Robert TressellRecensioni

A miserable novel that bangs on about the same miserable theme for hundreds of pages. Little redeeming with this and I DNF in the end (very rare for me). Something Jeremy Corbyn would write circa 1960s.

A political novel based in Edwardian England, describing the lives of several workers for a painting and decorating company. I was expecting the story to have much more humour in it than I found. Nearly every chapter began with some bleak outlook or description of misery and gloom. It made a good comparison to the improvements of the poor today; the predictions that the rich/poor divide would always remain, and questioned whether a socialist structure of government could eradicate the rich/poor divide. I was interested and amused by the conversations on science, in particular how the earth must be flat not spherical (the same arguments are still used today, more than 100 years on!). I liked the detail of methods used in mixing paints, using brushes and ladders, sanding down using pumice stones etc.

This book was completed in 1910 but published posthumously, as the Irish author died of TB at the age of 40 a year later. It’s an unabashedly socialist novel that follows the lives of a group of English working men. They earn poverty wages and live in constant fear of being unemployed. While a lot of conditions described in the book seem as true of the working poor today as a century ago, the one striking difference is that there was no safety net whatsoever. If the men were out of work for too long, they and their families would literally starve to death, and the only alternative was going to the workhouse, which is not really described in this novel but seems to be feared as an equivalent fate to death. The most harrowing part is when one of men believes he should murder his wife and bright young son and then himself to spare them a worse fate, and is mulling over the best way to do it. That was Stephen King-level horror. There are a lot of long speeches about socialism that are meritorious but boring and I ended up skimming through them. It was mostly this one guy Owen making the speeches, but the other men dismissed him as a nut. I think this book deserves its status as a classic.

I wanted to like this book because I'd heard so much about it, but there are only so many times one can read about men being willing to work for less, of two coats of paint being applied when there ought to be three, etc before it becomes repetitive and dreary. With 400 pages of the book read and another 200 stretching before me, I decided enough was enough.½

powerful propaganda, but a failure as literature.

It’s okay.
A bit dull and really belabours the point.

Mary Barton did it much better:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54620

Overlong, under-edited, but very detailed and always interesting. The book works through the travails of workmen at the not very lucrative bottom of the Edwardian dynamic, and does so with the insight of one of their own. In parts dogmatic, in parts adopting the approach of rational inquiry, but always from a committed standpoint; such that when in Chapter 3 a baby shows up unquietly teething, you're already foreseeing the Dickensian scene of maudlin fate that will follow. Tressell’s motive is the “suppressor fury” (his phrase) - exposing the injustices and unfairness of these working arrangements, of the economy as it was, and is. His remedy is Marxist but not in the wearisome formula of a tract; the book is written in the prosaic profane discourse of workmen, and with real common feeling for their ways. Still, in the way of Marxists, he can be patronising in his insistence on received truth and on the delusions (false consciousness) of the men. Likewise, the author curls his lip at their diversions and pleasures - football, their “beano”, taking sides in elections, churchgoing. Overall an engaging read, and it is rather touching now to be reminded how keen the belief was (pre USSR) in the utopia of common endeavours and gains. There’s documentary interest too, as these workmen, housepainters mostly, are working on the very housing stock we now expensively cherish.½

The first part of the book was interesting, I liked learning about the way of life and living conditions van the group of main characters. How they interacted, how work matters were delat with then etc.

When the amount of pages read grew however, I started not liking it very much. It became a very political book, less interesting for me.

This is not an easy book to define, at a deep level.

There is very little drama, very little action that takes place in the book. What you have, is a series of little incidents and observations of the daily life of the English worker, and his masters in the early 1900's. The observations are minute and, it seems that when it was published, many workers identified themselves as the characters in the book - in the sense that they felt that Robert Tressell felt that they were writing about them.

It is also an early treatise on socialism, and the talks on socialism are pioneered by the main character - Owens, as well as another character - Barrington.

The characters of the owners, the 'rulers' and leaders of the town have been painted mercilessly, and what is amazing, is that you can picture these characters in many countries today.

There is a biting sarcasm throughout the book, and it is a social commentary of the times.

It is an extremely good, many-layered book, and is not a book that you should rush through.

I recommend this book to anyone who would like to understand British society 100 years back and draw parallels in many societies today.

I also recommend this book to anyone who likes to read a book that is multi-layered and complex.

“The theories that drunkenness, laziness or inefficiency are the causes of poverty are so many devices invented and fostered by those who are selfishly interested in maintaining the present states of affairs, for the purpose of preventing us from discovering the real causes of our present condition.

Published just over 100 years ago this novel is still a powerful and unfortunately relevant read. Drawn heavily from the author's own experiences the novel centres around a fictional group of 'working' men and their families, fighting for survival against poverty and starvation, and is sometimes referred to as the "painters' bible".

The men work for a painter and decorating firm as short term 'temporary hands'. The nature of their employment makes them and their families vulnerable to exploitation by their employers which this latter group take full advantage of. The men lead harsh lives at the whim of their bosses, with little reward for their labours, and harsh penalties for the slightest of transgressions. The author shows a great attention to detail as he uncovers the daily routine of these men's lives, their happiness, and their misery. The importance and drudgery of this work cannot be understated. These men work out of necessity rather than desire, taking very little pride in their results.

That all said and done this novel is not all gloom and down, there are some light hearted moments and there is some elements of genuine selflessness. You can imagine that the author had great fun thinking up the names of some of it's characters and in particular the company names....'Pushem and Sloggem', 'Bluffem and Doemdown', 'Dodger and Scampit',' Snatchum and Graball', 'Smeeriton and Leavit', 'Makehaste and Sloggitt' with the employers names including 'Rushton, 'Grinder', 'Starvem' and 'Sweatem' to name but a few. Equally the local newspapers are called the 'Daily Obscurer', the 'Chloroform' and the 'Daily Ananais' whilst the local MP is 'Graball D'Encloseland'.

In many respects this is not an easy read. Not because it is dull political treatise, although is plainly evident that the author was a ardent advocate of Socialism, but rather because this is a chillingly human story based on fact, one that reveals the greed and vice at the heart of a capitalist system. A system that advocates the needs of the few over the many and one which inflicts abuse and misery onto its fellow 'brothers' and 'sisters' with its failure to fairly distribute the necessities of human life. No sector of society avoids censorship. Capitalism and its advocates along with the hypocrisy within the Church are rightly slated but so too are the working class men themselves. Despite the misery of their lives they would rather perpetrate the present system's continued existence rather than thinking about changing it, attacking and criticising anyone who suggests that there could be another way. They believe that because they are poor, they and their children shouldn't enjoy the same opportunities as the rich.

Perhaps what really makes this book so uncomfortable to read is that even today, 100+ years after its publication, there are still elements of this era in working class people's lives. The workhouses may have gone but short-term and zero hours contracts still leave workers' and their families lives in a precarious, unstable situation. The relevance of this work, and it's ability to speak to us in the 21st century is a sad indictment of our own time. A must read for anyone with a social conscience.

As ever on reading this book (8th or 9th time) I'm torn between admiring it as a important piece of left-wing writing and the often reactionary views of Tressell himself - after all he "employed" a black manservant (ie slave) called Sixpence, of whom he was said to be "very fond". In 1897, Tresell led a successful protest against the employment of black skilled labour.
I suppose all our idols have feet of clay!

This book is a bitterly savage satire on the social, economic and religious conditions in England during the early years of the twentieth century. In some ways this reminded me of Dos Passos's trilogy [U.S.A.]. Both books make it crystal clear why socialism, Bolshevism/communism, trade unions and anarchy were popular ideas in the years immediately preceding & following the Russian Revolution. However, Dos Passos's books were ultimately more optimistic than this one; despite the terrible conditions of American laborers, there was the feeling that Wobblies and/or the union organizers would eventually make life better. Tressell holds out no such hope - instead, he shows that the most downtrodden citizens are some of the strongest opponents to change.

I did find the names Tressell gave to the employers amusing: Mr. Oyley Sweater (as in one who sweats the work out of his employees); Mr. Grinder; Mrs Starvem; the painting firm of Dauber and Botchit; Snatchum the undertaker; and on the town council Dr. Weakling as the only one interested in helping others! Not to mention the workers' manager Hunter, variously called Nimrod or Misery.

While I believe that conditions for blue collar workers in the United States & England have improved, I found this idea that the workers firmly held to conditions that were ultimately responsible for their misery depressing because it seems so similar to the way lower economic classes in the U.S. responded to Donald Trump.

I also listened to the LibriVox recording; Tadhg's narration was wonderful -- this free public domain audiobook was of better quality than some commercial audiobooks!

Too long and political. Otherwise an interesting look at the lives of the working poor.

I have twice tried to read this book. Once when I was in my late teens and another in my 50s. Both times I have been unable to finish it. The plot is dreary and repetitive. Its analysis is simplistic and bitter. I think it is really only popular because we want it to be. It was written by a working class man who had first-hand experience of the class war and an insight into how they were and what they suffered at the turn of the century. He in turn makesx us suffer pages and pages of boredom.

A book that teaches you to stand for your beliefs, no matter the difficulties.½

[The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist] by Robert Tressell is a unique reading experience, but one that I was thankful to finish. The misery and dejection of the working people is graphically described, but however accurate it may be the repetitive nature of much of it means that it can be a slog to read, However dispiriting this may be, it is the underlying message that most of them deserve to be half starved and destitute, for continuing to support the capitalist system that is most depressing. The Ragged Trousered philanthropists are the working men because in undisguised irony Tressell is saying that they are devoting their lives for the most deserving of charities: the rich.

The books final two sentences imagine a socialist utopia:

“The light that will shine upon the world wide Fatherland and illumine the gilded domes and glittering pinnacles of the beautiful cities of the future, where men shall dwell together in true brotherhood and goodwill and joy. The Golden Light that will be diffused throughout all the happy world from the rays of the risen sun of socialism”

But they deny all that has gone before and are really only the delirious dream of Owen the consumptive, socialist working class hero of the novel.

The novel which doubles as a socialist tract follows the working lives of a band of painters and decorators. They are driven and “sweated” to complete jobs in a cut throat competitive environment. Tressell himself was a sign writer and uses his experiences to give a first hand, blow by blow account of their working conditions; he tells of their struggle to clothe and feed themselves and of their desperately poor home life. The story of their continuous struggle to survive is interlaced with the Socialist teaching that could transform their lives. The original teacher is Owen who whenever he can; lectures his workmates on how a socialist system would be to the benefit of all. The reader follows Owen’s explanation of how the Capitalist money trick works, how it robs the workers of the fruits of their labours. Their are diagrams painted on walls, their are impromptu question and answer sessions, but through it all Owen struggles to make any headway, let alone make any converts. Later it is a socialist battle van visiting the town that provides a platform for the socialists and finally George Barrington (an independent man of means) makes an impassioned plea for Socialist change: in effect delivering a socialist manifesto.

The Socialist message is repeated and enhanced throughout the book, but it continually fails to impress the townspeople of Mugsborough. The working men continue to vociferously support the system which serves to enslave them:

“They often said that such things as leisure, culture, pleasure and the benefits of civilisation were never intended for ‘the likes of us’

They refuse to believe that changing the system would benefit anybody and perhaps after all they are right, because Tressells message that men/women do not deserve socialism and will not be ready for it for another 500 years; comes through loud and clear. Tressells book has been taught in schools and universities and was required reading for any would be socialist member of the British parliament, but those days are gone. After the recent Conservative success in the British Election this year, it would appear that either the working class has disappeared completely from the majority of the South and Midlands, or that they still believe that the knobs (rich and powerful) have a divine right to run the country.

Sir Graball d’Encloseland, Mayor Sweater, Councillors Rushton, Didlum and Grinder, along with Mrs Starvem, and Lady Slumrent ably supported by Rev Bosher run the Town of Mugsborough for all that it is worth and in effect take the book into the realms of a fable (although a very long one). In my opinion there is no doubt that the book could do with some serious editing, but as an example of a Socialist novel with a political message then it is in a class of it’s own. I can’t say I really enjoyed the book, but I liked what it said and so 4 stars.

Every once in a while you come upon a book that makes you wonder "Where has this been all my life?" That was my immediate reaction on reading [The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists].

Ostensibly a story about a group of working men in Edwardian England, it is actually a devastating attack on the society of the time. As we see this crew of painters, wallpaperers, plasterers and decorative workers go about their daily lives for Rushton and Co., the precariousness of their existences and those of their families is revealed. Poor laws, child labour laws, education, pensions, charity, religion and politics are all revealed for the sham they truly are when it comes to the realities of the working class, employed or not.

Frank Owen, the main character, is convinced there is a better way. Owen's name is a nod to Robert Owen, the great reformer from a century before, and like him, Frank believes that socialism will provide the answers, if only his fellow workers will see the light. To this end he spends hours discussing 'The Great Money Trick' with them, demonstrating that no matter how much or how well they work, the capitalist classes will always have the money, control of resources, and property, while the people who create things with it will always want. The men in turn reply that such things "aren't for the likes of us". After all, don't school and church teach that "The poor are always with us"? They have been taught there is a natural order to the world, and they know from experience there is nothing to be gained by upsetting it. The men know on a personal level that to object or protest would lead to immediate termination; that there are hordes of unemployed willing to work for even less than they do the minute a vacancy occurs. Frank himself despaired of the future. Ill with tuberculosis he struggled on, knowing the day would come when he could no longer work.

[The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists] was written in 1911 and published posthumously in 1914. Tressell's town of Mugsborough was actually Hastings, where political corruption was rife. Tressell's name was Robert Noonan, but he took his writing name from one of the tools of his trade, the trestle. Like Frank, he was employed as a painter, giving the speech and settings of the novel an immediacy that would otherwise be difficult to obtain. Tressell's criticisms of his world ring true on every page. He viewed these ragged men as the true philanthropists of the age, for it was they who were creating the enormous wealth of the propertied classes. His writing has echoes of the humour of Dickens, but it also has many of the more sombre tones of Gissing and Hardy.

The original manuscript had 250,000 words, but was almost halved when it was first published. The 1918 edition was edited down again, to about 90,000 words. It wasn't until 1955 that the full manuscript was restored and published in its entirety. Leaving out the last third of the book in its early editions gave a completely different tone to Tressell's work. It left out the crucial "Great Oration" by Owen's friend Barrington, who is finally able to impart Frank's message, in theory if not in practice, to some of their fellow workers. For those interested in the politics of the times, it also left out the political campaigning and backroom manouevering of the Tories and Liberals, and the struggle to fill the void on the left before the full emergence of Labour.

In retrospect we know the "Golden Light" from the "risen sun of Socialism" did not work out as those early adherents had hoped, but as a piece of social history, this novel restores some of that idealism and makes you wish for just a little of that light.

A socialist manifesto masquerading as a novel. It's too long, too repetitive, and very naive in hindsight now we have a few examples of 20th century communist states. Everything is black and white: good socialists, and bad capitalists. And the workers who don't agree with the socialist viewpoint deserve their fate according to the author. There are many strawman arguments put forward so the author can knock them down to show the superiority of socialism.

I was surprised to see no mention of the Labour party. This book was written around 1910, and the labour party would have stood for at least two elections by then and won a handful of seats each time. But you only hear about the tories and the liberals.

It's still an interesting book though, being one of the key texts on the development of British left-wing politics. And some of the concepts and thoughts are quite insightful. But it was a bit of a slog to get through. It's a shame, because with better writing, a tighter story, and less politicising, this could have been the British equivalent of The Grapes of Wrath.½

This is a book I’ve wanted to read for literally decades and it was well worth the wait. That I should have read it at this time seems to be no accident. There is much relevance for society today with all the draconian cuts and culture of austerity we are now facing, further impoverishing the poor and enriching the wealthy. Although a work of fiction, the book is a valuable social document of the realities of Edwardian England for the poorest. Electric lighting was not commonplace (Tressell’s workers light lamps and candles at work and at home in the dark winter evenings), adequate clothing and protection against inclement weather was non-existent leaving the workers open to poor health and life-threatening diseases, there was no NHS, no unemployment benefit or welfare state and no workers’ rights or health and safety protection for workers.
The book begins with a group of workers who are working on the renovation of a house called The Cave under the auspices of their cut-throat employer Rushton’s (although as the book unfolds we find that Mr Rushton and his colleagues are relatively ‘good’ employers compared with others in the town of Mugsborough where the novel is set). Rushton’s underling is the appropriately-named Hunter (and as you read on you will find many an ironic or fun-poking name for his characters) who coerces and spies on his workers in the hope of catching them out doing something they shouldn’t so he can dismiss them and replace them with cheaper labour. And there’s always an army of half-starved ill-clad men hanging about desperate for work and willing to be paid less than the going rate than the ‘old hands’. This inevitably results in a working atmosphere of resentment, fear, suspicion and backstabbing among the men who are overseen by the foreman Crass. Crass is in many ways in an enviable position, though he has to do a lot of cozying up to the bosses. In turn, the workers themselves try to get into his good books to prevent themselves from being considered for dismissal.
Rushton, Hunter and many of the other town’s big employers are also influential in the business and religious affairs of the town.
When self-educated Frank Owen, tries to explain the causes of poverty to his fellow workers, he is mocked and ridiculed by most of them. They are resistant to change and opt for the status quo because they don’t believe in an alternative, in spite of their lot being a miserable one: their families half-starving and dressed in rags and dilapidated boots. However, Owen’s arguments – as well as those of one of his fellow workers, Barrington - are persuasive and the men cannot put together a cohesive argument against those of Owen.
All in all, Tressell portrays a rich portrayal of brutal working life and poverty as it was at the time and many of the tragedies that resulted. But there is also plenty of humour in the interplay of characters who are as alive and relevant today as they were then.

This biting and bitter social satire was declined by publishers in Robert Tressell's lifetime which says much about the prevailing social order that the novel criticises, for it is as uncomfortable for the establishment as it is powerful for the reader. It is now a century since it was written but the book (sometimes called the bible of socialism, sometimes the first working class novel) remains as broadly relevant today as it did in the period just before the First World War. Under the surface of apparent progress surprisingly litte has changed with respect to class distinction and social economic status in the western world: the rich still wax fat on the labours of the poor; politicians still rise to power on empty promises that are swallowed whole by a deluded electorate.

Robert Tressell was the pen-name of Robert Noonan. Fittingly the name was taken from the decorator's 'tressell' for Noonan was himself a decorator and signwriter. The central characters in his novel are a set of impoverished painters and decorators whose work and lives are examined in relation to each other, their struggling families and their grasping employers. The book is overtly political and occasionally doctrinaire - setting the principles of socialism (as a theoretical ideal) against the unjust realities of capitalism - but it also has a strong narrative and characterisation played out in credible if oppressive situations. There is humour too, which serves to season the prevailing mood of near-despair.

Tressell's only work may lack the subtlety of, say, George Orwell, but it greatly influenced Orwell and other political writers when they were finally able to read it. It is a pity that Robert Noonan died without knowing his ambition to be published would eventually be realised and unaware of how seminal his book, written in angry sincerity, would become. Even if he knew this, however, he would doubtless remain disappointed that socialism as he understood it has never genuinely been tried while, after flirting with mixed economies, most western nations have reverted to a capitalist system as virulent as the one he knew. Plus ça change.

A book that has stood the test of time. Almost the bible for left wind politics. One that inspires and at the same time is uplifting as the craftsman and the their masters come into economic conflict.

Took me a long while to get through this. It’s a fairly large book and I found the writing repetitive and a bit tedious in places. However, there’s no denying that this is an important book and a milestone in British literature, illustrating as it does, a pivotal moment in the political ideology of that nation.

If you’ve ever read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair then you can basically describe Ragged as a British vegetarian’s Jungle. Instead of working in meat packing, the destitute in Ragged work in the building and decorating trade. And instead of being oppressed immigrants from Lithuania, they are local inhabitants. Both groups are still trodden on and abused by their industry bosses although in this book, you actually get to know the bosses a lot better than in the Jungle.

What Ragged really lacks though is the style that made scenes and characters in The Jungle come alive and jump off the page at you. Tressell writes somewhat verbosely and I found myself wanting him to just get on with it. The lectures on socialism that characters occasionally delivered reminded me of the awful ability that Ayn Rand has to give characters fourteen page long turns in conversations that are utterly unrealistic. In a similar way although nowhere near as bad as Rand’s, Tressell’s prose is very much the servant of socialism, not the other way round.

You do see into the home and working lives of a group of men in detail and you feel their pain as they face what must have been a horrific reality for most of Britain prior to WW1. In fact, it makes you understand why so many working class men decided that a life being shelled in the trenches offered them more than a working life in the UK.

But socialism has, particularly from propaganda that still pours like vitriol from the Republican camps of the US, had a bad rap over the last 100 years since Tressell wrote this. It has had a positive impact on many countries. I think books like this were particularly influential in the establishment of some great British institutions such as the National Health Service which I thank God for every time I use it in the UK.

But like all ideologies, socialism is flawed. It’s such a shame that writers like Tressell couldn’t see that at the time. It would have saved the world a lot of heartache. That Tressell was ignorant of this is evident throughout the book. Capitalism is totally lambasted and socialism is held up to be, literally, “the Golden Light.” Clearly such phrases as this are laughable today, and can’t be taken seriously.

Still, the book is an important one and should definitely be read as a good example of how the novel can be used as a vehicle of expression that captures the mood of a nation in history.

Rather a polemic, but very readable, mainly for it's social history, but also for the clarity of its explanation of the roots of poverty½

As someone with socialist sympathies this book appealed to my political sensitivity. I felt indignation at the hopeless predicament the proletariat in this novel were entrapped in and their inability to understand how they were being exploited by a self serving greedy elitist system, bar a minority of individuals who constantly throughout the book tried to explain in the most simplistic way, why they were all in "abject poverty" and how to make a fairer society for all, but were constantly mocked by the majority of the workforce. Even if your not a socialist, this book is worth a read. A genuine heart felt story.

Excellent book I lost myself in the mind of the author