this has been a delightful day. about eleven o'clock a rap came at the door, and a young lady entered my classroom.
"jerusalem!" i gasped. "dorothy! where did you drop from?"
"i'm motoring to edinburgh," she explained, "on tour, you know, old thing!"
dorothy is an actress in a musical comedy touring company, and she is a very old friend of mine. she is a delightful child, full of fun and mischief, yet she can be a most serious lady on occasion.
she looked at my bairns, then she clasped her hands.
"o, sandy! fancy you teaching all these kiddies! won't you teach me, too?" and she sat down beside violet brown. i thanked my stars that i had never been dignified in that room.
"dorothy," i said severely, "you're [pg 177]talking to violet brown and i must give you the strap."
the bairns simply howled, and when dorothy took out her wee handkerchief and pretended to cry, laughter was dissolved in tears.
it was minutes time, and she insisted on blowing the "dismiss" on the bugle. her efforts brought the house down. the girls refused to dismiss, they crowded round dorothy and touched her furs. she was in high spirits.
"you know, girls, i'm an actress and this big bad teacher of yours is a very old pal of mine. he isn't such a bad sort really, you know," and she put her arm round my shoulders.
"see her little game, girls?" i said. "do you notice that this woman from a disreputable profession is making advances to me? she really wants me to kiss her, you know. she—" but dorothy shoved a piece of chalk into my mouth.
what a day we had! dorothy stayed all day, and by four o'clock she knew all the big girls by their christian names. she insisted on their calling her dorothy. she even tried[pg 178] to talk their dialect, and they screamed at her attempt to say "guid nicht the noo."
in the afternoon i got her to sing and play; then she danced a ragtime, and in a few minutes she had the whole crowd ragging up and down the floor.
she stayed to tea, and we reminisced about london. dear old dorothy! what a joy it was to see her again, but how dull will school be tomorrow! ah, well, it is a workaday world, and the butterflies do not come out every day. if dorothy could read that sentence she would purse up her pretty lips and say, "butterfly, indeed, you old bluebottle!" the dear child!
* * *
the school to-day was like a ballroom the "morning after." the bairns sat and talked about dorothy, and they talked in hushed tones as about one who is dead.
"please, sir," asked violet, "will she come back again?"
"i'm afraid not," i answered.
"please, sir, you should marry her, and then she'll always be here."
"she loves another man, vi," i said [pg 179]ruefully, and when vi whispered to katie farmer, "what a shame!" i felt very sad. for the moment i loved dorothy, but it was mere sentimentalism, dorothy and i could never love, we are too much of the pal to each other for emotion to enter.
"she is very pretty," said peggy smith.
"very," i assented.
"p—please, sir, you—you could marry her if you really tried?" said violet. she had been thinking hard for a bit.
"and break the other man's heart!" i laughed.
violet wrinkled her brows.
"please, sir, it wouldn't matter for him, we don't know him."
"why!" i cried, "he is a very old friend of mine!"
"oh!" violet gasped.
"please, sir," she said after a while, "do you know any more actresses?"
i seized her by the shoulders and shook her.
"you wee bissom! you don't care a rap about me; all you want is that i should marry an actress. you want my wife to come and[pg 180] teach you ragtimes and tangoes!" and she blushed guiltily.
* * *
lawson came down to see me again to-night; he wanted to tell me of an inspector's visit to-day.
"why don't you apply for an inspectorship?" he asked.
i lit my pipe.
"various reasons, old fellow," i said. "for one thing i don't happen to know a fellow who knows a chap who lives next door to a woman whose husband works in the scotch education department.
"again, i'm not qualified; i never took the education class at oxford."
"finally, i don't want the job."
"i suppose," said lawson, "that lots of 'em get in by wire-pulling."
"very probably, but some of them probably get in straight. naturally, you cannot get geniuses by wire-pulling; the chap who uses influence to get a job is a third-rater always."
lawson reddened.
"i pulled wires to get into my job," he said.
[pg 181]
"that's all right," i said cheerfully, "i've pulled wires all my days."
"but," i added, "i wouldn't do it again."
"caught religion?"
"not quite. the truth is that i have at last realised that you never get anything worth having if you've got to beg for it."
"it's about the softest job i know, whether you have to beg for it or not. the only job that beats it for softness is the kirk," he said.
"i wouldn't exactly call it a soft job, lawson; a rotten job, yes, but a soft job, no. inspecting schools is half spying and half policing. it isn't supposed to be you know, but it is. you know as well as i do that every teacher starts guiltily whenever the inspector shoves his nose into the room. nosing, that's what it is."
"you would make a fairly decent inspector," said lawson.
"thanks," i said, "the insinuation being that i could nose well, eh?"
"i didn't mean that. suppose you had to examine my school how would you do it?"
"i would come in and sit down on a bench and say: 'just imagine i am a new boy, and give me an idea of the ways of the school. i[pg 182] warn you that my attention may wander. fire away! but, i say, i hope you don't mind my finishing this pie; i had a rotten breakfast this morning.'"
"go on," said lawson laughing.
"i wouldn't examine the kids at all. when you let them out for minutes i would have a crack with you. i would say something like this: 'i've got a dirty job, but i must earn my screw in some way. i want to have a wee lecture all to myself. in the first place i don't like your discipline. it's inhuman to make kids attend the way you do. the natural desire of each boy in this room was to watch me put myself outside that pie, and not one looked at me.
"'then you are far too strenuous. you went from arithmetic to reading without a break. you should give them a five minutes chat between each lesson. and i think you have too much dignity. you would never think of dancing a ragtime on this floor, would you? i thought not. try it, old chap. apart from its merits as an antidote to dignity it is a first-rate liver stimulator.' hello! where are you going? time to take 'em in again?
[pg 183]
"'o, i say, i'm your guest, uninvited guest, i admit, but that's no reason why you should take advantage of me. man, my pipe isn't half smoked, and i have a cigarette to smoke yet. come out and watch me play footer with the boys.'"
"you think you would do all that," said lawson slowly, "but you wouldn't you know. i remember a young inspector who came into my school with a blush on his face. 'i'm a new inspector,' he said very gingerly, 'and i don't know what i am supposed to do.' a year later that chap came in like whirlwind, and called me 'young man.' man, you can't escape becoming smug and dignified if you are an inspector."
"i'd have a darned good try, anyway," i said. "getting any eggs just now?"
* * *
to-night i have been glancing at the educational news. there is a letter in it about inspectors, it is signed "disgusted." that pseudonym damns the teaching profession utterly and irretrievably. again and again letters appear, and very seldom does a teacher sign his own name. naturally, a[pg 184] letter signed with a pseudonym isn't worth reading, for a moral coward is no authority on inspectors or anything else. it sickens me to see the abject cringing cowardice of my fellow teachers. "disgusted" would no doubt defend himself by saying, "i have a wife and family depending on me and i simply can't afford to offend the inspector."
i grant that there is no point in making an inspector ratty, or for that matter making anyone ratty. i don't advise a man to seize every opportunity for a scrap. there is little use in arguing with an inspector who has methods of arithmetic different to your methods; it is easier to think over his advice and reject it if you are a better arithmetician than he. but if a man feels strongly enough on a subject to write to the papers about it, he ought to write as a man not as a slave. incidentally, the habit of using a pseudonym damns the inspectorate at the same time. for this habit is universal, and teachers must have heard tales of the victimising of bold writers. most educational papers suggest by their contributed articles that the teachers of britain are like a crowd of public school boys who fear to send their erotic verses to[pg 185] the school magazine lest the head flays them. no wonder the social status of teachers is low; a profession that consists of "disgusted" and "rural school" and "vindex" and their kind is a profession of nonentities.
* * *
once in my palmy days i told a patient audience of londoners that the post office was a socialist concern.
"any profits go to the state," i said.
a postman in the crowd stepped forward and told me what his weekly wage was, and i hastily withdrew my statement. to-day i should define it as a state concern run on the principles of private profiteering, i.e., it considers labour a commodity to be bought.
the school board here is theoretically a socialistic body. its members are chosen by the people to spend the public money on education. no member can make a profit out of a board deal. yet this board perpetrates all the evils of the private profiteer.
mrs. findlay gets ten pounds a year for cleaning the school. to the best of my knowledge she works four or five hours a day, and she spends the whole of each saturday morning cleaning out the lavatories. this sum[pg 186] works out at about sixpence a day or three ha'pence an hour. most of her work consists of carrying out the very considerable part of the playground that the bairns carry in on their boots. yet all my requests for a few loads of gravel are ignored.
the members do not think that they are using sweated labour; they say that if mrs. findlay doesn't do it for the money half a dozen widows in the village will apply for the job. they believe in competition and the market value of labour.
a few saturdays ago i rehearsed a cantata in the school, and i offered mrs. findlay half a crown for her extra trouble in sweeping the room twice. she refused it with dignity, she didn't mind obliging me, she said. and this kindly soul is merely a "hand" to be bought at the lowest price necessary for subsistence.
sometimes i curse the board as a crowd of exploiters, but in my more rational moments i see that they could not do much better if they tried. if mrs. findlay had a pound a week the employees of the farmers on the board would naturally object to a woman's getting a pound a week out of the public[pg 187] funds for working four hours a day while they slaved from sunrise to sunset for less than a pound. a public conscience can never be better than the conscience of the public's representatives. hence i have no faith in socialism by act of parliament; i have no faith in municipalisation of trams and gas and water. private profit disappears when the town council takes over the trams, but the greater evil—exploitation of labour remains.
ah! i suddenly recollect that mrs. findlay has her old age pension each friday. she thus has eight and six a week. i wonder did lloyd george realise that his pension scheme would one day prevent fat farmers from having conscience qualms when they gave a widow sixpence a day?
* * *
as i came along the road this morning i saw half a dozen carts disgorging bricks on one of lappiedub's fields. lappiedub himself was standing by, and i asked him what was happening.
"man," he cried lustily, "they've fund coal here and they're to sink pits a' ower the countryside."
[pg 188]
when i reached the school the bairns were waiting to tell me the news.
"please, sir," said willie ramsay, "they're going to build a town here bigger than london."
"bigger than glasgow even," said peter smith.
a few navvies went past the school.
"they're going to build huts for thousands of navvies," said a lassie.
"please, sir, they'll maybe knock down the school and have a mine here," suggested violet brown.
"they won't," i said firmly, "this ugly school will stand until the countryside becomes as ugly as itself. poor bairns! you don't know what you're coming to. in three years this bonny village will be a smoky blot on god's earth like newcastle. dirty women will gossip at dirty doors. you, willie, will become a miner, and you will walk up that road with a black face. you, lizzie, will be a trollop of a wife living in a brick hovel. you can hardly escape."
"mr. macnab of lappiedub will lose all his land," said a boy.
[pg 189]
"he didn't seem sad when i saw him this morning," i remarked.
"maybe he's tired of farming," suggested a girl.
"perhaps," i said, "if he is he doesn't need to worry about farming. he will be a millionaire in a few years. he will get a royalty on every ton of coals that comes up from the pit, and he will sit at home and wait for his money. simply because he is lucky he will be kept by the people who buy the coals. if he gets sixpence a ton your fathers will pay sixpence more on every ton. i want you to realise that this is sheer waste. the men who own the mines will take big profits and keep up big houses with servants and idle daughters. then mr. macnab will have his share. then a man called a middleman will buy the coals and sell them to coal merchants in the towns, and he will have his share. and these men will sell them to the householders. when your father buys his ton of coals he is paying for these things:—the coalowner's income, mr. macnab's royalty, the middleman's profit, the town coal merchant's profit, and the miners' wages. if the miners want more wages and strike, they will[pg 190] get them, but these men won't lose their profits; they will increase the price of coals and the householders will pay for the increase.
"don't run away with the idea that i am calling mr. macnab a scoundrel. he is a decent, honest, good-natured man who wouldn't steal a penny from anyone. it isn't his fault or merit that he is to be rich, it is the system that is bad."
thomas hardy somewhere talks about "the ache of modernism." i adapt the phrase and talk about the ache of industrialism. i look out at my wee window and i see the town that will be. there will be gin palaces and picture houses and music-halls—none of them bad things in themselves, but in a filthy atmosphere they will be hideous tawdry things with horrid glaring lights. i see rows of brick houses and acres of clay land littered with bricks and stones thrown down any way. stores will sell cheap boots and frozen meat and patent pills, packmen will lug round their parcels of shoddy and sheen. and education! they will erect a new school with a higher grade department, and the board will talk of turning out the type of scholar the needs of the community[pg 191] require. they will have for rector a b.sc., and technical instruction will be of first importance. when that happens i shall trek inland and shall seek some rural spot where i can be of some service to the community. i might be able to stand the smoke and filth, but before long there would be a labour candidate for the burgh, and i couldn't stand hearing him spout.
