| <Saturday Review 14 October 1865: Stephen>
| <Working-man Worship>
| A certain kind of idolatry is still prevalent in these islands. 
| The object of worship is a strange figment of the 
| imagination, not formed after any recognised type of 
| humanity, endowed by true believers with many incoherent 
| attributes, and arbitrarily named the Working Man. The 
| high priests of the sect are gentlemen who know how to 
| combine philosophy with sentiment, and to make gentle 
| reproof look for all the world like highflown compliment. 
| The sacred rites are of a remarkably simple character; they 
| consist in placing the idol upon an exalted pedestal, and 
| regaling him with plenty of incense. it need not be very 
| delicate or very appropriate; so long as it is thick enough, 
| sweet enough, and strong enough, the idol is pretty sure to 
| be satisfied. A very little trouble will collect it in abundance 
| from the pages of Radical newspapers, and it should be 
| served up as hot as possible. A grand celebration generally 
| takes place at meetings of the Social Science philosophers. 
| On the last occasion, however, there was a hitch in the 
| proceedings. Certain revelations had just been made, or 
| rather well-known facts had been brought into fresh 
| prominence, not altogether favourable to the idol’s 
| character. it is true that, in the state of exaltation to which 
| the celebrants generally manage to raise themselves, the 
| connection of the Working Man with any really existing 
| mortals is usually overlooked; he becomes a mere myth, a 
| creature of the imagination; he is a figure projected upon a 
| cloud of eloquence from the sanguine anticipations of his 
| admirers, rather than from their actual observation. Still it is 
| impossible altogether t overlook the fact that he is 
| supposed to have had some foundation in reality; that, 
| although he has been sublimated till he is almost free from 
| the stains of common life, there was at bottom some sort of 
| living and breathing material upon which the imaginations 
| of this admirers might operate. It could hardly, therefore, be 
| denied that some of his glory was dimmed by a reflection 
| from the peculiarities of the nearest actual specimens. Now 
| the Sheffield working-men had been the subjects of an 
| interesting and curious paper. They are highly paid and 
| skilful labourers. They produce some of the work for which 
| England has a special reputation, and the producers might 
| be expected to show some of the best characteristics of 
| the average British workman. They are engaged, amongst 
| other things, in manufacturing files. The process is 
| dangerous, because there is a chance of getting lead into 
| the system. The danger may to a certain degree be evaded 
| by the simple plan of washing the hands before eating. if 
| this is neglected, more or less lead dust is infallibly 
| absorbed, and the unfortunate workman dies with all the 
| symptoms of lead-poisoning. Again, in other processes, a 
| similar danger may be guarded against by having a fan 
| fixed to the machinery, which blows away the fatal clouds 
| of dust. Yet it seems that the workmen are so inveterately 
| reckless that they obstinately refuse to take these simple 
| precautions. Young boys are employed who become 
| decrepit before they have grown into manhood, and die of 
| old age before they are five-and-thirty. The average 
| expectation of life amongst other classes, at the age of 
| twenty-one, is thirty-nine years; the expectation of life 
| amongst the fork-grinders is fourteen. They thus, from 
| sheer carelessness, throw away on an average twenty-five 
| years of life. A man who was asked to adopt one of these 
| simple means of safety refused, on the ground that it was 
| not worth taking trouble for such a short time as he had to 
| live. It is even said that the men refuse to secure 
| themselves, from the fear that, if the grade were less fatal, 
| wages would fall. The allied varieties of recklessness are of 
| course common. When the average of life is limited to 
| some thirty-five years, it is not to be expected that any 
| habits of forethought should grow up. The men insist upon 
| keeping certain <p> “saint-days” </p> with religious 
| punctiliousness; and they of course spend them in drinking, 
| and, equally of course, maintain the doctrine, common in 
| similar cases in hot climates, that habitual drunkenness is 
| favourable to long life. Nothing can be more melancholy 
| than these apparently well-established facts. men earning 
| large wages, and living in a town represented as 
| exceptionally healthy in other respects, are subject to a 
| frightful rate of mortality, and live utterly reckless and 
| degraded lives. de Tocqueville once said, when arguing in 
| favour of self-government, that he despaired of teaching 
| men that it was their interest to look after their own 
| business, if they did not see it for themselves. But it seems 
| even more hopeless to teach men, who don’t see it, that it 
| is for their own interest to look after their own lives. A man 
| who will not take the trouble to wash his hands before 
| dinner, in order to prolong his life for twenty-five years, is in 
| a stage past preaching to. At least it seems scarcely 
| possible to establish a stronger case of helplessness, and 
| of the necessity of some sort of government interference.
| The immediate neighbourhood of such a population might, 
| one would have thought, have cast a certain damp upon 
| the spirits of the idolatrous sect we have described. They 
| seem, however, to have met, and set about the 
| performance of their habitual rites with their habitual 
| alacrity. The Working Man of fiction was paraded in all his 
| glory. His growing intelligence, prudence, and morality 
| received their due tribute. Suddenly, however, an 
| unexpected element of discord was introduced. One of the 
| chief performers became recalcitrant; instead of bowing 
| down before the idol, he gave it a very effective slap in the 
| face. Mr. Thomas Hughes has perhaps not always been 
| free from the imputation of using the censer a little too 
| freely. On this occasion, however, he certainly did not 
| offend in that direction. He told his audience some 
| home-truths, very much, as it seems, to their surprise. They came 
| confidingly for their accustomed rations of flattery, and had 
| some stinging rebukes served out instead. Mr. Hughes has, 
| it seems, suffered a considerable annoyance. When he 
| has been defending working-men behind their backs, he 
| has had a very natural retort thrown in his teeth. How about 
| Sheffield? seems to have been an unpleasantly puzzling 
| question. And accordingly, finding himself on the spot, he 
| rather naively referred the question to the Sheffield people. 
| Was it true that a man’s house had been blown up with 
| gunpowder, and that another man’s wife and child had 
| been assaulted, because he did not obey the laws of a 
| Union of which he was not a member? Did not a certain 
| Union make it a rule that a man must not wear a beard and 
| moustache, though beards and moustaches helped to 
| keep out the fatal metallic dust? Did not another Union 
| insist upon their members using a particular rest for the 
| arm, which crippled a man many years sooner than he 
| would naturally be invalided? What amount of truth may be 
| contained in these insinuations does not exactly appear; it 
| is so far credible to his hearers that they were anxious to 
| deny them. If there was, as seems probable, a 
| considerable foundation for the statements, the workmen 
| had at any rate the grace to be ashamed of them. The 
| immediate result, however, of Mr. Hughes’s bold deviation 
| from the routine was inexpressible consternation. The 
| audience were as indignant as an eastern king would be if 
| a courtier suddenly declared that he was a tyrant; or a 
| fashionable audience, if the preacher accused them of 
| being pickpockets. The meeting was reduced to a state of 
| the most admired disorder; the <hi> terrible enfant </hi> 
| had blurted out the very thing that ought to have been most 
| carefully shunned; and the mutual Admiration Society was 
| instantaneously converted into the likeness of a crowd at a 
| hustings listening to the unpopular candidate. The crisis 
| was undoubtedly difficult. But the old remedy was at hand, 
| and had lost none of its potency. A sufficient quantity of oil 
| and butter was poured into the wounds inflicted by these 
| impertinent remarks; they healed as if by magic; the fever 
| subsided, and the working-man relapsed into his normal 
| state of placid self-complacency. We would not be hard 
| upon a rather liberal exhibition of calming doses of flattery 
| under such unwonted perplexity. It would perhaps have 
| required a bold man to continue the application of the lash, 
| when the victim was already so sore; but, if so, it does not 
| say much for the audience that they required to be 
| compensated for a little plain-speaking by an extra 
| allowance of compliment. It would have been as well that 
| Mr. Hughes’s advice should have been allowed to sink into 
| their minds, and that they should have been made to 
| understand that even a working-man is not held by his 
| friends to be exempt from all the weaknesses of humanity.
| The whole performance seems to us to exhibit all the 
| actors in a singularly false position. This is tolerably evident 
| in the case of the thoroughgoing zealots. To call a large 
| audience together, in order to daub them all over with 
| untempered mortar, is not a graceful proceeding, either for 
| the daubed or the daubers. Of the two parties to it, those 
| certainly have the worst who make themselves the most 
| conspicuous. It is rather ludicrous to go to a big hall to hear 
| your own praises elaborately chanted; but, after all, it is an 
| amusement to which few people are so averse as they 
| would profess. Most men have a tolerable appetite for 
| flattery, whether it comes to them as individuals or as 
| members of a class. It is, therefore, better to be in the body 
| of the hall than on the platform, as it is better to receive an 
| ignominious service than to render it. The disgrace must 
| rest chiefly with those who ought to know better. An orator 
| at such a meeting almost infallibly lowers his character. He 
| is under a strong temptation to launch out into sentimental 
| oratory, to slur over obvious truths in order to satisfy the 
| greediness for praise of his audience, and to make his 
| political economy more elastic than a science ought to be. 
| He is in a singularly unhealthy and enervating atmosphere. 
| He is lucky indeed if he escapes the charge of insincerity; 
| when he comes into a colder region, and his flow of 
| nonsense and honey is perceptibly checked, he may have 
| his two phases unpleasantly compared by people with 
| good memories. Gentlemen who give way to their feelings 
| so very readily are apt to find themselves are apt to find 
| themselves committed to more than they can stand to. 
| Glowing eulogies in public meetings are succeeded by 
| lukewarm apologies in the House of Commons. Mr. 
| Hughes, indeed, made a bold attempt to place himself in a 
| better position. He deserves every praise for his candour; 
| but we doubt whether he made the matter intrinsically 
| much better. After all, men cannot be invited to come and 
| be preached at, unless, indeed, they are allowed to take a 
| share in the discussion. The audience only feel that they 
| have been brought together under false pretences when 
| their faults are dilated upon instead of their virtues. These 
| lay sermons are only one degree better when they are 
| denunciations than when they are eulogies, because they 
| are not enfeebled by such a large element of humbug. The 
| radical vice is pretty much the same in both. The Working 
| Man is in either case patronized as a sort of exceptional 
| being; if he is not made into a pet, he is made the text of a 
| spoken tract. He is the plaything of a set of philanthropists 
| who like to spout about him, as the agricultural labourer is 
| the plaything of country gentlemen who give him a pair of 
| new breeches for fifty years’ faithful service. One process 
| is not much more dignified, though it leads to a great deal 
| more talk, than the other. The desirable thing is that his 
| superiors should learn to treat the Working Man not as a 
| text for unctuous eloquence, but simply as a more or less 
| reasonable creature, with nothing very remarkable about 
| him. There is no excuse for surrounding him with a nimbus 
| of sentiment and fine language. He is made to fancy that 
| he is scarcely to be mentioned except in blank verse, and 
| that it is an impertinence to talk to him about political 
| economy. We see at  
| Sheffield one variety of the class as it actually exists. The 
| file-grinder appears to be as ignorant and as helpless as a 
| child; he wants to be looked after by wiser people, that he 
| may not get steel-filings into his lungs, or convert 
| ginger-beer bottles into hand-grenades for the benefit of his 
| non-union neighbours, or insist upon his fellow-unionists cutting 
| off their beards and moustaches, and using rests that 
| cripple them in a few years. There is, as we well know, 
| another variety of this species altogether different, who is 
| beginning to learn the advantages of saving money, and 
| who is inventing and applying new modes of co-operation, 
| and is very probably raising the whole social condition of 
| the class to which he belongs. But we see nothing to take 
| any of them out of the domain of the ordinary laws of 
| human action. No doubt, philanthropists may do good in 
| advising the more intelligent and in coercing the reckless; 
| but we doubt whether these ends will be much served by 
| collecting crowds of either of the varieties, or of any of the 
| intermediate varieties, in a hall, and spouting at them, 
| avowedly for their advantage, and covertly for the 
| glorification of the spouters. There is one characteristic 
| common to most working-men ~~ namely, that, as 
| necessarily half-educated men, they are apt to be taken in 
| by very flimsy oratory, and to allow themselves much too 
| willingly to be converted into pets. They like flattery best, 
| and they are sure to get most of it in the long run; but even 
| if they come in for a little reproof in turn, it is apt to turn out 
| mere flattery disguised in the end. If their volunteer 
| advisers were less numerous, they would surely be the 
| sturdier and the more independent. But so long as the 
| mania for talking at them continues, it will be difficult to 
| introduce the desirable element of a little quiet common 
| sense.