i went "drumming" last night. i like the american word "drummer," it is so much more expressive than our "commercial traveller."
i made a series of postcards, and i went round the shops trying to place them. one man refused to take them up because the profits would not be large enough. as the profits work out at 41? per cent i begin to wonder what he usually makes.
to-day i talked to the bairns about commerce, and i pointed out that much in commerce was thieving.
"this is commerce," i said: "suppose i am a pig-dealer. i hear one day from a friend that pigs will rise in price in a few days. i at once set out on a tour of neighbouring farms, and by nightfall i have bought twenty pigs at the market price. next morning pigs have doubled in price, and these farmers naturally want to shoot me. why don't they shoot me?"
[pg 130]
"they would be hanged," said violet brown.
"because they would buy pigs in the same way if they had the chance," said margaret steel.
i went on to say that buying pigs like that is stealing, and i said that the successful business man is usually the man who is most unscrupulous.
i told them of the murderous system that allows a big firm to place a shop next door to a small merchant and undersell him till his business dies. it is all done under the name of competition, but of course there is no more competition about the affair than there is about the relationship between a wolf and a lamb.
i try very very hard to keep my bairns from low ideals. some one, oscar wilde or shaw, i think, says that love of money is the root of all good. that is the sort of paradox that isn't true, and not even funny. i see farmers growing rich on child labour: fifteen pence a day for spreading manure. i meet the poor little boys of thirteen and fourteen on the road, and the smile has gone from[pg 131] their faces; their bodies are bent and racked.
when i was thirteen i went to the potato-gathering at a farm. even now, when i pass a field where potatoes are being lifted, the peculiar smell of potato earth brings back to me those ten days of misery. i seldom had time to straighten my back. i had but one thought all day: when will that sun get down to the west? my neighbour, jock tamson, always seemed fresh and cheerful, but, unfortunately, i did not discover the cause of his optimism until the last day.
"foo are you feenished so quick, jock?" i asked.
jock winked and nodded his head in the direction of the farmer.
"look!" he said, and he skilfully tramped a big potato into the earth with his right foot; then he surreptitiously happed it over with his left.
i have never forgiven jock for being so tardy in spreading his gospel.
* * *
to-day i received from the clerk the report on my school.
[pg 132]
"discipline," it says, "which is kindly, might be firmer, especially in the senior division, so as to prevent a tendency to talk on the part of the pupils whenever opportunity occurs."
an earlier part runs thus: "the pupils in the senior division are intelligent and bright under oral examination, and make an exceedingly good appearance in the class subjects."
i scratch my head thoughtfully. if the inspector finds the bairns intelligent and bright, why does he want them to be silent in school? i cannot tell; i suspect that talking children annoy him. i fancy that stern disciplinarians are men who hate to be irritated.
"more attention, however, should be paid to neatness of method and penmanship in copybooks and jotters."
i wonder. i freely admit to myself that the jotters are not neat, but i want to know why they should be. i can beat most men at marring a page with hasty figures; on the other hand i can make a page look like copperplate if i want to. i find that my bairns do neat work on an examination paper.
[pg 133]
the truth is that i am incapable of teaching neatness. my desk is a jumble; my sitting-room is generally littered with books and papers. some men are born tidy: some have tidiness thrust upon them. i am of the latter crowd. between the school charwoman and my landlady i live strenuously.
i object to my report. i hate to be the victim of a man i can't reply to, even when he says nice things. but the main objection i have to the report is this: the school board gets not a single word of criticism. if i were not almost proud of my lack of neatness, i might argue that no man could be neat in an ugly school. it is always filthy because the ashed playground is undrained. broken windows stand for months; the plaster of the ceiling came down months ago, and the lathes are still showing. the school board does not worry; its avowed object is to keep down the rates at any price in meanness (some members are big ratepayers). the sanitary arrangements are a disgrace to a long-suffering nation. nothing is done.
* * *
it would be a good plan to make teachers forward reports of inspectors' visits to the[pg 134] scotch education department. i should love to write one.
"mr. silas k. beans, h.m.i.s., paid a visit to this school to-day, and he made quite a passable appearance before the pupils.
"it was perhaps unfortunate that mr. beans laboured under the delusion that mrs. hemans wrote come into the garden, maud, but on the whole the subject was adequately treated.
"the geography lesson showed mr. beans at his best, but it might be advisable for him to consider whether the precise whereabouts of seville possesses the importance in the scheme of things that he attributes to it. and it might be suggested that children of twelve find some difficulty in spelling prsym—prysem—pryems——anyway, the name of the town that has kept the alleged comic weeklies alive during a trying period.
"the school staff would have liked mr. beans to have stayed long enough to discover that a few of the scholars possessed imagination, and it hoped that he will be able to make his visit longer than four hours next time.
[pg 135]
"mr. beans's knowledge of dates is wonderful, and his parsing has all the glory of early victorian furniture."
