Sybil, Or, The Two Nations, Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli [chrysanthemum read aloud TXT] 📗

yet.”

“And I have been obliged to pay the doctor for my poor wife in tommy,” said another. “‘Doctor,’ I said, says I, ‘I blush to do it, but all I have got is tommy, and what shall it be, bacon or cheese?’ ‘Cheese at tenpence a pound,’ says he, ‘which I buy for my servants at sixpence. Never mind,’ says he, for he is a thorough Christian, ‘I’ll take the tommy as I find it.’”

“Juggins has got his rent to pay and is afeard of the bums,” said Nixon; “and he has got two waistcoats!”

“Besides,” said another, “Diggs’ tommy is only open once a-week, and if you’re not there in time, you go over for another seven days. And it’s such a distance, and he keeps a body there such a time—it’s always a day’s work for my poor woman; she can’t do nothing after it, what with the waiting and the standing and the cussing of Master Joseph Diggs,—for he do swear at the women, when they rush in for the first turn, most fearful.”

“They do say he’s a shocking little dog.”

“Master Joseph is wery wiolent, but there is no one like old Diggs for grabbing a bit of one’s wages. He do so love it! And then he says you never need be at no loss for nothing; you can find everything under my roof. I should like to know who is to mend our shoes. Has Gaffer Diggs a cobbler’s stall?”

“Or sell us a penn-orth of potatoes,” said another. “Or a ha’porth of milk.”

“No; and so to get them one is obliged to go and sell some tommy, and much one gets for it. Bacon at ninepence a-pound at Diggs’, which you may get at a huckster’s for sixpence, and therefore the huckster can’t be expected to give you more than fourpence halfpenny, by which token the tommy in our field just cuts our wages atween the navel.”

“And that’s as true as if you heard it in church, Master Waghorn.”

“This Diggs seems to be an oppressor of the people,” said a voice from a distant corner of the room.

Master Nixon looked around, smoked, puffed, and then said, “I should think he wor; as bloody-a-hearted butty as ever jingled.”

“But what business has a butty to keep a shop?” inquired the stranger. “The law touches him.”

“I should like to know who would touch the law,” said Nixon; “not I for one. Them tommy shops is very delicate things; they won’t stand no handling, I can tell you that.”

“But he cannot force you to take goods,” said the stranger; “he must pay you in current coin of the realm, if you demand it.”

“They only pay us once in five weeks,” said a collier; “and how is a man to live meanwhile. And suppose we were to make shift for a month or five weeks, and have all our money coming, and have no tommy out of the shop, what would the butty say to me? He would say, ‘do you want e’er a note this time’ and if I was to say ‘no,’ then he would say, ‘you’ve no call to go down to work any more here.’ And that’s what I call forsation.”

“Ay, ay,” said another collier; “ask for the young queen’s picture, and you would soon have to put your shirt on, and go up the shaft.”

“It’s them long reckonings that force us to the tommy shops,” said another collier; “and if a butty turns you away because you won’t take no tommy, you’re a marked man in every field about.” * *A Butty in the mining districts is a middleman: a Doggy is his manager. The Butty generally keeps a Tommy or Truck shop and pays the wages of his labourers in goods. When miners and colliers strike they term it, “going to play.”

“There’s wus things as tommy,” said a collier who had hitherto been silent, “and that’s these here butties. What’s going on in the pit is known only to God Almighty and the colliers. I have been a consistent methodist for many years, strived to do well, and all the harm I have ever done to the butties was to tell them that their deeds would not stand on the day of judgment.

“They are deeds of darkness surely; for many’s the morn we work for nothing, by one excuse or another, and many’s the good stint that they undermeasure. And many’s the cup of their ale that you must drink before they will give you any work. If the queen would do something for us poor men, it would be a blessed job.”

“There ayn’t no black tyrant on this earth like a butty, surely,” said a collier; “and there’s no redress for poor men.”

“But why do not you state your grievances to the landlords and lessees,” said the stranger.

“I take it you be a stranger in these parts, sir,” said Master Nixon, following up this remark by a most enormous puff. He was the oracle of his circle, and there was silence whenever he was inclined to address them, which was not too often, though when he spoke, his words, as his followers often observed, were a regular ten-yard coal.

“I take it you be a stranger in these parts, sir, or else you would know that it’s as easy for a miner to speak to a mainmaster, as it is for me to pick coal with this here clay. Sir, there’s a gulf atween ‘em. I went into the pit when I was five year old, and I count forty year in the service come Martinmas, and a very good age, sir, for a man what does his work, and I knows what I’m speaking about. In forty year, sir, a man sees a pretty deal, ‘specially when he don’t move out of the same spot and keeps his ‘tention. I’ve been at play, sir, several times in forty year, and have seen as great stick-outs as ever happened in this country. I’ve seen the people at play for weeks together, and so clammed that I never tasted nothing but a potatoe and a little salt for more than a fortnight. Talk of tommy, that was hard fare, but we were holding out for our rights, and that’s sauce for any gander. And I’ll tell you what, sir, that I never knew the people play yet, but if a word had passed atween them and the main-masters aforehand, it might not have been settled; but you can’t get at them any way. Atween the poor man and the gentleman there never was no connection, and that’s the wital mischief of this country.

“It’s a very true word, Master Nixon, and by this token that when we went to play in —28, and the masters said they would meet us; what did they do but walk about the ground and speak to the butties. The butties has their ear.”

“We never want no soldiers here if the masters would speak with the men; but the sight of a pitman is pison to a gentleman, and if we go up to speak with ‘em, they always run away.”

“It’s the butties,” said Nixon; “they’re wusser nor tommy.”

“The people will never have their rights,” said the stranger, “until they learn their power. Suppose instead of sticking out and playing, fifty of your families were to live under one roof. You would live better than you live now; you would feed more fully, and he lodged and clothed more