The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Robert Tressell
to it as ‘this work which must be done or I will die in the workhouse.’1 He kept the book secret from his workmates because, Ball suggests, of working class prejudice against the arts.
Tressell began The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists sometime in 1906-7. Working a fifty-six and a half hour week meant that he could only write in the evenings and on Sundays, and the constant toil aggravated his already poor health. The novel was completed in 1910. Tressell sent it to publishers but, since the manuscript was only hand-written, it was rejected without being read. Disillusioned, Tressell decided to emigrate to Canada in the hope of making a better life there before sending for Kathleen. Sadly, he fell ill en route and died, in Liverpool, on 2 February, 1911. Kathleen had no money to pay for or even to attend her father’s funeral and he was buried in a pauper’s grave. His last letter to her ended: Je vous aime toujours, Dad.
What Kathleen did have, however, was the manuscript. Some time after her father’s death she moved to London and obtained a post as a nurse governess with a Mr and Mrs Mackinlay. She told a friend of theirs, Jessie Pope, about her father’s manuscript. Pope suggested she show it to the publisher Grant Richards who was sufficiently impressed to publish it buying the sole rights from Kathleen for £25. His only stipulation was that the manuscript, which he felt was repetitious, be cut from 250,000 to 100,000 words. Kathleen said that the repetitions were necessary because ‘my father felt that he had to hammer home his message to get the workers to see it’2 but she eventually agreed to Richards’s terms and the book was published on 23 April, 1914. It has never been out of print since.
Jessie Pope was responsible for the editing of the novel. So as not to offend the moral and political sensibilities of middle class readers she omitted from the original manuscript Chapters 23, 38, 39, 47, 48 and 51 and concluded the novel not with Tressell’s vision of a socialist future, but with Owen’s contemplation of suicide in Chapter 34. This clearly interfered with Tressell’s aims, one of which was to describe the effects of poverty and how it might be eliminated through socialism once it is properly understood.
Class, Revolution and Resistance
The socialism of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists has its roots in the Marxist analysis of society, the main tenet of which states that the economic base of society entirely determines what Marx calls the superstructure, that is its social, political and cultural forms. Owen – who incidentally takes his name and many of his ideas from Robert Owen, a nineteenth century socialist – describes the orthodox Marxist position in Chapter 21 when he observes that there are two main classes in capitalist society: first, those who own the means of production, that is, raw materials, machinery, modes of transport, communication and so on, and second, the workers, who own nothing except their labour power which they have to sell in order to survive. What the workers earn is always less than the value of what they produce. Hence the owners, by selling back to the workers what they produce, continue to increase their wealth while the condition of the workers progressively deteriorates. Eventually, a situation is reached where the owners have become so rich and the workers so poor that, as Owen puts it, ‘these miserable wretches [will] turn upon their oppressors and drown both them and their system in a sea of blood’(p.370).
This analysis was consistent with the principles of the Social Democratic Federation (1884), one of many organisations which sprung from the revival of socialist ideas in the late nineteenth century. Its members were sceptical of trade unions believing that society could only be changed through revolution. Tressell belonged to the Hastings branch of the party for which he wrote manifestos and designed posters. He also painted a banner, known as the Robert Tressell banner, which was borne aloft at the 1936 May Day demonstration in London. It was then sent for safe keeping in Birmingham, but no-one has seen it since.
If The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists reflects the revolutionary politics of the period it is also the case that it endorses the gradualist approach to social problems espoused by the Fabians. The Fabians, whose most prominent members were George Bernard Shaw and Beatrice and Sidney Webb, were socialists in the sense that they wanted to destroy the anarchy of the capitalist market and usher in a classless society. They believed that injustice and inequality could be removed by state intervention and a good example of this in the novel is the proposal to add a ‘halfpenny’ to the rates in order ‘to provide food for all the hungry schoolchildren’ whose fathers are out of work (p.346).
As well as reflecting both revolutionary and reformist socialist politics, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists also negotiates more general socialist concerns. For example, the value Owen places on craftsmanship in contrast to the ‘scamping’ demanded by his employer, Rushton, echoes the ideas of William Morris, cofounder of The Socialist League (1884), who believed that work should express the whole person, unlike the capitalists in the novel who propagate the idea that ‘[t]he men work with their hands and the masters work with their brains’ (p.138). The desire for profit, Morris argued, destroys traditional skills and denies people the right to produce ‘beautiful things’. This is illustrated in the novel by the different approaches Owen and Rushton take to the decoration of the drawing room at the ‘Cave’, the house which the philanthropists are renovating. The former ‘simply wanted to do the work; and he was so fully occupied with thinking and planning how it was to be done that the question of profit was crowded out’ (p.123). The latter only thinks about ‘how much money could be made out of it’ (ibid.). Hence, in keeping with his name, he wants Owen to ‘rush’ the job and do it as cheaply as possible so as to maximise his profits.
Another influence on Tressell was Robert Blatchford who, in 1891, founded the Clarion, a socialist newspaper, which sold up to 90,000 copies a week. He also wrote two highly popular Utopian socialist essays, Merrie England (1895) and Britain for the British (1902), both of which are alluded to in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Frankie, Owen’s son, when he tries to convert the local butcher by getting him to read ‘the two very best [socialist tracts] Happy England and England for the English’ (p.228). Whereas Morris was concerned with work, Blatchford was concerned with leisure. He believed that greater use of machines would mean that people had more free time which could be spent in education, self-improvement and in acquiring knowledge of the cultural heritage of the nation, ideas which form an important part of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Owen, for example, argues that ‘civilisation – the accumulation of knowledge which has come down to us from our forefathers…is by right the common heritage of all’ (pp.29-30) The same point, together with other related issues, is expanded in detail in the chapter entitled ‘The Great Oration’, where Barrington describes the ideal socialist society.
The various socialist theories in the novel have drawn some criticism over the years, in particular in their negative portrayal of women, an attitude which reflects the decidedly anti-feminist drift within some areas of the late nineteenth century socialist movement. For example H. M. Hyndman, founder of the Social Democratic Federation, was utterly dismissive of feminist and sexual politics asserting in 1883 that he was ‘quite content to bear the reproach of chauvinism’.3 Pamela Fox has argued that The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is biased towards maleness by its emphasis on traditional notions of work and production. She also notes how women are excluded not just from the workplace but also from the men’s leisure activities.4 While there is some truth in this argument it overlooks the fact that Tressell shows Ruth as having a far better grasp of economics than her husband, as is shown when he tries to balance their household budget (Chapter 3). Her greater understanding of money and, by implication, the capitalist system, gives her an advantage over the philanthropists who, despite Owen’s patient expositions, remain profoundly ignorant of its workings. Women, that is, have precisely the sort of insight that may precipitate change.
A more serious charge against the socialism of the novel is its denigration of working class culture which is judged wanting against a middle class one of ‘books, theatres, pictures[and] music’ (p.29). Without these accoutrements the philanthropists