Inspiring Older Readers

posted on 11 Aug 2015

A Capful O’ Nails  by David Christie Murray

Lost and forgotten books are frequently lost or forgotten for very good reasons – usually because they aren’t actually any good. There are times, however, when books are written by authors who have very little capital attached to their names or didn’t move in influential literary circles that are genuinely extraordinary and it’s unaccountable why they have simply slipped down the back of the cultural sofa. One such example is David Christie Murray’s novel of working class life and early trade unionism set in the Black Country, A Capful O’ Nails.

Murray was born in West Bromwich in 1847 and slowly worked his way up the ladder in journalism, eventually becoming a war reporter for The Chicago Times. A Capful O’ Nails was his second novel, published in 1896, nine years before his death in 1907. His novels appear to have drawn no attention from the literary world of the time and his writing life was only ever recognised by a commemorative plaque in the West Bromwich library. The copy of the novel I have is a reprint made possible by the Black Country Society and is not available in any reprint from an established publishing house – which is a cause for real sadness.

The novel takes the form of a recollection by the young, 8 year old, Jack Salter looking back at the struggles of his father and mother – nail-makers in the Black Country. It’s never made entirely clear how old Jack is when he writes this recollection nor do we know what he has become but clearly he is now meant to have something of the status of Murray himself. The novel tells the story of how Jack’s father, also a Jack or sometimes a John, decides it is time to stand up to those who have made nail-making the most desperate, exploited and poverty-stricken occupation of the time. The older Salter is dedicated to self-education and passes on to his son the belief that education is the way to try and lift yourself and your peers out of the desperate conditions they find themselves in. Salter is eloquent and has a strong sense of moral fairness and decency and he is coaxed by the local preacher, Allardyce,  to leave his job and take up the role of a paid ‘agitator’ – what we would now call an early trade union organiser before there were formal trade unions to join.   

This of course brings him into the heart of a political maelstrom in which he becomes the mortal enemy of the dreadful Sim – a, drunken, corpulent,  exploiting employer who cheats on his weights and measures – and is championed by the eccentric Brambler Brothers, rich landowners who see Sim as their mortal enemy. Sim seeks to have John Salter and Preacher Allardyce beaten and potentially killed by hired mercenaries (paid by being relieved of their debts to him) and also tries to destroy Salter by bringing a legal case for libel against him.

Murray shows how Salter’s belief in the need for the nail makers to organise and oppose their exploitation never falters despite all of this opposition but, despite this, he fails to win over the men themselves. And it is this, that makes this novel so unusual and so important. What the author is keen to show is that these men are so beaten and exploited that they actually construct an argument that makes Salter the problem. He may seem to be lobbying on the side of the powerless but those who are powerless simply see him as a further threat to their precarious income. They know they are exploited but they essentially resent those who show them this truth and cannot live with the knowledge of this constantly being thrown in their faces.

In a genuinely shocking climax the men finally turn – not on Sim, their exploiter, but on Salter, their champion. Remarkable, genuinely remarkable. This book must be reprinted and it deserves a modern audience because it has so much to say to readers who have forgotten why trade unions exist and maybe it will help them understand how their exploiters keep them cowed.

 

Terry Potter

August 2015