This gathering together of the material that I used was one of the chief drawbacks to my progress. I could not of course lay in a stock; first, because I had no capital; secondly, because I had no room to store it; and thirdly, because, owing to the enormous variety of patterns, I could never tell what I should want a stock of. Of course I early learned to guide my client's taste in the direction of the easily obtainable (and profitable to me) patterns for obvious reasons, but if a customer had seen a certain pattern and required it, I never tried to persuade him out of it, but did my very best to satisfy him. Here I found another enormous difficulty. I did not know what to charge! There was no one of whom I dared ask the question, for it will be quite easily understood that in all trades there must be intense jealousy and dislike of an outsider coming in by a side entrance and cutting into the business. I got some help from the price-lists of the great stores, finding that I could make a very respectable profit, as I considered it, by charging about twenty-five per cent. less than they did. But that only helped me a little way, because I was continually confronted by the cheap frames made by the gross and sold by the drapers and fancy goods people at a few pence and some farthings each, less in fact than I could buy the materials for in the making of one frame.
So I groped blindly along, sometimes making a fair profit on my labour, sometimes after two or three days' hard work emerging with about what I started with because of unforeseen difficulties. I may have undersold the legitimate operators in the same line, but if so it was entirely due to ignorance on my part—I would never willingly spoil any man's market, unless of course as in some monopolies prices needed reduction in the interests of truth and honesty.
The writing of the last three words of the preceding sentence has suddenly brought before me the necessity of a word or two of explanation. I have not the slightest intention in these chapters to be dictative. Still less do I wish to write a clumsy tract. And yet I find upon looking back upon the last few pages that I am in great danger of being accused of a smug and disgustingly hypocritical trumpeting forth of my virtues. From such a peril I desire to guard myself if possible. And I feel that I can only do so by stating definitely that although of course I claimed to be a Christian man, my actions with regard to my work did not seem to me to spring from any desire to follow a certain code of moral laws, but to do to others as I wished they would do to me. At my proper work at the office I know I was often indolent and careless, and pre-occupied with my own affairs when I ought to have given my best abilities to the duties for which I was paid, the reason (not the excuse) being, that I never could take the slightest interest in it. But in my private business outside the office I did always try to give the best possible value for the money I received, and I had an absolute horror of overcharging anybody.
Moreover, on certain occasions when I had to pay others to do what I could not do myself, and based my proposal for payment on the profit I expected to make, I have several times, on finding that my profits were larger than I had expected, voluntarily increased the payment to my helper. Not, I affirm, because of any deep-seated desire to be just as well as kind, but, because it was the easiest way to quiet some inner impulse driving me in the direction of justice. This is not a matter of virtue, it is a matter of temperament. There is to me something diabolical, infernal, in the idea of "doing" anybody, of getting the better of them in a business deal, of binding men down to serve you for a pittance upon which they can hardly live, and making yourself a fortune by their labour. And I believe that a faithful servant who puts love for you as the employer into his or her work is valuable beyond all payment, but that fact should never hinder the recipient of such service from paying as liberally as he can, not caring a hang for the laws of political economy.
Dear me, how far this kind of thing does lead one to be sure. But I have the most vivid recollection of those reflections in that strenuous time, and they gave point and edge to my remarks made on Sunday morning at Kensal Green Cemetery Gates, to the immense audiences of men waiting there for William the Fourth to open. I preached the doctrine of Christian Socialism as I saw it, as different from the naked and unabashed Socialism of the Keir Hardie type, as light is from darkness, a social law of love and duty towards my neighbour, whether he be rich or poor. And this was a great and splendid compensation, even when as often happened, I, having laid out my last few shillings on Friday for materials wherewith to make frames in the hope of getting paid for them on Saturday, found that I was left with only a few pence to procure that sacrament of the Londoner, the Sunday's dinner.
However hard those times now seem to look back upon, I can very plainly see how much of pleasure and good training there was in them, compensations of which I then thought little. But I cannot help seeing also how helpful a few business-like habits would have been. I cannot say that I had a rooted objection to keeping accounts, I only know that I never did keep them except in my head. And consequently I grew to trust my memory for everything, which in business, however small, is I now know fatal. Yet I know, too, that had I been managing anybody else's business, I should have been a scrupulous book-keeper. Blamable in the last degree this constitutional aversion of mine from putting down what I had spent and how much I had earned from that spending. Also, for another confession, though I was in theory anything but an optimist, in practice I acted optimism. I never could feel sure of my monthly government pay, until I had actually cashed the cheque, yet in the face of demands which it seemed miraculous that I should ever be able to satisfy I was cheery, even confident, that, as Dickens so scornfully puts it, "things would come round."
Now I must close this chapter, already overlong, but before I do so I must just say that at this time I drank nothing but water or tea, did not smoke, never paid a penny for recreation, and wore my clothes till I dared wear them no longer. And yet I was, with a steady salary of £2. 2s. a week, abjectly poor!