The late Chancellor foresaw all this well enough, but he was unable to alter it. The list of penalties enacted under his leadership against all infractions of the duty of labour is to be seen in all workshops where it has not yet been torn down. In this list penalties are threatened against idleness, inattention, disobedience, carelessness, impertinence to superiors, and a host of offences. These penalties consist of the withdrawal of the money-certificate, the reduction of the meat rations, the deprivation of the entire mid-day meal, and even of incarceration. But where there is none to bring a charge there is no need of a judge.
Directors and managers are chosen just in the same way as masters and foremen, and they have to look to it that they do not ruffle those who elect them.
In those rare cases where denunciations do take place, the judicial proceedings are tedious, and full of detail. Recently, however, a number of builders got denounced by passers-by, who had their patience tired out by the lengthy intervals of rest taken, and by the careful scrutiny applied to every individual brick. On another occasion, the inmates of an entire establishment were transferred to another part of the country. But, as a rule, this transference to other parts only arises from political reasons. It is on this account that the Younkers are now agitating to obtain for all working-men the same permanence which judges enjoy in their office.
This matter of removal to other places has its odd side. The principle of social equality requires that every man, no matter where he be, finds everything precisely as it was in the old place. He finds exactly the same wages, the same food, the same dwelling, and so on, as those he left behind him.
Well, Rome was not built in a day. And this very spirit of selfishness which we see so much of in our workshops, what is it other than the evil inheritance left us by a state of society in which every man strove to gain an advantage over every other man? Our new schools and institutions will very soon create that “moral atmosphere” in which the tree of Socialism will grow and flourish, and extend the welcome shadow of its branches to the whole human species.
CHAPTER XVIII.
FAMILY MATTERS.
Sunday was such a Sunday as I had never spent before. My wife got permission at last to visit little Annie. It seems that the observance of order in the Children’s Homes necessitates the regulation that parents should only see their children in their due turn. How my wife had pictured to herself the meeting with her child! All sorts of cakes, and sweetmeats, and playthings had been got together to take to her. But to mother’s great distress she found she had to leave all these things behind her at the entrance. It was forbidden, she learned, for any of the children to have any playthings which were not common to all, because this would not accord with their education, which taught absolute social equality. The same thing applied to sweetmeats. Such things were only too apt to give rise to quarrels and vexations, and to disturb the regular course of matters in the Home.
My wife was in perfect ignorance of these new regulations, as for some time past she has been engaged in the kitchen of her Home, and not in attending to the children.
Then again, my wife had expected that Annie would show more lively and tender delight at meeting with her mother. But in her new surroundings the child was disposed to be less confiding than she had always been. True, the separation had not been a long one, but there is a good deal of truth in the case of young children, in the words, “Out of sight out of mind.” Then again, the idea of seeing her mother had constantly been associated in Annie’s mind with the expectation of sweets and playthings. But now she beheld her mother come with empty hands. Childlike, she soon wanted a change again, and she quickly got away from the embraces of her mother in order to rejoin the other children at play.
My wife found Annie looking somewhat pale and changed. This is probably due to the different way of living, and the different kind of nourishment. Naturally, the strictest order is maintained in the Home. But (and the same intention pervades all our institutions) there is no superfluity of victuals, and the large scale of the undertaking does not admit of any pampering of individual children. Children’s looks vary so rapidly, and were Annie now at home with us, her looks would hardly disquieten the experienced mother. But, of course, it is a different thing altogether when separated, and mother now pictures to herself the approach of some disease which she sees herself powerless to contend against.