The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (Wordsworth Classics)

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The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (Wordsworth Classics)

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (Wordsworth Classics)

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Of course, the real reason for the difficulty is that the raw materials that were created for the use and benefit of all have been stolen by a small number, who refuse to allow them to be used for the purposes for which they were intended. This numerically insignificant minority refuse to allow the majority to work and produce the things they need; and what work they do graciously permit to be done is not done with the object of producing the necessaries of life for those who work, but for the purpose of creating profit for their masters. Robert Phillipe Noonan (17 April 1870 – 3 February 1911), born Robert Croker, and best known by the pen name Robert Tressell, was an Irish writer best known for his novel The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. Before Fred Ball, the only widely known description of Robert Tressell came from the poet Jessie Pope, who had received the manuscript for Ragged from Tressell’s daughter Kathleen and arranged for its first publication with the publisher Grant Richards in 1914. Tressell, Pope wrote, was ‘a socialistic working-man’, ‘a house-painter and sign-writer who recorded his criticism of the present scheme of things until, weary of the struggle, he slipped out of it.’ Given the author's interest in the philosophy of Plato, it is highly likely that "the Cave" is a reference to Plato's " Allegory of the Cave". A major recurring theme in Tressell's book highlights the inability and reluctance of the workers to comprehend, or even consider, an alternative economic system. The author attributes this inability, amongst other things, to the fact that they have never experienced an alternative system, and have been raised as children to unquestioningly accept the status quo, whether or not it is in their interests. In Plato's work, the underlying narrative suggests that in the absence of an alternative, human beings will submit to their present condition and consider it normal, no matter how contrived the circumstances. Owen sets out his view in the first chapter:

And the message ...that society's repeated failure to fairly distribute the necessities of human life, and a pathalogical tendency towards corruption and vain consumption are so prevalent, so manifestly routine, that our doom is all but certain. Our very survival as a species may lie in re-organizing our affairs efficiently for the benefit of all, rather than the priviledge of few. While poignant and beautifully written, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a deeply uncomfortable read that, unlike many tales, doesn’t have a happy ever after. An important and powerful book, it’s clear to see why almost a century after its publication it made its way onto a list of the nation’s best loved books. About The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists One of the characters, Frank Owen, is a socialist who tries to convince his fellow workers that capitalism is the real source of the poverty he sees all around him, but their education has trained them to distrust their own thoughts and to rely on those of their "betters". Much of the book consists of conversations between Owen and the others, or more often of lectures by Owen in the face of their jeering; this was presumably based on Tressell's own experiences. Potts, Alex (1981). "Robert Tressell and the Liverpool Connection". History Workshop Journal. 12 (1): 163–171. doi: 10.1093/hwj/12.1.163. ISSN 1477-4569 . Retrieved 10 February 2022.

The political economy of hunger

The manuscript was then bought by the National Federation of Building Trade Operatives (NFBTO), and presented to the Trades Union Congress the following year. Now,’ continued Owen, ‘I am a capitalist; or, rather, I represent the landlord and capitalist class. That is to say, all these raw materials belong to me. It does not matter for our present argument how I obtained possession of them, or whether I have any real right to them; the only thing that matters now is the admitted fact that all the raw materials which are necessary for the production of the necessaries of life are now the property of the Landlord and Capitalist class. I am that class: all these raw materials belong to me.’ a b Tressell, Robert (1983) [1955]. "Publisher's Foreword". The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. London: Lawrence and Wishart. OCLC 779119068. The burning injustices of class society had, by this time, made Tressell an impassioned evangelist for the socialist cause. One such example, again recorded in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, was the 1905 case of a man who had murdered his children rather than see them starve. In the book, Frank Owen briefly considers this fate for his own family, remarking that it might be a kinder end than the one the system had in store for them. This fear of the workhouse animated both Tressell and his protagonist throughout their respective journeys.

Of course, ‘Tressell’ was not Lenin – who had only 20 émigré intellectual supporters in Switzerland in 1910 - and Noonan died in Liverpool in February 1911. Yet in August, after the revolutionary syndicalist Tom Mann agitated 100,000 workers outside St George's Hall, just down the road from where Noonan died, police charged repeatedly and injured and arrested many. After 3,000 workers tried to free those being taken to Walton Goal, troops shot and killed two of them. A city-wide strike began and the ‘Great Unrest’ was underway. A key part of the TUC Library Collections at London Metropolitan University, the manuscript is consistently popular, recently attracting the attention of, amongst others, the Irish Embassy, historian Paddy O’Sullivan and the University’s Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research, Prof Don MacRaild. It recently featured in a short BBC series about Novels that Shaped Our World. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is based on his own experiences of poverty and his terror that he and his daughter whom he was raising alone, would be consigned to the workhouse if he became ill- which he did, Tressel wrote a detailed and scathing analysis of the relationship between working-class people and their employers. The "philanthropists" of the title are the workers who, in his view, acquiesce in their own exploitation in the interests of their bosses. That's for sure, you will know that just by reading the preface:

He hated and despised them because they calmly saw their children condemned to hard labour and poverty for life, and deliberately refused to make any effort to secure for them better conditions than those they had themselves."

Hastings and St Leonards was a formerly genteel town with no industry, a growing problem of poverty and unemployment. This to Robert was made worse by the election in 1906 of a Conservative MP in what had been a Liberal constituency. The decline in the standard of living for the working class that followed, some have argued, provided the catalyst for Robert to start writing what would become the RTP.My father was a house painter – and this is set amongst a group of house painters. I worked with my father for a couple of years while I was finishing my first degree. I’ve never really had a head for heights, and so that made a lot of the job an exercise in terror for me. But one of the things that painting does, that most of the other jobs I’ve done since don’t do, is it allows you to see a job finished. So much work today is task based and all part of an extreme division of labour, such that nothing one does ever really feels like it was you that did it. Painting isn’t like that. Although, oddly enough, it is here in this book, because of the forced cutting of corners the bosses require. I first came across this while reading the Secret Diary of Adrian Mole - a "sacred text" of mine when I was about 12. Adrian, wanting to be an intellectual, had got hold of the book but - I think - wasn´t sure he wanted to read a book about badly dressed stamp collectors. Now this book itself has become something of a sacred text to a lot of people and - finally getting around to reading it at 44 years young - I can see why. These are the wretches who cause poverty: they not only devour or waste or hoard the things made by the worker, but as soon as their own wants are supplied--they compel the workers to cease working and prevent them producing the things they need. Most of these people!' cried Owen, his usually pale face flushing red and his eyes shining with sudden anger, 'most of these people do not deserve to be called human beings at all! They're devils! They know that whilst they are indulging in pleasures of every kind--all around them men and women and little children are existing in want or dying of hunger.' " Five Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.K. Pound Amount, 1270 to present". MeasuringWorth, 2022. 14 December 2022 . Retrieved 14 December 2022. a b Harker, Dave (2003). Tressell: The Real Story of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. London and New York: Zed Books. p.xvii. ISBN 1-84277-384-4.

THEY WERE THE ENEMY. Those who not only quietly submitted like so many cattle to the existing state of things, but defended it, and opposed and ridiculed any suggestion to alter it." Robert gave the manuscript to Kathleen as a present saying “I can’t leave you money or property, but look after this, it might come in useful some day.” Soon after he left for Liverpool with the intention of finding work before getting a ship to Canada. Kathleen never saw him again. His biographer Fred Ball says it is doubtful he thought he would make it. He was in an advanced state of TB and was admitted to the work-house hospital where he died in February 1911.Little had been known until then about Tressell’s talents as an artist, but Gower’s testimony helped to illuminate this aspect of his life. It was discovered that he had been a master sign-maker — painting one for another building company, Adams & Jarrett, which lasted until the 1960s — as well as a decorator of fine rooms. The famous Cave from the book is likely an amalgam of a number of jobs in the wealthy upper St. Leonard’s locales of The Green and Hollington Park Road. We now also know that Tressell worked on a Moorish room, as Frank Owen did, in the Val Mascal in Gillsmans Hill between 1903 and 1904. Money is the cause of poverty because it is the device by which those who are too lazy to work are enabled to rob the workers of the fruits of their labour.’ Some books seem to batter their way to immortality against all odds, by sheer brute artistic strength, and high up in this curious and honourable company must be counted The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Robert Tressell's unfailing humour mixes with an unfailing rage and the two together make a truly Swiftian impact' This book is about the ugly side of capitalism and the hardships it causes working people, it is a book calling for socialism by pointing out the systemic failures of the capitalist system and how these will only be overcome once private ownership is abolished. There would have been quite a long period after the second world war when people might have smugly felt that that harsh face of capitalism had become a thing of the past and that now the abject poverty facing people as described in this book, where people were required to be able and willing to work all day and all week, and still live in poverty, had become unthinkable. But we have returned to a time when people can work (and even work in multiple jobs) while still not having the basic requirements of life: shelter, food, clothing. Then, raising his voice till it rang through the air and fell upon the ears of the assembled multitude like the clanging of a funeral bell, he continued:



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