories as in the offices of Lechworthy & Co. one found the last word of effectiveness and enterprise. Time after time good machinery had been scrapped to make way for better and to meet American competition, and the enormous outlay involved had subsequently justified itself. Everything connected with their business was manufactured at Setton Park. Boxes and crates were made there. They made every metal article required—from the eyelets of a pair of cheap boots to the gold fittings of the most expensive dressing-case. They made their own glue. They even made their own thread.
Lechworthy & Co. were good employers. They paid fair wages, and in the treatment of their workwomen went far beyond what the Factory Acts required of them. Allotments, cricket fields, libraries, recreation halls abounded. Lechworthy & Co. had themselves seen to it that the least paid woman in the packing or lining departments could obtain an abundant supply of pure milk for her babies at a price she could easily afford. The sanitation was excellent, and the delightful air of the country—for the tannery was at a judicious distance—made town-workers envy their more fortunate comrades at Lechworthy’s. Thrift was compulsory and automatic. The man who grew old and past work, or who broke down from illness in the company’s service, found ample provision made for him from funds to which his own savings had contributed, augmented by the company’s generosity. Such a man need not leave Setton Park; there was a cottage for him, and it was not called an alms-house; medical attendance was provided free for him. The conditions still prevailed which were established when Lechworthy turned his business into a Limited Company. The ordinary investor had never been given a chance to put a penny into the concern. Lechworthy had by far the largest holding, and the other shareholders were men of a like mind, personal and political friends; men of substance, and, it was averred, of nice conscience. The company earned an excellent dividend, in spite of its philanthropical ideas.
It was not of course to be expected that Lechworthy & Co. would entirely escape criticism. The man who has political friends has also political enemies, and the political enemy is not always too scrupulous in the way in which he inquires into his opponents’ private business. A part at least of the raw material which the company purchased had been subjected to comment. Their attitude towards any smaller manufacturer was characterised as merciless—he was absorbed into Lechworthy’s, or he was frozen off the face of the earth. The scheme of compulsory thrift was commented upon even by those who did not deny a value to compulsory virtues. It was said quite truly that any man who voluntarily left the company’s service, or who was dismissed for misconduct, thereby sacrificed all that he had been compelled to put by. It was answered as truly that every man who entered the service knew upon what conditions he entered it, and that the company had a right to guard itself against disloyalty, defection and disorder, by all the means in its power. In view of the fact that Lechworthy had always proclaimed freedom of religious and political opinions, it was held to be remarkable that ninety per cent. of his work-people shared his political views, and that while every shade of dissent was represented among them, it was hard to find a member of the Church of England and impossible to find either a Catholic or an Agnostic. If this were mentioned to Lechworthy he said merely that he had been fortunate, or that he supposed that like attracted like. He was sincere, and had strong convictions; he was also shrewd and knew that strong convictions depend amazingly little upon argument. Many a workman of Lechworthy’s had professed for mercenary and time-serving reasons a religion which had afterwards become real to him—not as the result of a cool reasoning analysis, but by sheer force of habit and by the unconscious effect of example. Now and again a discharged servant of the company asserted bitterly that he had been discharged for his political or religious views, but the head of his department always had another story to tell, and the evidence of discharged servants is always—and quite properly—discounted. A more serious charge was that he had kept on servants whom he should have discharged. Mr Bruce Chalmers, the Conservative candidate, had attempted to address a meeting of the men in their dinner-hour. Lechworthy’s young men had smashed up the motor-car, and hurled stones and mud at himself, his wife, and his supporters. Mrs Bruce Chalmers had been seriously injured, the police had come to the rescue, and several of these fervent young men had been imprisoned without the option of a fine. But their situations were still waiting for them when they came out, and in some of the worst cases promotion rapidly followed. Lechworthy maintained that he had told Chalmers that if he addressed the men he would do so at his own risk, and that those who provoked a breach of the peace should not complain if the peace were broken. If, as he supposed, the law had punished his men sufficiently, it would have been unnecessary and unjust for him to punish them further. Those who knew that two words from Lechworthy would have prevented the outbreak, or knew what Lechworthy’s attitude would have been to a workman who had been fined for drunkenness, did not think the defence satisfactory. For the rest, the selection of books in the free library at Setton Park provoked a sneer, the blacking out of all the racing news in the reading-room papers seemed a little childish, and the absence of a rifle-range, when gymnasia, swimming-baths, and cricket fields were liberally provided, was taken as an instance of the short-sighted methods of professed lovers of peace.
At the age of sixty Lechworthy determined to retire from the board of his company. He had relinquished the position of managing director some years before. He was not so young as he had been—it was his favourite observation—and other men could be found to take his place on the board. He was an active Member of Parliament and he was the proprietor of the Morning Guide. The paper did not pay, and Lechworthy did not run it to pay; he said more than once in public that he ran it in the service of Christ. Incidentally, it was of some use as an organ of his political party, and a most enthralling hobby for himself. While in England he was quite incapable of leaving the editor alone for two days together. The same doctor who had recommended him to retire from the board of Lechworthy & Co. had suggested a prolonged holiday in some place where it would be impossible for him to see a copy of the Morning Guide.
The occasion of his retirement had of course to be marked. Sounded upon the subject, Lechworthy had objected to the service of gold plate or to his full-length portrait by the most fashionable and most expensive artist. He did not want for money, or for the things that money can buy, and he said that he thought the talented artist might find some more pleasing subject. He knew too, that subscriptions would come from many who could ill afford to give them, and that idea was repellent to him. But he consented to receive an illuminated address, to which his employees might affix their signatures. The address swelled itself to a book, every leaf of the finest vellum, magnificently bound, majestically expressed. The title-page declared as follows: