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Making of a Bigot

<h2>CHAPTER XIV. UNITY.</h2> THE office of Unity was a room on the top floor of the Denisons’ publishing house. It looked out on Fleet Street, opposite Chancery Lane. Sitting there, Eddy, when not otherwise engaged (he and Arnold were joint editors of Unity) watched the rushing tide far below, the people crowding by. There with the tide went the business men, the lawyers, the newspaper people, who made thought and ensued it, the sellers and the buyers. Each had his and her own interests, his and her own irons in the fire. They wanted none of other people’s; often they resented other people’s. Yet, looked at long enough ahead (one of the editors in his trite way mused) all interests must be the same in the end. No state, surely, could thrive, divided into factions, one faction spoiling another. They must needs have a common aim, find a heterogeneous city of peace. So Unity, gaily flinging down barriers, cheerily bestriding walls, with one foot planted in each neighbouring and antagonistic garden—Unity, so sympathetic with all causes, so ably written, so versatile, must surely succeed. Unity really was rather well written, rather interesting. New magazines so often are. The co-operative contributors, being clever people, and fresh-minded, usually found some new, unstaled aspect of the topics they touched, and gave them life. The paper, except for a few stories and poems and drawings, was frankly political and social in trend; it dealt with current questions, not in the least impartially (which is so dull), but taking alternate and very definite points of view. Some of these articles were by the staff, others by specialists. Not afraid to aim high, they endeavoured to get (in a few cases succeeded, in most failed) articles by prominent supporters and opponents of the views they handled; as, for example, Lord Hugh Cecil and Dr. Clifford on Church Disestablishment; Mr. Harold Cox and Sir William Robertson Nicholl on Referendums, Dr. Cunningham and Mr. Strachey on Tariff Reform; Mr. Roger Fry and Sir William Richmond on Art; Lord Robert Cecil and the Sidney Webbs on the Minimum Wage; the Dean of Welchester and Mr. Hakluyt Egerton on Prayer Book Revision; Mr. Conrad Noel and Mr. Victor Grayson on Socialism as Synonymous with Christianity, an Employer, a Factory Hand, and Miss Constance Smith, on the Inspection of Factories; Mrs. Fawcett and Miss Violet Markham on Women as Political Creatures; Mr. J. M. Robertson and Monsignor R. H. Benson on the Church as an Agent for Good; land-owners, farmers, labourers, and Mr. F. E. Greene, on Land Tenure. (The farmers’ and labourers’ articles were among the failures, and had to be editorially supplied.) A paper’s reach must exceed its grasp, or what are enterprising editors for? But Unity did actually grasp some writers of note, and some of unlettered ardour, and supplied, to fill the gaps in these, contributors of a certain originality and vividness of outlook. On the whole it was a readable production, as productions go. There were several advertisements on the last page; most, of course, were of books published by the Denisons, but there were also a few books published by other people, and, one proud week, “Darn No More,” “Why Drop Ink,” and “Dry Clean Your Dog.” “Dry Clean Your Dog” seemed to the editors particularly promising; dogs, though led, indeed, by some literary people about the book-shops of towns, suggest in the main a wider, more breezy, less bookish class of reader; the advertisement called up a pleasant picture of Unity being perused in the country, perhaps even as far away as Weybridge; lying on hall tables along with the Field and Country Life, while its readers obediently repaired to the kennels with a dry shampoo.... It was an encouraging picture. For, though any new journal can get taken in (for a time) by the bookier cliques of cities, who read and write so much that they do not need to be very careful, in either case, what it is, how few shall force a difficult entrance into our fastidious country homes. The editors of Unity could not, indeed, persuade themselves that they had a large circulation in the country as yet. Arnold said from the first, “We never shall have. That is very certain.” Eddy said, “Why?” He hoped they would have. It was his hope that Unity would circulate all round the English-speaking world. “Because we don’t stand for anything,” said Arnold, and Eddy returned, “We stand for everything. We stand for Truth. We are of Use.” “We stand for a lot of lies, too,” Arnold pointed out, because he thought it was lies to say that Tariff Reform and Referendums and Democracies were good things, and that Everyone should Vote, and that Plays should be Censored, and the Prayer Book Revised, and lots of other things. Eddy, who knew that Arnold knew that he for his part thought these things true, did not trouble to say so again. Arnold added, “Not, of course, that standing for lies is any check on circulation; quite the contrary; but it’s dangerous to mix them up with the truth; you confuse people’s minds. The fact that I do not approve of any existing form of government or constitution of society, and that you approve of all, makes us harmonious collaborators, but hardly gives us, as an editorial body, enough insight into the mind of the average potential reader, who as a rule prefers, quite definitely prefers, one party or one state of things to another; has, in fact, no patience with any other, and does not in the least wish to be told how admirable it is. And if he does—if a country squire, for instance, really does want to hear a eulogy of Free Trade—(there may be a few such squires, possibly, hidden in the home counties; I doubt it, but there may)—well, there is the Spectator ready to his hand. The Spectator, which has the incidental advantage of not disgusting him on the next page with ‘A Word for a Free Drama,’ or ‘Socialism as Synonymous with Christianity.’ If, on the other hand, as might conceivably happen, he desired to hear the praises of Tariff Reform—well, there are the Times and the Morning Post, both organs that he knows and trusts. And if, by any wild chance, in an undisciplined mood, he craved for an attack on the censorship, or other insubordinate sentiments, he might find at any rate a few to go on with in, say, the English Review. Or, if it is Socialism he wants to hear about (and I never yet met the land-owner, did you, who hadn’t Socialism on the brain; it’s a class obsession), there is the New Statesman, so bright, thorough, and reliable. Or, if he wants to learn the point of view and the grievances of his tenant farmers or his agricultural labourers, without asking them, he can read books on ‘The Tyranny of the Countryside,’ or take in the Vineyard. Anyhow, where does Unity come in? I don’t see it, I’m afraid. It would be different if we were merely or mainly literary, but we’re frankly political. To be political without being partisan is savourless, like an egg without salt. It doesn’t go down. Liberals don’t like, while reading a paper, to be hit in the eye by long articles headed ‘Toryism as the only Basis.’ Unionists don’t care to open at a page inscribed ‘The Need for Home Rule.’ Socialists object to being confronted by articles on ‘Liberty as an Ideal.’ No one wants to see exploited and held up for admiration the ideals of others antagonistic to their own. You yourself wouldn’t read an article—not a long article, anyhow—called ‘Party Warfare as the Ideal.’ At least you might, because you’re that kind of lunatic, but few would. That is why we shall not sell well, when people have got over buying us because we’re new.” Eddy merely said, “We’re good. We’re interesting. Look at this drawing of Jane’s; and this thing of Le Moine’s. They by themselves should sell us, as mere art and literature. There are lots of people who’ll let us have any politics we like if we give them things as good as that with them.” But Arnold jeered at the idea of there being enough readers who cared for good work to make a paper pay. “The majority care for bad, unfortunately.” “Well, anyhow,” said Eddy, “the factory articles are making a stir among employers. Here’s a letter that came this morning.” Arnold read it. “He thinks it’s his factory we meant, apparently. Rather annoyed, he sounds. ‘Does not know if we purpose a series on the same subject’—nor if so what’s going to get put into it, I suppose. I imagine he suspects one of his own hands of being the author. It wasn’t, though, was it; it was a jam man. And very temperate in tone it was; most unreasonable of any employer to cavil at it. The remarks were quite general, too; mainly to the effect that all factories were unwholesome, and all days too long; statements that can hardly be disputed even by the proudest employer. I expect he’s more afraid of what’s coming than of what’s come already.” “Anyhow,” said Eddy, “he’s coming. In about ten minutes, too. Shall I see him, or you?” “Oh, you can. What does he want out of us?” “I suppose he wants to know who wrote the article, and if we purpose a series. I shall tell him we do, and that I hope the next number of it will be an article by him on the Grievances of Employers. We need one, and it ought to sweeten him. Anyhow it will show him we’ve no prejudice in the matter. He can say all workers are pampered and all days too short, if he likes. I should think that would be him coming up now.” It was not him, but a sturdy and sweet-faced young man with an article on the Irrelevance of the Churches to the World’s Moral Needs. The editors, always positive, never negative, altered the title to the Case for Secularism. It was to be set next to an article by a Church Socialist on Christianity the Only Remedy. The sweet-faced young man objected to this, but was over-ruled. In the middle of the discussion came the factory owner, and Eddy was left alone to deal with him. After that as many of the contributors as found it convenient met at lunch at the Town’s End Tavern, as they generally did on Fridays, to discuss the next week’s work. This was at the end of January, when Unity had been running for two months. The first two months of a weekly paper may be significant, but are not conclusive. The third month is more so. Mr. Wilfred Denison, who published Unity, found the third month conclusive enough for him. He said so. At the Town’s End on a foggy Friday towards the end of February, Arnold and Eddy announced at lunch that Unity was going to stop. No one was surprised. Most of these people were journalists, and used to these catastrophic births and deaths, so radiant or so sad, and often so abrupt. It is better when they are abrupt. Some die a long and lingering death, with many recuperations, artificial galvanisations, desperate recoveries, and relapses. The end is the same in either case; better that it should come quickly. It was an expected moment in this case, even to the day, for the contract with the contributors had been that the paper should run on its preliminary trial trip for three months, and then consider its position. Arnold, speaking for the publishers, announced the result of the consideration. “It’s no good. We’ve got to stop. We’re not increasing. In fact, we’re dwindling. Now that people’s first interest in a new thing is over, they don’t buy us enough to pay our way.” “The advertisements are waning, certainly,” said someone. “They’re nearly all books and author’s agencies and fountain pens now. That’s a bad sign.” Arnold agreed. “We’re mainly bought now by intellectuals and non-political people. As a political paper, we can’t grow fat on that; there aren’t enough of them.... We’ve discussed whether we should change our aim and become purely literary; but after all, that’s not what we’re out for, and there are too many of such papers already. We’re essentially political and practical, and if we’re to succeed as that, we’ve got to be partisan too, there’s no doubt about it. Numbers of people have told us they don’t understand our line, and want to know precisely what we’re driving at politically. We reply we’re driving at a union of parties, a throwing down of barriers. No one cares for that; they think it silly, and so do I. So, probably, do most of us; perhaps all of us except Oliver. Ned Jackson, for instance, was objecting the other day to my anti-Union article on the Docks strike appearing side by side with his own remarks of an opposite tendency. He, very naturally, would like Unity not merely to sing the praise of the Unions, but to give no space to the other side. I quite understand it; I felt the same myself. I extremely disliked his article; but the principles of the paper compelled us to take it. Why, my own father dislikes his essays on the Monistic Basis to be balanced by Professor Wedgewood’s on Dualism as a Necessity of Thought. A philosophy, according to him, is either good or bad, true or false. So, to most people, are all systems of thought and principles of conduct. Very naturally, therefore, they prefer that the papers they read should eschew evil as well as seeking good. And so, since one can’t (fortunately) read everything, they read those which seem to them to do so. I should myself, if I could find one which seemed to me to do so, only I never have.... Well, I imagine that’s the sort of reason Unity’s failing; it’s too comprehensive.” “It’s too uneven on the literary and artistic side,” suggested a contributor. “You can’t expect working-men, for instance, who may be interested in the more practical side of the paper, to read it if it’s liable to be weighted by Raymond’s verse, or Le Moine’s essays, or Miss Dawn’s drawings. On the other hand, the clever people are occasionally shocked by coming on verse and prose suitable for working men. I expect it’s that; you can’t rely on it; it’s not all of a piece, even on its literary side, like Tit-Bits, for instance. People like to know what to expect.” Cecil Le Moine said wearily in his high sweet voice, “Considering how few things do pay, I can’t imagine why any of you ever imagined Unity would pay. I said from the first ... but no one listened to me; they never do. It’s not Unity’s fault; it’s the fault of all the other papers. There are hundreds too many already; millions too many. They want thinning, like dandelions in a garden, and instead, like dandelions, they spread like a disease. Something ought to be done about it. I hate Acts of Parliament, but this is really a case for one. It is surely Mr. McKenna’s business to see to it; but I suppose he is kept too busy with all these vulgar disturbances. Anyhow, we have done our best now to stem the tide. There will be one paper less. Perhaps some of the others will follow our example. Perhaps the Record will. I met a woman in the train yesterday (between Hammersmith and Turnham Green it was), and I passed her my copy of Unity to read. I thought she would like to read my Dramatic Criticism, so it was folded back at that, but she turned over the pages till she came to something about the Roman Catholic Church, by some Monsignor; then she handed it back to me and said she always took the Record. She obviously supposed Unity to be a Popish organ. I hunted through it for some Dissenting sentiments, and found an article by a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist on Disestablishment, but it was too late; she had got out. But there it is, you see; she always took the Record. They all always take something. There are too many.... Well, anyhow, can’t we all ask each other to dinner one night, to wind ourselves up? A sort of funeral feast. Or ought the editors to ask the rest of us? Perhaps I shouldn’t have spoken.” “You should not,” Eddy said. “We were going to introduce that subject later on.” The company, having arranged the date of the dinner, and of the final business meeting, dispersed and got back to their several jobs. No one minded particularly about Unity’s death, except Eddy. They were so used to that sort of thing, in the world of shifting fortunes in which writers for papers move. But Eddy minded a good deal. For several months he had lived in and for this paper; he had loved it extraordinarily. He had loved it for itself, and for what, to him, it stood for. It had been his contribution to the cause that seemed to him increasingly of enormous importance; increasingly, as the failure of the world at large to appreciate it flung him from failure to failure, wrested opportunities one by one out of his grasp. People wouldn’t realise that they were all one; that, surely, was the root difficulty of this distressed world. They would think that one set of beliefs excluded another; they were blind, they were rigid, they were mad. So they wouldn’t read Unity, surely a good paper; so Unity must perish for lack of being wanted, poor lonely waif. Eddy rebelled against the sinking of the little ship he had launched and loved; it might, it would, had it been given a chance, have done good work. But its chance was over; he must find some other way. To cheer himself up when he left the office at six o’clock, he went eastward, to see some friends he had in Stepney. But it did not cheer him up, for they were miserable, and he could not comfort them. He found a wife alone, waiting for her husband and sons, who were still out at the docks where they worked, though they ought to have been back an hour since. And they were blacklegs, and had refused to come out with the strikers. The wife was white, and red-eyed. “They watch for them,” she whimpered. “They lay and wait for them, and set on them, many to one, and do for them. There was someone ’eard a Union man say he meant to do for my men one day. I begged my man to come out, or anyhow to let the boys, but he wouldn’t, and he says the Union men may go to ’ell for ’im. I know what’ll be the end. There was a man drowned yesterday; they found ’im in the canal, ’is ’ands tied up; ’e wouldn’t come out, and so they did for ’im, the devils. And it’s just seven, and they stop at six.” “They’ve very likely stopped at the public for a bit on the way home,” Eddy suggested gently, but she shook her head. “They’ve not bin stoppin’ anywhere since the strike began. Them as won’t come out get no peace at the public.... The Union’s a cruel thing, that it is, and my man and lads that never do no ’urt to nobody, they’ll lay and wait for ’em till they can do for ’em.... There’s Mrs. Japhet, in Jubilee Street; she’s lost her young man; they knocked ’im down and kicked ’im to death on ’is way ’ome the other day. Of course ’e was a Jew, too, which made ’im more rightly disliked as it were; but it were because ’e wouldn’t come out they did it. And there was Mrs. Jim Turner; they laid for ’er and bashed ’er ’ead in at the corner of Salmon Lane, to spite Turner. And they’re so sly, the police can’t lay ’ands on them, scarcely ever.... And it’s gone seven, and as dark as ’ats.” She opened the door and stood listening and crying. At the end of the squalid street the trams jangled by along Commercial Road, bringing men and women home from work. “They’ll be all right if they come by tram,” said Eddy. “There’s all up Jamaica Street to walk after they get out,” she wailed. Eddy went down the street and met them at the corner, a small man and two big boys, slouching along the dark street, Fred Webb and his sons, Sid and Perce. He had known them well last year at Datcherd’s club; they were uncompromising individualists, and liberty was their watchword. They loathed the Union like poison. Fred Webb said that there had been a bit of a row down at the docks, which had kept them. “There was Ben Tillett speaking, stirring them up all. They began hustling about a bit—but we got clear. The missus wants me to come out, but I’m not having any.” “Come out with that lot!” Sid added, in a rather unsteady voice. “I’d see them all damned first. You wouldn’t say we ought to come out, Mr. Oliver, would you?” Eddy said, “Well, not just now, of course. In a general way, I suppose there’s some sense in it.” “Sense!” growled Webb. “Don’t you go talking to my boys like that, sir, if you please. You’re not going to come out, Sid, so you needn’t think about it. Good night, Mr. Oliver.” Eddy, dismissed, went to see another Docks family he knew, and heard how the strike was being indefinitely dragged out and its success jeopardised by the blacklegs, who thought only for themselves. “I hate a man not to have public spirit. The mean skunks. They’d let all the rest go to the devil just to get their own few shillings regular through the bad times.” “They’ve a right to judge for themselves, I suppose,” said Eddy, and added a question as to the powers of the decent men to prevent intimidation and violence. The man looked at him askance. “Ain’t no ’timidation or violence, as I know of. ‘Course they say so; they’ll say anything. Whenever a man gets damaged in a private quarrel they blame it on the Union chaps now. It’s their opportunity. Pack o’ liars, they are. ‘Course a man may get hurt in a row sometimes; you can’t help rows; but that’s six of one and ’alf a dozen of the other, and it’s usually the blacklegs as begin it. We only picket them, quite peaceful.... Judge for themselves, did you say? No, dang them; that’s just what no man’s a right to do. It’s selfish; that’s what it is.... I’ve no patience with these ’ere individualists.” Discovering that Eddy had, he shut up sullenly and suspiciously, and ceased to regard him as a friend, so Eddy left him. On the whole, it had not been a cheery evening. He told Arnold about it when he got home. “There’s such a frightful lot to be said on both sides,” he added. Arnold said, “There certainly is. A frightful lot. If one goes down to the Docks any day one may hear a good deal of it being said; only that’s nearly all on one side, and the wrong side.... I loathe the Unions and their whole system; it’s revolting, the whole theory of the thing, quite apart from the bullying and coercion.” “I should rather like,” said Eddy, “to go down to the Docks to-morrow and hear the men speaking. Will you come?” “Well, I can’t answer for myself; I may murder someone; but I’ll come if you’ll take the risk of that.” Eddy hadn’t known before that Arnold, the cynical and negligent, felt so strongly about anything. He was rather interested. “You’ve got to have Unions, surely you’d admit that,” he argued. This began a discussion too familiar in outline to be retailed; the reasons for Unions and against them are both exceedingly obvious, and may be imagined as given. It lasted them till late at night. They went down to the Docks next day, about six o’clock in the evening. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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