Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet: An Autobiography — John Locke — John Shaqi
Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet: An Autobiography
John Locke · en
But, in the face of these facts (and very painful and disappointing
they are to me), I will ask the upper classes: Do you believe that the
average of Trades' Union members are capable of such villanies as that at
Sheffield? Do you believe that the average of them are given to violence
or illegal acts at all, even though they may connive at such acts in their
foolish and hasty fellows, by a false class-honour, not quite unknown,
I should say, in certain learned and gallant professions? Do you fancy
that there are not in these Trades' Unions, tens of thousands of loyal,
respectable, rational, patient men, as worthy of the suffrage as any
average borough voter? If you do so, you really know nothing about the
British workman. At least, you are confounding the workman of 1861 with the
workman of 1831, and fancying that he alone, of all classes, has gained
nothing by the increased education, civilization, and political experience
of thirty busy and prosperous years. You are unjust to the workman; and
more, you are unjust to your own class. For thirty years past, gentlemen
and ladies of all shades of opinion have been labouring for and among the
working classes, as no aristocracy on earth ever laboured before; and do
you suppose that all that labour has been in vain? That it has bred in the
working classes no increased reverence for law, no increased content with
existing institutions, no increased confidence in the classes socially
above them? If so, you must have as poor an opinion of the capabilities of
the upper classes, as you have of those of the lower.