Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet: An Autobiography — John Locke — John Shaqi
Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet: An Autobiography
John Locke · en
Let them help and foster the growth of association by all means. Let them
advise the honourable tailors, while it is time, to save themselves from
being degraded into slopsellers by admitting their journeymen to a share in
profits. Let them encourage the journeymen to compete with Nebuchadnezzar &
Co. at their own game. Let them tell those journeymen that the experiment
is even now being tried, and, in many instances successfully, by no less
than one hundred and four associations of journeymen in Paris. Let them
remind them of that Great Name which the Parisian "ouvrier" so often
forgets--of Him whose everlasting Fatherhood is the sole ground of all
human brotherhood, whose wise and loving will is the sole source of all
perfect order and government. Let them, as soon as an association is
formed, provide for them a properly ventilated workshop, and let it out
to the associate tailors at a low, fair rent. I believe that they will
not lose by it--because it is right. God will take care of their money.
The world, it comes out now, is so well ordered by Him, that model
lodging-houses, public baths, wash-houses, insurance offices, all pay a
reasonable profit to those who invest money in them--perhaps associate
workshops may do the same. At all events, the owners of these show-shops
realize a far higher profit than need be, while the buildings required for
a tailoring establishment are surely not more costly than those absurd
plate-glass fronts, and brass scroll-work chandeliers, and puffs, and paid
poets. A large house might thus be taken, in some central situation, the
upper floors of which might be fitted up as model lodging-rooms for the
tailor's trade alone. The drawing-room floor might be the work-room; on the
ground floor the shop; and, if possible, a room of call or registration
office for unemployed journeymen, and a reading-room. Why should not this
succeed, if the owners of the house and the workers who rent it are only
true to one another? Every tyro in political economy knows that association
involves a saving both of labour and of capital. Why should it not succeed,
when every one connected with the establishment, landlords and workmen,
will have an interest in increasing its prosperity, and none whatever in
lowering the wages of any party employed?
But above all, so soon as these men are found working together for common
profit, in the spirit of mutual self-sacrifice, let every gentleman and
every Christian, who has ever dealt with, or could ever have dealt with,
Nebuchadnezzar and Co., or their fellows, make it a point of honour and
conscience to deal with the associated workmen, and get others to do the
like. _It is by securing custom, far more than by gifts or loans of money,
that we can help the operatives._ We should but hang a useless burthen of
debt round their necks by advancing capital, without affording them the
means of disposing of their produce.