“Working-men!” ejaculated little Miss Pimpernell, raising her beady black eyes in astonishment to her brother, “why, I thought all working-men, properly so-called, were mechanics!”
“That is the radical politician’s view, my dear,” answered the vicar. “Let a man be apprenticed to a skilled trade, and carry a bricklayer’s hod, or a carpenter’s rule. Let him only wear slops and work in an engine-room, or use a mason’s trowel—so long as he does these things and receives his wages weekly, he is a ‘working-man;’ and, must have the hours of labour made to suit him, the legislation of the country altered on his behalf, the taxation of the public judiciously contrived to steer clear of him. He is the typical ‘working-man,’ my dear, of whom demagogues are always prating:—the fetish, before which so-called ‘liberal’ statesmen fall down and worship!
“But, your poor agricultural labourer, who lives in poverty, and dirt, and misery—starving annually on a tenth portion of the wages that the skilled mechanic gets—he is no working-man; oh no! Nor the wretched London clerk; he, also, is no working-man; nor the Government hack; nor the striving, hard-worked doctor; besides, many professional men and struggling tradesmen, who, for the larger portion of their lives, inch and pinch to scrape out existence!
“None of these are working-men; although they work harder—and for many more hours per diem than the mechanic—on, in most instances, a less income than the happy protégé of the radical law-maker gets by the addition of his weekly wages at the year’s end.
“And yet, the clerks, and the struggling tradesmen, and professional men, have to pay poor-rates and house-rates, and all sorts of petty taxes, from which the fetish ‘working-man’ is free; besides the income-tax, which never approaches him. The latter, often getting from three to five pounds in wages, can dress as he pleases, live in a single room for five shillings a week, pay no rates or taxes; and may, finally, disport himself as he likes—leaving off work whenever the fancy strikes him and resuming it again at his pleasure—without consulting the convenience or the wishes of his employer, who is, through trades’ unions and special class legislation, entirely at his mercy!
“Clerks, shopkeepers, and struggling professional men, cannot do this, however. They have to conform to certain rules of society; and keep up an appearance of respectability on, frequently, half the sum that the mechanic gets in wages, as I’ve said already—while groaning under a burden of taxation from which the great ‘liberal’ fetish is completely free. He is a ‘working-man,’ my dear:—they, are nothing of the sort.—Oh, no!”
“Do they really obtain such good wages?” I inquired;—“if so, what on earth do they do with the money?”
“Yes,”—said the vicar, in full swing of his favourite political argument,—“if anything, I have rather understated the case than exaggerated it. The manager of one of the telegraph-cable manufactories down the river, told me the other day, that, many of the hands drew four and five pounds regularly each Saturday. And these men, he further informed me, spent the greater part of this in drink and pleasuring on their off-days. They will have good food and the best, too—such as I cannot afford, in these days of high butchers’ bills; notwithstanding that they make such a poor show for their money, and save none of it, either! I do not complain of this, politically speaking, for, ‘an Englishman’s house is his castle,’ you know, and he has the right to live as he pleases; but, I do say, that when poor curates and clerks are so taxed, these men ought to bear their share of the taxation, possessing, as they do, incomes quite as large and in many cases greater.”
“But, they are taxed indirectly, though, are they not?”—I asked.
“Certainly; but, so also are all of us, the larger number of real working-men of the country—quite in addition to the heavy burden we have to bear of local and direct taxation! The pseudo ‘working-man’ should fairly contribute his quota to all this—particularly, since his bottle-holders have been so clamourous for giving him a share in the government of the state. If he wants ‘a share in the government,’ why, he should help to support it:—that’s what I say!”