Twixt Desk and Shelves
by James Leatham
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: EPISODE FIVE – A Club Scandal.
Swearwords: None.
Description: EPISODE FIVE – A Club Scandal.
First published in The Gateway in November 1916.
‘I wish you, as an independent man, would do something in your journal with a matter that’s causing a great deal of talk locally,’ said one of two callers.
Independent! thought the printer, who knew what was coming. Why should he be regarded as any more independent than any other local traders? He had issued a circular inviting custom, and he had not intended it to be received as a joke. His technical equipment was better than many of the city printers, who gave out work that he was able to do for himself. If he removed, as he very likely might, he would want to sell his business as a going concern, and it was only the local connection that could be sold in that way. Why should a man at the beginning of his career in a new locality be referred to as an independent? He never had been anything but independent, wherever he had been: but that was his personal predilection rather than the outcome of his financial position. It was a luxury perhaps – a necessary luxury. If there was any merit in independence, it was a merit that others could shoe as well as he, if they had the inclination. However, he said nothing of this. What he did say was:
‘I know what you mean. It’s the denial of the use of the club to the wounded soldiers. Several people have spoken to me about it, but I have never got the story properly. Tell me all about it.’
First Speaker: It’s a very disgraceful story for St. Congans. The secretary of the local Red Cross Society wrote to the Club asking them for the use of the club premises for the men in hospital. They have no place to read in or to write a letter except the Free Church Hall, where they eat and sleep. The Red Cross Secretary offered £20 a year of rent, to be paid from funds accumulated for such purposes. And the Club could have done with the money very well. They are in financial straits. A lot of members have withdrawn because whist and whisky were having rather too much of a show.
Second Caller: Yes, and that isn’t all. One of the men who took the most active part in opposing the request had taken the chair at a soldiers’ concert shortly before, and had declared that he would part with the shirt off his back to make them happy and comfortable during their stay in this place. And this is what he does.
Printer: Yes, I heard about that.
First Caller: It would have been a right enough thing to say if he had meant to make it good. Other clubs have done what the men’s representatives asked the St Congans Club to do. If a soldier goes into the billiard-room at Banff, a player will stop and offer him his cue. And little enough too. These men have suffered wounds and hardships and risked death itself for our sake. Nothing that we can do is too good for them.
Printer: That is so. I thoroughly agree with that. I don’t see that there can be anything really adequate to say on the other side. But what do the opposition lot say? Surely they must have something of a case. I know most of them, a little, and I shouldn’t have doubted their goodwill.
First Speaker: Oh they talked about the men getting drunk and abusing the place – tearing the cloth of the billiard-table and so on. It’s abominable. These are men who were in civil life like the rest of us, till quite recently. There’s no more fear of their misconducting themselves than there is of the members themselves misconducting themselves. What if the cloth of the billiard-table were ploughed a little? It would mend again. And £20 would cover some wear and tear.
Second Speaker: And the worst of it was the way the thing was done. It was decided to let the letter lie on the table. Surely the application was worth a reply.
Printer: Very bad, very bad. Of course a club is an exclusive private affair – very much like one’s own home. And yet people have had soldiers billeted to their homes too. People clamour about rights of way; but a right of way across the bottom of one’s garden is always more or less of a nuisance, even if the public knows how to behave.
First Speaker: Well, it’s war time and other clubs have waived their exclusiveness.
Printer: How did the members generally take it? How many members are there?
First Speaker: There are some sixty-five members; but only eighteen voted at the meeting. Eight voted that the use of the rooms be given, ten voted against.
Printer: Well I don’t care much whether or not I offend those who have themselves behaved offensively. It is one of the functions of the press to voice grievances, and to make delinquents sit up and mend their ways. The organ of public opinion that does not do that simply fails to fulfil its function. The only thing is that I don’t wish The Pelican to become a local organ. My readers are mostly in England and the Colonies, and I should be sorry to give up to St Congans what was meant for the English-speaking world. Besides, I should like to hear what the other side have to say. I am suspicious of popular outcries; the public is as often quite wrong, and while it fumes about things that don’t matter it allows the most flagitious things to go on regularly without a murmur. Nay, not only without a murmur, but it votes for the men who want to maintain them, and breaks the hearts of those who would reform or abolish them altogether. You have, for instance, in St Congans a school board which has on it only two men who care a rap for education. The one is the chairman, an Episcopal minister: the other is Taylor, the Socialist. The rump of the board is really opposed to education, and believe in big, strong men who are a little weak in the head, because they lend themselves of exploitation more readily. That nay boy or girl should be allowed to go to work just at the time when they should be getting most good of school is nothing short of a calamity to the child and may well be disastrous to the nation, as we have come very near proving at this time, when we have been up against the most instructed people in Europe. The work age varies in Germany as between one state and another; but it ranges up to sixteen, and there are compulsory continuation classes afterwards. The result has been that in war as in peace they carried things before them. Nothing much less than the whole of the rest of the world has been sufficient to hold them in check a little bit, and still your ignorant grasping farmers are all for ignorance, main strength and stupidity, and against education every time. The cry is always ‘Fa’s gaun ti pu’ the neeps?’ As if the Germans did not reap more produce, acre for acre, than they do! Exemptions are cheerfully given, usually on the plea of a parent’s poverty – a poverty which farmers themselves have caused. The great cause of poverty is low wages, and the average workman’s wage in St Congans is not, even in wartime, more than twenty-five shillings a week, while the cost of living in, apart from house rent, much higher than it will be in London. Wages in Scotland as a whole are 13 per cent lower than in England as a whole. And they would be much lower still if it were not that emigration has made labour scarce here and raised its value.
Here one of the visitors left, while the other listened in cold silence.
Printer (continuing): That, however, is only one thing. And yet it is of much more importance than this poor little club scandal, which is only a symptom of the well-to-do towards the mass of their fellow countrymen. If the workman does not respect himself and insist on being well-treated, how can he expect that other people will respect him and treat him well? The workmen of the cities have clubs of their own. If the St Congans workmen were not a lot of poor thralls they would have had clubs of their own, and could have done their fellow-workmen the service which the men from the front have so richly deserved. However, this club’s refusal is just one more proof of what balderdash all the talk is of how different everything will be after the war. Not it. Not unless John is prepared to speak up for himself and insist on having his full share of the benefits he first earned for all and has since fought to preserve for all.
‘I wish you, as an independent man, would do something in your journal with a matter that’s causing a great deal of talk locally,’ said one of two callers.
Independent! thought the printer, who knew what was coming. Why should he be regarded as any more independent than any other local traders? He had issued a circular inviting custom, and he had not intended it to be received as a joke. His technical equipment was better than many of the city printers, who gave out work that he was able to do for himself. If he removed, as he very likely might, he would want to sell his business as a going concern, and it was only the local connection that could be sold in that way. Why should a man at the beginning of his career in a new locality be referred to as an independent? He never had been anything but independent, wherever he had been: but that was his personal predilection rather than the outcome of his financial position. It was a luxury perhaps – a necessary luxury. If there was any merit in independence, it was a merit that others could shoe as well as he, if they had the inclination. However, he said nothing of this. What he did say was:
‘I know what you mean. It’s the denial of the use of the club to the wounded soldiers. Several people have spoken to me about it, but I have never got the story properly. Tell me all about it.’
First Speaker: It’s a very disgraceful story for St. Congans. The secretary of the local Red Cross Society wrote to the Club asking them for the use of the club premises for the men in hospital. They have no place to read in or to write a letter except the Free Church Hall, where they eat and sleep. The Red Cross Secretary offered £20 a year of rent, to be paid from funds accumulated for such purposes. And the Club could have done with the money very well. They are in financial straits. A lot of members have withdrawn because whist and whisky were having rather too much of a show.
Second Caller: Yes, and that isn’t all. One of the men who took the most active part in opposing the request had taken the chair at a soldiers’ concert shortly before, and had declared that he would part with the shirt off his back to make them happy and comfortable during their stay in this place. And this is what he does.
Printer: Yes, I heard about that.
First Caller: It would have been a right enough thing to say if he had meant to make it good. Other clubs have done what the men’s representatives asked the St Congans Club to do. If a soldier goes into the billiard-room at Banff, a player will stop and offer him his cue. And little enough too. These men have suffered wounds and hardships and risked death itself for our sake. Nothing that we can do is too good for them.
Printer: That is so. I thoroughly agree with that. I don’t see that there can be anything really adequate to say on the other side. But what do the opposition lot say? Surely they must have something of a case. I know most of them, a little, and I shouldn’t have doubted their goodwill.
First Speaker: Oh they talked about the men getting drunk and abusing the place – tearing the cloth of the billiard-table and so on. It’s abominable. These are men who were in civil life like the rest of us, till quite recently. There’s no more fear of their misconducting themselves than there is of the members themselves misconducting themselves. What if the cloth of the billiard-table were ploughed a little? It would mend again. And £20 would cover some wear and tear.
Second Speaker: And the worst of it was the way the thing was done. It was decided to let the letter lie on the table. Surely the application was worth a reply.
Printer: Very bad, very bad. Of course a club is an exclusive private affair – very much like one’s own home. And yet people have had soldiers billeted to their homes too. People clamour about rights of way; but a right of way across the bottom of one’s garden is always more or less of a nuisance, even if the public knows how to behave.
First Speaker: Well, it’s war time and other clubs have waived their exclusiveness.
Printer: How did the members generally take it? How many members are there?
First Speaker: There are some sixty-five members; but only eighteen voted at the meeting. Eight voted that the use of the rooms be given, ten voted against.
Printer: Well I don’t care much whether or not I offend those who have themselves behaved offensively. It is one of the functions of the press to voice grievances, and to make delinquents sit up and mend their ways. The organ of public opinion that does not do that simply fails to fulfil its function. The only thing is that I don’t wish The Pelican to become a local organ. My readers are mostly in England and the Colonies, and I should be sorry to give up to St Congans what was meant for the English-speaking world. Besides, I should like to hear what the other side have to say. I am suspicious of popular outcries; the public is as often quite wrong, and while it fumes about things that don’t matter it allows the most flagitious things to go on regularly without a murmur. Nay, not only without a murmur, but it votes for the men who want to maintain them, and breaks the hearts of those who would reform or abolish them altogether. You have, for instance, in St Congans a school board which has on it only two men who care a rap for education. The one is the chairman, an Episcopal minister: the other is Taylor, the Socialist. The rump of the board is really opposed to education, and believe in big, strong men who are a little weak in the head, because they lend themselves of exploitation more readily. That nay boy or girl should be allowed to go to work just at the time when they should be getting most good of school is nothing short of a calamity to the child and may well be disastrous to the nation, as we have come very near proving at this time, when we have been up against the most instructed people in Europe. The work age varies in Germany as between one state and another; but it ranges up to sixteen, and there are compulsory continuation classes afterwards. The result has been that in war as in peace they carried things before them. Nothing much less than the whole of the rest of the world has been sufficient to hold them in check a little bit, and still your ignorant grasping farmers are all for ignorance, main strength and stupidity, and against education every time. The cry is always ‘Fa’s gaun ti pu’ the neeps?’ As if the Germans did not reap more produce, acre for acre, than they do! Exemptions are cheerfully given, usually on the plea of a parent’s poverty – a poverty which farmers themselves have caused. The great cause of poverty is low wages, and the average workman’s wage in St Congans is not, even in wartime, more than twenty-five shillings a week, while the cost of living in, apart from house rent, much higher than it will be in London. Wages in Scotland as a whole are 13 per cent lower than in England as a whole. And they would be much lower still if it were not that emigration has made labour scarce here and raised its value.
Here one of the visitors left, while the other listened in cold silence.
Printer (continuing): That, however, is only one thing. And yet it is of much more importance than this poor little club scandal, which is only a symptom of the well-to-do towards the mass of their fellow countrymen. If the workman does not respect himself and insist on being well-treated, how can he expect that other people will respect him and treat him well? The workmen of the cities have clubs of their own. If the St Congans workmen were not a lot of poor thralls they would have had clubs of their own, and could have done their fellow-workmen the service which the men from the front have so richly deserved. However, this club’s refusal is just one more proof of what balderdash all the talk is of how different everything will be after the war. Not it. Not unless John is prepared to speak up for himself and insist on having his full share of the benefits he first earned for all and has since fought to preserve for all.
About the Author
James Leatham was born in Aberdeen in 1865 and apprenticed to a printer aged 13½. Over his life he worked for a range of papers/periodicals in the North East of Scotland and England, including the St Nicholas Press, The Workers Herald and The Peterhead Sentinel (editorship of which he took over from David Scott in 1897). He wrote for radical socialist papers throughout his life at a time when socialism and the Labour Party were a febrile battleground of theory and practice. He more than once lost his job because of his political views. In his 50’s he moved back to Aberdeenshire, setting up the Deveron Press in 1916 from his Turriff base. He published many ‘penny pamphlets’ and in book form his publications include the political work Socialism and Character (1897); William Morris: A Master of Many Crafts (1900); and a tribute to David Scott, Daavit (1912).