Twixt Desk and Shelves
by James Leatham
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: EPISODE NINE – The Daily Round.
Swearwords: None.
Description: EPISODE NINE – The Daily Round.
First published in The Gateway a century ago.
There was a thud of flying feet – hooved as well as shod – a bump, the whack of a stick on well-fed flesh, and some shouts in the little terrace, with an answered excitement from the road below. The occupants of the press looked up with mild interest, in time to see an excited citizen pursue with uplifted stick a couple of strayed stirks which had come in from the roadway, and were blundering about, their bewilderment increased by the needless excitement of the men (and boys) in charge.
This happened so often that the workers at the press were callous to the recurring frenzy of the propellors of horned beasts. Considering the fascination that an open gate has for everything that walks on four legs, the wonder was that the drovers did not send some of their young henchmen in advance to see that the gate was closed. Sometimes they ran alongside their charges, and pulled it to with a bang, looking up crossly towards the press, as if nothing were more unheard of than that gates should ever be left open. The printer rather preferred it open, as he then seemed to be less cut off from the highway and custom.
This was doubtless a mere humour, since those who wished to call could easily open the gate. He was not very set upon the policy of the closed door, however. When he remembered that the day was Tuesday (consecrated to cattle or sheep) or Thursday (sacred to pigs) he would shut the gate; but there was some traffic, and it would often be left open. Hence these excitements, which proceeded entirely from the drovers. The cattle, left to themselves, would have had a look around, would have glance in at his windows, taken a brief inspection of the tombstones over the low paling that ran across the terrace, might have sniffed at a cycle or two in the open shed where they were stored pro bono pimlico, as a friend of his used to put it, and would have gone out by the same door at which they entered. Bo-peep’s sheep, left to their own devices, came home of themselves, carrying their tails behind them.
As it was, the humans made all the trouble, as now. Hounded in the rear, one of the two stirks blundered up against the stout iron bar that ran along the front of the windows, standing out about a foot from the glass. There was a brief vision of an excited bovine face, wide between the eyes and horns; but the bar stood the strain, and the two strayed revellers, rounding towards the gate once more, brushed past a laurel bush that sprouted among the clinkers, dropped neatly down a deep dip that the terrace took at the gate, neatly cleared the bar that kept one half of the gate closed, and a second later were out in the road, and the hunt was over.
The incident set the Printer thinking once again of the scheme a friend of his was fond of unfolding for the abolition of the marts and all the waste of labour involved in this driving of cattle to and fro. His friend would have valuers appointed to act for the buyer and seller. These would go round the various farms where there was stock to sell, prices would be agreed upon, the journeys by road and rail to and from the marts would be saved, the auctioneer’s commission would be saved, and so also would be the time of hundreds of thousands of cattlemen, drovers, clerks, commission agents, the farmers themselves, and of thousands of outsiders who attend the marts as mere lookers-on. The saying of a farmer had been turned over, more than once, as a joke that had some serious significance at all times, but especially now when all the talk was of economising manpower. It was alleged that a farmer had said: ‘It’s Strichen on Monday, Turriff on Tuesday, Maud on Wednesday, Inverurie on Thursday, Peterhead on Friday, and Setterday’s here afor ye ken faur ye are.’
How the abolition of open competition would operate in practice was another story. Free competition had certainly been going by the board for a long time in other lines of trade.
The Eternal Question
‘I’m needin’ ball tickets, and invitations for ladies – what’ll they be?’
The query was one of a couple of sonsie lasses who called about eleven on a Saturday forenoon.
The Printer smiles. It was an oft-recurring formula. Before you got any idea of what was wanted – what size or kind of job, or of how many copies – you were required to tell what the price would be. These young women pretty certainly would have no idea what the price ought to be, and whether he put it high or low they would equally pay it without a murmur. In fact, further talk revealed that they wanted to take the cards with them in an hour or two’s time, so that they had no choice.
The Printer looked from one to the other and smiled. ‘There’s great variety of ball tickets. You may have dance programme and pencils with tassels, and when they are gilded, and you haven’t told me how many you want.’
‘Oh, jist a plain ticket – a hunder.’
‘And the invitations on gilt-edged correspondence cards?’
‘Ay, ay, a hunder o’ them too.’
‘Three shillings for the tickets and four for the gilt-edged cards.’
‘A’ richt. We’re needin’ them back wi’s.’
Printer (smiling): My, you do give a body little time to do a job! But we’ll have to do it. We close at one on Saturday. It’ll be the last hour before I can guarantee them. But don’t let it be later than one.’
Lass: Weel, weel. Ye ken we want them oot, an’ there’s the invitations .
Printer: Ay, ay, and ye’ll be to break the Sabbath addressing them.
They looked at each other and smiled, pleased to find that he thoroughly understood.
A messenger came at twenty minutes to one; but the cards had been done some time before – so quickly and comfortably indeed, that had the price not been fixed before they would have saved sixpence at least. Only he had been ‘rushed’ to state a price, and not knowing exactly how long the job would take, he had named a figure that would keep him moderately safe.
Another of the Same
The following week a young man, well groomed, but with small bucolic eyes as if the skin were too tight across his face to allow of them being proper opened, came in and plunged at once in media res:
‘What’ll ye take to print notepaper?’
Printer (a little sharply): It depends on the notepaper, the quantity and the print. We have paper ranging in price from tenpence a packet to three shillings. The price of printing one five-quire packet is eightpence in black; and a shilling extra if you want it in a different colour.
Here again the customer knew nothing whatever about prices, and was even astonished when told that he could have envelopes to match the paper. He chose a very good paper, made no trouble about the price and was very pleased when the job was done. The initial fencing about price was simply canny rusticity. The less they knew about the matter the more canny and suggestive of suspicion they were.
The Card Game
‘Would you come and take a hand at cards tonight at the Hospital with the wounded men?’ asked a neighbour, for whom some whist scoring-cards had been printed that day.
Printer: Apart from the fact that I’ll be here working ‘over’ tonight, I don’t know a single card game. I have been taught again and again but I find it so easy to play that I forget the rules as soon as the game is over. It would be right punishment for me to spend a night over cards.
The caller left without words. He was fond of a game of cards himself, and probably found the situation beyond words.
An outdoor worker, a very intelligent man who had just bought a handsome new Byron, looked inquiringly at the Printer, and, eliciting a smile, he remarked: ‘The cards is weel enough fir jist knockin’ in an evenin’.’
Printer: Have you many evenings that need knocking in?
Workman: No. I like a book or some good news gaun on.
Printer: Exactly. The trouble is not to knock in the evening but to get evenings for rational enjoyment. Cards have nothing for the mind. They were invented to amuse a mad king, as is well known. Socially, cards are only a substitute for conversation. When people meet together it should be in their human capacity – to exchange views and sympathy and fun, whereas cards stop all that. Cards are really anti-sociable. I used to visit a volunteer officers’ mess occasionally, and they played cards silently, even fiercely; conversation was resented, and the intrusion of anybody with even the most important news or views was regarded with impatience. When I go out, and anybody asks me if I play cards, I take it as a sign that he is tired of my talk, and I either clear out, or, in more pique, get him interested and excited in spite of himself. I have known old men who admitted that in their youth they would sit up at cards till morning two nights in succession, but now they wanted to talk, in preference to any mere game.
Workman: I could fairly understand that.
There was a thud of flying feet – hooved as well as shod – a bump, the whack of a stick on well-fed flesh, and some shouts in the little terrace, with an answered excitement from the road below. The occupants of the press looked up with mild interest, in time to see an excited citizen pursue with uplifted stick a couple of strayed stirks which had come in from the roadway, and were blundering about, their bewilderment increased by the needless excitement of the men (and boys) in charge.
This happened so often that the workers at the press were callous to the recurring frenzy of the propellors of horned beasts. Considering the fascination that an open gate has for everything that walks on four legs, the wonder was that the drovers did not send some of their young henchmen in advance to see that the gate was closed. Sometimes they ran alongside their charges, and pulled it to with a bang, looking up crossly towards the press, as if nothing were more unheard of than that gates should ever be left open. The printer rather preferred it open, as he then seemed to be less cut off from the highway and custom.
This was doubtless a mere humour, since those who wished to call could easily open the gate. He was not very set upon the policy of the closed door, however. When he remembered that the day was Tuesday (consecrated to cattle or sheep) or Thursday (sacred to pigs) he would shut the gate; but there was some traffic, and it would often be left open. Hence these excitements, which proceeded entirely from the drovers. The cattle, left to themselves, would have had a look around, would have glance in at his windows, taken a brief inspection of the tombstones over the low paling that ran across the terrace, might have sniffed at a cycle or two in the open shed where they were stored pro bono pimlico, as a friend of his used to put it, and would have gone out by the same door at which they entered. Bo-peep’s sheep, left to their own devices, came home of themselves, carrying their tails behind them.
As it was, the humans made all the trouble, as now. Hounded in the rear, one of the two stirks blundered up against the stout iron bar that ran along the front of the windows, standing out about a foot from the glass. There was a brief vision of an excited bovine face, wide between the eyes and horns; but the bar stood the strain, and the two strayed revellers, rounding towards the gate once more, brushed past a laurel bush that sprouted among the clinkers, dropped neatly down a deep dip that the terrace took at the gate, neatly cleared the bar that kept one half of the gate closed, and a second later were out in the road, and the hunt was over.
The incident set the Printer thinking once again of the scheme a friend of his was fond of unfolding for the abolition of the marts and all the waste of labour involved in this driving of cattle to and fro. His friend would have valuers appointed to act for the buyer and seller. These would go round the various farms where there was stock to sell, prices would be agreed upon, the journeys by road and rail to and from the marts would be saved, the auctioneer’s commission would be saved, and so also would be the time of hundreds of thousands of cattlemen, drovers, clerks, commission agents, the farmers themselves, and of thousands of outsiders who attend the marts as mere lookers-on. The saying of a farmer had been turned over, more than once, as a joke that had some serious significance at all times, but especially now when all the talk was of economising manpower. It was alleged that a farmer had said: ‘It’s Strichen on Monday, Turriff on Tuesday, Maud on Wednesday, Inverurie on Thursday, Peterhead on Friday, and Setterday’s here afor ye ken faur ye are.’
How the abolition of open competition would operate in practice was another story. Free competition had certainly been going by the board for a long time in other lines of trade.
The Eternal Question
‘I’m needin’ ball tickets, and invitations for ladies – what’ll they be?’
The query was one of a couple of sonsie lasses who called about eleven on a Saturday forenoon.
The Printer smiles. It was an oft-recurring formula. Before you got any idea of what was wanted – what size or kind of job, or of how many copies – you were required to tell what the price would be. These young women pretty certainly would have no idea what the price ought to be, and whether he put it high or low they would equally pay it without a murmur. In fact, further talk revealed that they wanted to take the cards with them in an hour or two’s time, so that they had no choice.
The Printer looked from one to the other and smiled. ‘There’s great variety of ball tickets. You may have dance programme and pencils with tassels, and when they are gilded, and you haven’t told me how many you want.’
‘Oh, jist a plain ticket – a hunder.’
‘And the invitations on gilt-edged correspondence cards?’
‘Ay, ay, a hunder o’ them too.’
‘Three shillings for the tickets and four for the gilt-edged cards.’
‘A’ richt. We’re needin’ them back wi’s.’
Printer (smiling): My, you do give a body little time to do a job! But we’ll have to do it. We close at one on Saturday. It’ll be the last hour before I can guarantee them. But don’t let it be later than one.’
Lass: Weel, weel. Ye ken we want them oot, an’ there’s the invitations .
Printer: Ay, ay, and ye’ll be to break the Sabbath addressing them.
They looked at each other and smiled, pleased to find that he thoroughly understood.
A messenger came at twenty minutes to one; but the cards had been done some time before – so quickly and comfortably indeed, that had the price not been fixed before they would have saved sixpence at least. Only he had been ‘rushed’ to state a price, and not knowing exactly how long the job would take, he had named a figure that would keep him moderately safe.
Another of the Same
The following week a young man, well groomed, but with small bucolic eyes as if the skin were too tight across his face to allow of them being proper opened, came in and plunged at once in media res:
‘What’ll ye take to print notepaper?’
Printer (a little sharply): It depends on the notepaper, the quantity and the print. We have paper ranging in price from tenpence a packet to three shillings. The price of printing one five-quire packet is eightpence in black; and a shilling extra if you want it in a different colour.
Here again the customer knew nothing whatever about prices, and was even astonished when told that he could have envelopes to match the paper. He chose a very good paper, made no trouble about the price and was very pleased when the job was done. The initial fencing about price was simply canny rusticity. The less they knew about the matter the more canny and suggestive of suspicion they were.
The Card Game
‘Would you come and take a hand at cards tonight at the Hospital with the wounded men?’ asked a neighbour, for whom some whist scoring-cards had been printed that day.
Printer: Apart from the fact that I’ll be here working ‘over’ tonight, I don’t know a single card game. I have been taught again and again but I find it so easy to play that I forget the rules as soon as the game is over. It would be right punishment for me to spend a night over cards.
The caller left without words. He was fond of a game of cards himself, and probably found the situation beyond words.
An outdoor worker, a very intelligent man who had just bought a handsome new Byron, looked inquiringly at the Printer, and, eliciting a smile, he remarked: ‘The cards is weel enough fir jist knockin’ in an evenin’.’
Printer: Have you many evenings that need knocking in?
Workman: No. I like a book or some good news gaun on.
Printer: Exactly. The trouble is not to knock in the evening but to get evenings for rational enjoyment. Cards have nothing for the mind. They were invented to amuse a mad king, as is well known. Socially, cards are only a substitute for conversation. When people meet together it should be in their human capacity – to exchange views and sympathy and fun, whereas cards stop all that. Cards are really anti-sociable. I used to visit a volunteer officers’ mess occasionally, and they played cards silently, even fiercely; conversation was resented, and the intrusion of anybody with even the most important news or views was regarded with impatience. When I go out, and anybody asks me if I play cards, I take it as a sign that he is tired of my talk, and I either clear out, or, in more pique, get him interested and excited in spite of himself. I have known old men who admitted that in their youth they would sit up at cards till morning two nights in succession, but now they wanted to talk, in preference to any mere game.
Workman: I could fairly understand that.
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).