Crass knew that when the men stayed till half past seven they were in the habit of ceasing work for a few minutes to eat a mouthful of grub about six o’clock, so he suggested to Misery that as it was not possible to stop this, it would be a good plan to make the men stop work altogether from half past five till six, and lose half an hour’s pay; and to make up the time, instead of leaving off at seven-thirty, they could work till eight.
Misery had known of and winked at the former practice, for he knew that the men could not work all that time without something to eat, but Crass’s suggestion seemed a much better way, and it was adopted.
When the other masters in Mugsborough heard of this great reform they all followed suit, and it became the rule in that town, whenever it was necessary to work overtime, for the men to stay till eight instead of half past seven as formerly, and they got no more pay than before.
Previous to this summer it had been the almost invariable rule to have two men in each room that was being painted, but Crass pointed out to Misery that under such circumstances they wasted time talking to each other, and they also acted as a check on one another: each of them regulated the amount of work he did by the amount the other did, and if the “job” took too long it was always difficult to decide which of the two was to blame: but if they were made to work alone, each of them would be on his mettle; he would not know how much the others were doing, and the fear of being considered slow in comparison with others would make them all tear into it all they could.
Misery thought this a very good idea, so the solitary system was introduced, and as far as practicable, one room, one man became the rule.
They even tried to make the men distemper large ceilings single-handed, and succeeded in one or two cases, but after several ceilings had been spoilt and had to be washed off and done over again, they gave that up: but nearly all the other work was now arranged on the “solitary system”, and it worked splendidly: each man was constantly in a state of panic as to whether the others were doing more work than himself.
Another suggestion that Crass made to Misery was that the sub-foremen should be instructed never to send a man into a room to prepare it for painting.
“If you sends a man into a room to get it ready,” said Crass, “’e makes a meal of it! ’E spends as much time messin’ about rubbin’ down and stoppin’ up as it would take to paint it. But,” he added, with a cunning leer, “give ’em a bit of putty and a little bit of glass-paper, and the paint at the stand, and then ’e gits it in ’is mind as ’e’s going in there to paint it! And ’e doesn’t mess about much over the preparing of it”.
These and many other suggestions—all sorts of devices for scamping and getting over the work—were schemed out by Crass and the other sub-foremen, who put them into practice and showed them to Misery and Rushton in the hope of currying favour with them and being “kept on”. And between the lot of them they made life a veritable hell for themselves, and the hands, and everybody else around them. And the mainspring of it all was—the greed and selfishness of one man, who desired to accumulate money! For this was the only object of all the driving and bullying and hatred and cursing and unhappiness—to make money for Rushton, who evidently considered himself a deserving case.
It is sad and discreditable, but nevertheless true, that some of the more selfish of the philanthropists often became weary of well-doing, and lost all enthusiasm in the good cause. At such times they used to say that they were “Bloody well fed up” with the whole business and “Tired of tearing their bloody guts out for the benefit of other people” and every now and then some of these fellows would “chuck up” work, and go on the booze, sometimes stopping away for two or three days or a week at a time. And then, when it was all over, they came back, very penitent, to ask for another “start”, but they generally found that their places had been filled.