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Title: Wimbledon and Merton Notes
Author: Frank Kitz
Date: July 9th, 1887
Language: en
Topics: monarchy, United Kingdom
Source: Retrieved on 30th August 2021 from https://www.marxists.org/archive/kitz/jubilee.htm
Notes: Published in Commonweal, July 9th, 1887, p. 221.

Frank Kitz

Wimbledon and Merton Notes

We have survived the Jubilee here. The local toadies got up their

jubilation in secret, for fear that after what took place at the Drill

Hall the dreaded Socialists would mar their plans. The Mitcham

celebrators provided a tough dinner to persons over 68, mostly

toothless; and their Merton congeners expressed their thankfulness to

the Queen for being born by taking an extra dose of preaching and

letting off some squibs. We Socialists enlivened Uie enforced tedium of

the day by inundating the neighbourhood with Socialist leaflets. In this

wise we met a procession of schoolboys on jubilee parade, and before

their teachers were aware of our purpose we had given to every lad a

leaflet “Give them uo,” shouted the irate pedagogue, when he discovered

the nature of the bills, “or I will stop all your medals.” These said

medals being a bit of tin impressed with the puffy features of Victoria.

But the boys refused, and risked their medals. With insinuating manners

and, I grieve to say, false speech on our tongue as to the real nature

of the “goods” we were disposing of — such as “Take a tract, mum,” etc —

we “worked” — to use the expressive but inelegant language of one of our

colporteurs — a quantity of leaflets into hands that would otherwise

have refused them. Their disgust and horror when they discovered their

mistake was laughable, but they nevertheless kept the bills and read

them, and so we were rewarded.

Some curious instances occur in the course of this propagandist work,

and are, I think, worth noting here. When alone on tram or railway

journeys, I take the opportunity of placing the leaflets with which I am

always provided on seats of waiting-rooms and vehicles, or where a

workman’s face is an index of its owner’s receptivity, a leaflet is

bestowed with a casual remark. *Hm,” said a weary-looking young railway

servant to me on giving him a bill, “that’s what we want in this

country, is Socialism.” “So,” I ventured to rejoin, “you are not afraid

of the Socialists?” “Why should I be?” said he; “all my waking hours are

spent in watching and working, and I have to submit to tyranny of

officials and the insults of these sort of passengers,” pointing to a

trainload of city men and some members of the “demi monde” intermixed.

“Do you think them a useful class?” said I. “I don’t know,” he answered;

“any road, they take it easy — ten till four — and some don’t look as if

they troubled much.” “It is possible,” said I, “that they in their

shareholding and stockjobbing way are living upon and causing the

overwork of you railway men, and under Socialism you would be men,

instead of a source solely of profit to those who despise you.” “Hear,”

he said, “and the sooner they are swept away the better.” I may

supplement the railwayservant’s observation by saying that the manners

of these hucksters and quill-drivers towards working men in the trains

is insufferably contemptuous. It is an interesting sight, and one that

is a strange commentary upon the statement that there is no class

antagonism except what is stirred up by the Socialist, to see these

popinjays and their bedizened upstart women shrink from possible contact

or speech with the tired workmen who may chance into the same carriages

when they are on the way to and fro their city “operations” and their

paltry villas. Snobbery is contageous, and every wretched overworked

clerk or shopman imitates it, instead of fraternising with their

fellow-workers, the artisan and labourer.

Before entering my train I gave a Jubilee bill to a burly engineer.

After reading a few lines only, he said: “Whoever wrote that ought to be

locked np.” Being the writer a guilty feeling overcame me. I took stock

of him. “Here is an amiable specimen,” thought I; “whoever writes what

this man disagrees with must be imprisoned. What a fossil!” He probably

ekes out his wages with the miserable profits of a chandlers’ shop, and

because he is satisfied in the sense that donkeys are when oats abound,

no one else must protest. It is these curmudgeons who comprise what it

pleases the scribes of the press to style the bulwark of divinely

ordered society. England might wash her hands in the blood of all

nations, and tramps and paupers increase, but he has got work, continued

work, and with work he is satisfied. “Briton’s never shall be slaves.”

Leaving this “survival by fitness” I entered the train, into which I had

already thrown my leaflets. Presently a number of workmen entered and

the train started. The leaflets caught their eye and they speedily read

them. Said an elderly man: “It’s all very fine for them ‘ere Socialists

to talk, and what they say is right, but it will never come about. It

always was so, rich and poor. We must have a head, and if we was to

share out to-morrow we should all be back again next week worse off than

before; them ‘ere lazy chaps as won’t work would collar the lot.” I

looked fixedly out of the window while a fierce controversy raged

betwixt the speaker and the younger men, who, by the way, although they

showed the glaring illogic of what is called common sense, in their

converse yet were sympathetic to the new idea. I now mildly joined in,

saying that I knew something about those Socialists, and had even been

in the company of one that very day, who had been my personal

acquaintance since he was a child. I asked the first speaker if he had

ever heard or read of a Socialist who advocated the sharing out

principle, and if he further didn’t think that the idle and dissolute

had already “collared the lot.” Perhaps I diffidently suggested the

Socialist might want the mines whence comes the fuel that warms, and the

fields where grows the produce that feeds mankind, so as to be the

property of the miners and peasants who worked them, instead of the

property of the Lonsdales and Fitzwilliams, who neither delve nor dig,

but live upon the sweat of other’s bodies. If rich and poor, moreover,

were as he alleged always to be, did he think it right that the rich

should be those who didn’t work or produce, and the poor the producers

of the riches. The way of the world, I humbly remarked, was a little

changed, for the vehicle we were riding in proved it, and would it not

be better for the mass of the people to be educated physically and

mentally into self-governing men and women than to cling to the selfish

slavish idea that there must always be a head, and that head perchance

belonging to a rogue or idiot made, in short, of the same material that

British hearts are alleged to be made of, viz., tough timber? I asked

him, in conclusion, whether he was assured of ending his days free from

want, and he sorrowfully shook his head, but he added, “You’ll never

alter it” The younger men combated this notion, and I made an earnest

appeal to them to work in the cause of labour emancipation, and as they

left the train they cordially wished me “Good-speed!” and promised me

help, and so ended another effort in the favour of the Cause.

In a public-house, where the same cause led to a heated debate, one

vituperative antagonist said triumphantly, “Is not the landlord worthy

his hire?” but when I asked what reward the landlord of rack-rented

fever dens was justly entitled to, deponent said nothing.