At thirty-six, Pugsley married money, and further extended his business. His wife "received" local snobs, and gave "at homes," attended by inferior celebrities and "all the people who are likely to be of use to us." At forty Pugsley was a Constitutional candidate for Diddleham, the hope of the Respectables, the cynosure of the hide-bound conventionalists in politics. You may remember that he was returned by the imposing majority of six. Now came the zenith of his fame. Pugsley's politics like his pickles, are notoriously piquant. He has voted against every democratic measure, and prated about "the natural leaders of the working class."
See him now, in his honoured old age, hated of his workpeople, envied by Respectables, despised by the county gentry and feared by almost everyone, a millionaire to-day, with a seat in Clodshire, a house in Portland Terrace, a yacht at Brighton, and a deer forest in Inverness-shire. I have met his son, the Master of the Slowcomb Hounds, a good sort of Philistine, who would rather do his fellow-men a good turn than an ill one, but a terrible ignoramus and deadweight for all that; with far less real knowledge of men and books than my cobbler round the corner. There are three daughters. One of them, Miss Evelyn, is betrothed to Lord Durt, the young impoverished peer, who was lately earning thirty shillings a week as society reporter to the "Gadabout." I am glad for Durt. He has had a rough time, and Evelyn is an amiable, even hopeful specimen of the Respectable girl. She has lately talked about industrial questions, and I believe she is half ashamed already that papa has women in his employment earning nine shillings a week upon which to keep body and soul together.
Yes, it is with the sweat of women and children that Pugsley has become a plutocrat. His wife is the Patroness of the Refuge for the Fallen. How many of Pugsley's women have been forced to supplement their wretched earnings by prostitution? Someone once put this question to the pickleman. "Really, Mrs. ——," he said, "I am not responsible for the morals of my working people." But I say that it is such fellows as Pugsley who force girls to sell themselves in the street. I ask you, my Respectable sister, could you live yourself and help to support your widowed mother and two young children on a wage of seven shillings a week? I have known one of Pugsley's women workers try to do this till death came with its eternity of rest for that poor, semi-starved, aching body. To me it is a constant source of wonder, and a matter of profound respect for woman's moral courage that more of Pugsley's ill-paid women helpers do not walk the streets for hire.
O! Great Pugsley, I would that I could be certain of a day of reckoning betwixt you and an Almighty Judge! Sometimes, in dreams, I hear the tramp, tramp, of thousands of feet, and see the white faces of toilers gleam in the murk of a London night, a night of violent retribution. Must we wait for this? Must hands be stained with men's blood ere the rich will bestir themselves to render justice to the poor? I pray the fates that it may not be so! But everywhere, in the great cities, and out in the fields, I hear the murmur of deep, sullen discontent.
Think what such a man as Pugsley has wrought in the name of Respectability. He has systematically lied, cheated, and crushed the weaker to the wall. He has piled up wealth by defrauding the widow and the orphan of bare human rights, turning them into worse than slaves by his thrice-accursed lust for money. I have heard of old servants being deposed in his warehouse, and put into subordinate positions to make way for the young; of men dismissed for the expression of Liberal political opinions; of hands threatened with discharge for professing trades union principles; of fines wrung from hungry children for trivial offences; and of bullying and insult and injustices without number.
I hear my cut-and-dried economist calling me to account with his formulas and expositions. Ah! I have listened to them; I have read them; but they never have, and never will, persuade me that Pugsley, the plutocrat, does what is right and humane and reasonable towards those who have built up his fortune, and bought his mansions and his yacht, and dowered his daughters. I know about competition, and the law of demand and supply, and I take my stand on sound social science. But no science that I have studied convinces me that this plutocracy and plunder and monopoly are good for anyone but the plutocrats and the plunderers. And not good for them, either, in any moral sense. Is it moral to kill the social affections? I say that the professional burglar is a model of virtue by the side of Pugsley. He does not pose as a Christian philanthropist and a friend of the people when he goes about his nefarious business. Pugsley, the great successful gambler, fines poor country louts for playing pitch and toss with halfpence. The next day he perpetrates a filthy fraud on 'Change. Shelley was right, the true ruffian of a community is not the cutpurse who knocks you down in the Gray's Inn Road, and gags you, while his accomplice grabs your watch and valuables, but the "Respectable man—the smooth, smiling villain whom all the City honours, whose very trade is lies and murder; who buys his daily bread with the blood and tears of men." I want to know why the big thief, Pugsley, is made a peer, and the man who steals a handful of turnips is sent to the County gaol?
The other day, a labourer, out of work, wired a rabbit on Pugsley's estate, and went to prison for a week for the misdemeanour. But Pugsley annexed the very land that the rabbit was on, a good wide strip of it, too, which belonged to the people. I used to walk on that same ground, looking for the first primroses. Now I must ask Pugsley's permission before I dare set a foot there, on this property which I own in common with my neighbours! And you tell me that this sort of "law and order" is good for my morals.
I am glad that my ethical-cum-philosophical friend is not at my elbow just now, to suggest that I ought to be kind to Pugsley. Why, in the name of reason, am I to flatter and applaud this commercial gamester? I look upon him as a victim of morbid acquisitiveness induced by Respectability. Pugsley thinks he must keep up his reputation among the Respectables of his set, and to do this he is urged to plunder the poor. He is a dangerous maniac; he ought to be detained and set to hard labour to cure him of his derangement.
The stupidest farce played by the Pugsleys is when one of the girls goes district visiting, and tells the wives of the peasants earning twelve shillings a week, that they "ought to put by for a rainy day." I wonder that the women can keep their patience with the ninny. If Miss Clara Pugsley were to use her atrophied brain for five minutes, she would know that no woman with a husband and five children to feed and clothe, and a rent of eighteenpence a week to pay, can save a farthing out of such wages. It is gross insolence of this over-fed, idle, ignorant girl to talk in this fashion to the poor. But this fatuous nonsense is preached all over the country every day in the week. Ladies call it "helping the poor to be thrifty," "elevating the workers," etc.
O, Great Pugsley, it is not envy of your possessions that makes me dip my pen in gall, though I know well that is what you will think should you read these words of mine. I would be well content with the income of your under-steward. You have measured human nature with your little foot-rule, and come to the opinion that all men are naturally greedy vampires like yourself. Believe me, Pugsley, you are sadly wrong in this view. I know men and women who would not stain their fingers with your wretched blood-money for their own usage, though they would gladly employ it for the benefit of those from whom you filched it, drib and drab, by underpayment of their hard, dull toil.