BOOK II

_The Chasm_

The contrast between riches and poverty; the protest of common sense against a condition of society where one-tenth of the people own nine-tenths of the wealth.

Wat Tyler

BY ROBERT SOUTHEY

(One of the so-called "Lake School" of English poets, which included Wordsworth and Coleridge; 1774-1843. Poet-Laureate for thirty years. The refrain of this song was the motto of Wat Tyler's rebels, who marched upon London in 1381)

"When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?"

Wretched is the infant's lot, Born within the straw-roof'd cot; Be he generous, wise, or brave, He must only be a slave. Long, long labor, little rest, Still to toil, to be oppress'd; Drain'd by taxes of his store, Punish'd next for being poor: This is the poor wretch's lot, Born within the straw-roof'd cot.

While the peasant works,--to sleep, What the peasant sows,--to reap, On the couch of ease to lie, Rioting in revelry; Be he villain, be he fool, Still to hold despotic rule, Trampling on his slaves with scorn! This is to be nobly born.

"When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?"

The Poor-Slave Household

(_From "Sartor Resartus"_)

BY THOMAS CARLYLE

(See page 31)

"The furniture of this Caravanserai consisted of a large iron Pot, two oaken Tables, two Benches, two Chairs, and a Potheen Noggin. There was a Loft above (attainable by a ladder), upon which the inmates slept; and the space below was divided by a hurdle into two apartments; the one for their cow and pig, the other for themselves and guests. On entering the house we discovered the family, eleven in number, at dinner; the father sitting at the top, the mother at the bottom, the children on each side, of a large oaken Board, which was scooped out in the middle, like a trough, to receive the contents of their Pot of Potatoes. Little holes were cut at equal distances to contain Salt; and a bowl of Milk stood on the table; all the luxuries of meat and beer, bread, knives and dishes, were dispensed with." The Poor-Slave himself our Traveller found, as he says, broad-backed, black-browed, of great personal strength, and mouth from ear to ear. His Wife was a sun-browned but well-featured woman; and his young ones, bare and chubby, had the appetite of ravens. Of their Philosophical or Religious tenets or observances, no notice or hint.

But now, secondly, of the _Dandiacal Household_:

"A Dressing-room splendidly furnished; violet-colored curtains, chairs and ottomans of the same hue. Two full-length Mirrors are placed, one on each side of a table, which supports the luxuries of the Toilet. Several Bottles of Perfume, arranged in a peculiar fashion, stand upon a smaller table of mother-of-pearl; opposite to these are placed the appurtenances of Lavation richly wrought in frosted silver. A Wardrobe of Buhl is on the left; the doors of which, being partly open, discover a profusion of Clothes; Shoes of a singularly small size monopolize the lower shelves. Fronting the wardrobe a door ajar gives some slight glimpse of the Bathroom. Folding-doors in the background.--"Enter the Author," our Theogonist in person, "obsequiously preceded by a French Valet, in white silk Jacket and cambric Apron."

* * * * *

Such are the two sects which, at this moment, divide the more unsettled portion of the British People; and agitate that ever-vexed country. To the eye of the political Seer, their mutual relation, pregnant with the elements of discord and hostility, is far from consoling. These two principles of Dandiacal Self-worship or Demon-worship, and Poor-Slavish or Drudgical Earth-worship, or whatever that same Drudgism may be, do as yet indeed manifest themselves under distant and nowise considerable shapes: nevertheless, in their roots and subterranean ramifications, they extend through the entire structure of Society, and work unweariedly in the secret depths of English national Existence; striving to separate and isolate it into two contradictory, uncommunicating masses.

In numbers, and even individual strength, the Poor-Slaves or Drudges, it would seem, are hourly increasing. The Dandiacal, again, is by nature no proselytizing Sect; but it boasts of great hereditary resources, and is strong by union; whereas the Drudges, split into parties, have as yet no rallying-point; or at best only co-operate by means of partial secret affiliations. If, indeed, there were to arise a _Communion of Drudges_, as there is already a Communion of Saints, what strangest effects would follow therefrom! Dandyism as yet affects to look down on Drudgism; but perhaps the hour of trial, when it will be practically seen which ought to look down, and which up, is not so distant.

To me it seems probable that the two Sects will one day part England between them; each recruiting itself from the intermediate ranks, till there be none left to enlist on either side. These Dandiacal Manicheans, with the host of Dandyizing Christians, will form one body; the Drudges, gathering round them whosoever is Drudgical, be he Christian or Infidel Pagan; sweeping-up likewise all manner of Utilitarians, Radicals, refractory Potwallopers, and so forth, into their general mass, will form another. I could liken Dandyism and Drudgism to two bottomless boiling Whirlpools that had broken-out on opposite quarters of the firm land; as yet they appear only disquieted, foolishly bubbling wells, which man's art might cover-in; yet mark them, their diameter is daily widening; they are hollow Cones that boil-up from the infinite Deep, over which your firm land is but a thin crust or rind! Thus daily is the intermediate land crumbling-in, daily the empire of the two Buchan-Bullers extending; till now there is but a foot-plank, a mere film of Land between them; this too is washed away; and then--we have the true Hell of Waters, and Noah's Deluge is outdeluged!

Or better, I might call them two boundless, and indeed unexampled Electric Machines (turned by the "Machinery of Society"), with batteries of opposite quality; Drudgism the Negative, Dandyism the Positive; one attracts hourly towards it and appropriates all the Positive Electricity of the nation (namely, the Money thereof); the other is equally busy with the Negative (that is to say the Hunger) which is equally potent. Hitherto you see only partial transient sparkles and sputters; but wait a little, till the entire nation is in an electric state; till your whole vital Electricity, no longer healthfully Neutral, is cut into two isolated portions of Positive and Negative (of Money and of Hunger); and stands there bottled-up in two World-Batteries! The stirring of a child's finger brings the two together; and then--What then? The Earth is but shivered into impalpable smoke by that Doom's-thunderpeal; the Sun misses one of his Planets in Space, and thenceforth there are no eclipses of the Moon.

BY CHARLES MAURICE DE TALLEYRAND

(French bishop and statesman, 1754-1838)

Society is divided into two classes; the shearers and the shorn. We should always be with the former against the latter.

The Lotus Eaters

BY ALFRED TENNYSON

(Probably the most popular of English lyrical poets; 1809-1892. Made Poet-laureate in 1850, and a baron in 1884)

Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind. For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world: Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, Clanging fights and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands. But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong, Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong; Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil, Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil; Till they perish and they suffer--some, 'tis whisper'd--down in hell.

Yeast

BY CHARLES KINGSLEY

(English clergyman and novelist, 1819-1875; founder of the Christian Socialist movement. In the scene here quoted, a young University man is taken by a game-keeper to see the degradation of English village life)

"Can't they read? Can't they practice light and interesting handicrafts at home, as the German peasantry do?"

"Who'll teach 'em, sir? From the plough-tail to the reaping-hook, and back again, is all they know. Besides, sir, they are not like us Cornish; they are a stupid pig-headed generation at the best, these south countrymen. They're grown-up babies who want the parson and the squire to be leading them, and preaching to them, and spurring them on, and coaxing them up, every moment. And as for scholarship, sir, a boy leaves school at nine or ten to follow the horses; and between that time and his wedding-day he forgets every word he ever learnt, and becomes, for the most part, as thorough a heathen savage at heart as those wild Indians in the Brazils used to be."

"And then we call them civilized Englishmen!" said Lancelot. "We can see that your Indian is a savage, because he wears skins and feathers; but your Irish cotter or your English laborer, because he happens to wear a coat and trousers, is to be considered a civilized man."

"It's the way of the world, sir," said Tregarva, "judging carnal judgment, according to the sight of its own eyes; always looking at the outsides of things and men, sir, and never much deeper. But as for reading, sir, it's all very well for me, who have been a keeper and dawdled about like a gentleman with a gun over my arm; but did you ever do a good day's farm-work in your life? If you had, man or boy, you wouldn't have been game for much reading when you got home; you'd do just what these poor fellows do--tumble into bed at eight o'clock, hardly waiting to take your clothes off, knowing that you must turn up again at five o'clock the next morning to get a breakfast of bread, and, perhaps, a dab of the squire's dripping, and then back to work again; and so on, day after day, sir, week after week, year after year, without a hope or chance of being anything but what you are, and only too thankful if you can get work to break your back, and catch the rheumatism over."

"But do you mean to say that their labor is so severe and incessant?"

"It's only God's blessing if it is incessant, sir, for if it stops, they starve, or go to the house to be worse fed than the thieves in gaol. And as for its being severe, there's many a boy, as their mothers will tell you, comes home night after night, too tired to eat their suppers, and tumble, fasting, to bed in the same foul shirt which they've been working in all the day, never changing their rag of calico from week's end to week's end, or washing the skin that's under it once in seven years."

"No wonder," said Lancelot, "that such a life of drudgery makes them brutal and reckless."

"No wonder, indeed, sir: they've no time to think; they're born to be machines, and machines they must be; and I think, sir," he added bitterly, "it's God's mercy that they daren't think. It's God's mercy that they don't feel. Men that write books and talk at elections call this a free country, and say that the poorest and meanest has a free opening to rise and become prime minister, if he can. But you see, sir, the misfortune is, that in practice he can't; for one who gets into a gentleman's family, or into a little shop, and so saves a few pounds, fifty know that they've no chance before them, but day-laborer born, day-laborer live, from hand to mouth, scraping and pinching to get not meat and beer even, but bread and potatoes; and then, at the end of it all, for a worthy reward, half-a-crown-a-week of parish pay--or the work-house. That's a lively hopeful prospect for a Christian man!" ...

Into the booth they turned; and as soon as Lancelot's eyes were accustomed to the reeking atmosphere, he saw seated at two long temporary tables of board, fifty or sixty of "My brethren," as clergymen call them in their sermons, wrangling, stupid, beery, with sodden eyes and drooping lips--interspersed with more girls and brazen-faced women, with dirty flowers in their caps, whose sole business seemed to be to cast jealous looks at each other, and defend themselves from the coarse overtures of their swains.

Lancelot had been already perfectly astonished at the foulness of language which prevailed; and the utter absence of anything like chivalrous respect, almost of common decency, towards women. But lo! the language of the elder women was quite as disgusting as that of the men, if not worse. He whispered a remark on the point to Tregarva, who shook his head.

"It's the field-work, sir--the field-work, that does it all. They get accustomed there from their childhood to hear words whose very meanings they shouldn't know; and the elder teach the younger ones, and the married ones are worst of all. It wears them out in body, sir, that field-work, and makes them brutes in soul and in manners...."

Sadder and sadder, Lancelot tried to listen to the conversation of the men round him. To his astonishment he hardly understood a word of it. It was half articulate, nasal, guttural, made up almost entirely of vowels, like the speech of savages. He had never before been struck with the significant contrast between the sharp, clearly defined articulation, the vivid and varied tones of the gentleman, or even of the London street-boy, when compared with the coarse, half-formed growls, as of a company of seals, which he heard round him. That single fact struck him, perhaps, more deeply than any; it connected itself with many of his physiological fancies; it was the parent of many thoughts and plans of his after-life. Here and there he could distinguish a half sentence. An old shrunken man opposite him was drawing figures in the spilt beer with his pipe-stem, and discoursing of the glorious times before the great war, "when there was more food than there were mouths, and more work than there were hands." "Poor human nature!" thought Lancelot, as he tried to follow one of those unintelligible discussions about the relative prices of the loaf and the bushel of flour, which ended, as usual, in more swearing, and more quarrelling, and more beer to make it up--"Poor human nature! always looking back, as the German sage says, to some fancied golden age, never looking forward to the real one which is coming!"

"But I say, vather," drawled out some one, "they say there's a sight more money in England now, than there was afore the war-time."

"Eees, booy," said the old man; "_but it's got into too few hands_."

"Well," thought Lancelot, "there's a glimpse of practical sense, at least." And a pedler who sat next him, a bold, black-whiskered bully from the Potteries, hazarded a joke--

"It's all along of this new sky-and-tough-it farming. They used to spread the money broad cast, but now they drills it all in one place, like bone-dust under their fancy plants, and we poor self-sown chaps gets none."

This garland of fancies was received with great applause; whereat the pedler, emboldened, proceeded to observe, mysteriously, that "donkeys took a beating, but horses kicked at it; and that they'd found out that in Staffordshire long ago. You want a good Chartist lecturer down here, my covies, to show you donkeys of laboring men that you have got iron on your heels, if you only knowed how to use it...."

Blackbird was by this time prevailed on to sing, and burst out as melodious as ever, while all heads were cocked on one side in delighted attention.

"I zeed a vire o' Monday night, A vire both great and high; But I wool not tell you where, my boys, Nor wool not tell you why. The varmer he comes screeching out, To zave 'uns new brood mare; Zays I, 'You and your stock may roast, Vor aught us poor chaps care.'

"Coorus, boys, coorus!"

And the chorus burst out--

"Then here's a curse on varmers all As rob and grind the poor; To re'p the fruit of all their works In ---- for evermoor-r-r-r.

"A blind owld dame come to the vire, Zo near as she could get; Zays, 'Here's a luck I warn't asleep, To lose this blessed hett. They robs us of our turfing rights Our bits of chips and sticks, Till poor folks now can't warm their hands, Except by varmers' ricks.'

"Then, etc."

And again the boy's delicate voice rang out the ferocious chorus, with something, Lancelot fancied, of fiendish exultation, and every worn face lighted up with a coarse laugh, that indicated no malice--but also no mercy....

Lancelot almost ran out into the night--into a triad of fights, two drunken men, two jealous wives, and a brute who struck a poor, thin, worn-out woman, for trying to coax him home. Lancelot rushed up to interfere, but a man seized his uplifted arm.

"He'll only beat her all the more when he getteth home."

"She has stood that every Saturday night for the last seven years, to my knowledge," said Tregarva; "and worse, too, at times."

"Good God! is there no escape for her from her tyrant?"

"No, sir. It's only you gentlefolks who can afford such luxuries; your poor man may be tied to a harlot, or your poor woman to a ruffian, but once done, done for ever."

"Well," thought Lancelot, "we English have a characteristic way of proving the holiness of the marriage tie. The angel of Justice and Pity cannot sever it, only the stronger demon of Money."

Alton Locke

BY CHARLES KINGSLEY

(See page 78)

"What!" shriek the insulted respectabilities, "have we not paid him his wages weekly, and has he not lived upon them?" Yes; and have you not given your sheep and horses their daily wages, and have they not lived on them? You wanted to work them; and they could not work, you knew, unless they were alive. But here lies your iniquity; you have given the laborer nothing but his daily food--not even his lodgings; the pigs were not stinted of their wash to pay for their sty-room, the man was; and his wages, thanks to your competitive system, were beaten down deliberately and conscientiously (for was it not according to political economy, and the laws thereof?) to the minimum on which he could or would work, without the hope or the possibility of saving a farthing. You know how to invest your capital profitably, dear Society, and to save money over and above your income of daily comforts; but what has he saved?--what is he profited by all those years of labor? He has kept body and soul together--perhaps he could have done that without you or your help. But his wages are used up every Saturday night. When he stops working, you have in your pocket the whole profits of his nearly fifty years' labor, and he has nothing. And then you say that you have not eaten him!

Looking Backward

BY EDWARD BELLAMY

(One of the classics of the Socialist movement, this book sold over four hundred thousand copies in the first years of its publication. Its author was an American school-teacher, 1850-1898)

By way of attempting to give the reader some general impression of the way people lived together in those days, and especially of the relations of the rich and poor to one another, perhaps I cannot do better than compare society as it then was to a prodigious coach which the masses of humanity were harnessed to and dragged toilsomely along a very hilly and sandy road. The driver was hunger, and permitted no lagging, though the pace was necessarily very slow. Despite the difficulty of drawing the coach at all along so hard a road, the top was covered with passengers who never got down, even at the steepest ascents. The seats on top were very breezy and comfortable. Well up out of the dust their occupants could enjoy the scenery at their leisure, or critically discuss the merits of the straining team. Naturally such places were in great demand and the competition for them was keen, every one seeking as the first end in life to secure a seat on the coach for himself and to leave it to his child after him. By the rule of the coach a man could leave his seat to whom he wished, but on the other hand there were many accidents by which it might at any time be wholly lost. For all that they were so easy, the seats were very insecure, and at every sudden jolt of the coach persons were slipping out of them and falling to the ground, where they were instantly compelled to take hold of the rope and help to drag the coach on which they had before ridden so pleasantly. It was naturally regarded as a terrible misfortune to lose one's seat, and the apprehension that this might happen to them or their friends was a constant cloud upon the happiness of those who rode.

But did they think only of themselves? you ask. Was not their very luxury rendered intolerable to them by comparison with the lot of their brothers and sisters in the harness, and the knowledge that their own weight added to their toil! Had they no compassion for fellow beings from whom fortune only distinguished them? Oh, yes; commiseration was frequently expressed by those who rode for those who had to pull the coach, especially when the vehicle came to a bad place in the road, as it was constantly doing, or to a particularly steep hill. At such times, the desperate straining of the team, their agonized leaping and plunging under the pitiless lashing of hunger, the many who fainted at the rope and were trampled in the mire, made a very distressing spectacle, which often called forth highly creditable displays of feeling on the top of the coach. At such times the passengers would call down encouragingly to the toilers of the rope, exhorting them to patience, and holding out hopes of possible compensation in another world for the hardness of their lot, while others contributed to buy salves and liniments for the crippled and injured. It was agreed that it was a great pity that the coach should be so hard to pull, and there was a sense of general relief when the specially bad piece of road was gotten over. This relief was not, indeed, wholly on account of the team, for there was always some danger at these bad places of a general overturn in which all would lose their seats.

It must in truth be admitted that the main effect of the spectacle of the misery of the toilers at the rope was to enhance the passengers' sense of the value of their seats upon the coach, and to cause them to hold on to them more desperately than before. If the passengers could only have felt assured that neither they nor their friends would ever fall from the top, it is probable that, beyond contributing to the funds for liniments and bandages, they would have troubled themselves extremely little about those who dragged the coach.

Rich and Poor

BY LEO TOLSTOY

(Russian novelist and reformer, 1828-1910)

The present position which we, the educated and well-to-do classes, occupy, is that of the Old Man of the Sea, riding on the poor man's back; only, unlike the Old Man of the Sea, we are very sorry for the poor man, very sorry; and we will do almost anything for the poor man's relief. We will not only supply him with food sufficient to keep him on his legs, but we will teach and instruct him and point out to him the beauties of the landscape; we will discourse sweet music to him and give him abundance of good advice.

Yes, we will do almost anything for the poor man, anything but get off his back.

A Tale of Two Cities

BY CHARLES DICKENS

(Celebrated English novelist, 1812-1870. The novel here quoted deals with the French Revolution, and the scene narrates how one of Monseigneur's guests drives away from the palace)

Not many people had talked with him at the reception; he had stood in a little space apart, and Monseigneur might have been warmer in his manner. It appeared under the circumstances, rather agreeable to him to see the common people dispersed before his horses, and often barely escaping from being run down. His man drove as if he were charging an enemy, and the furious recklessness of the man brought no check into the face, or to the lips, of the master. The complaint had sometimes made itself audible, even in that deaf city and dumb age, that, in the narrow streets without footways, the fierce patrician custom of hard driving endangered and maimed the mere vulgar in a barbarous manner. But few cared enough for that to think of it a second time, and, in this matter, as in all others, the common wretches were left to get out of their difficulties as they could.

With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment of consideration not easy to be understood in these days, the carriage dashed through streets and swept round corners, with women screaming before it, and men clutching each other and clutching children out of its way. At last, swooping at a street corner by a fountain, one of its wheels came to a sickening little jolt, and there was a loud cry from a number of voices, and the horses reared and plunged.

But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would not have stopped; carriages were often known to drive on, and leave their wounded behind, and why not? But the frightened valet had got down in a hurry, and there were twenty hands at the horses' bridles.

"What has gone wrong?" said Monsieur, calmly looking out.

A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it like a wild animal.

"Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis!" said a ragged and submissive man, "it is a child."

"Why does he make that abominable noise? Is it his child?"

"Excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis--it is a pity--yes."

The fountain was a little removed; for the street opened, where it was, into a space some ten or twelve yards square. As the tall man suddenly got up from the ground, and came running at the carriage, Monsieur the Marquis clapped his hand for an instant on his sword-hilt.

"Killed!" shrieked the man, in wild desperation, extending both arms at their length above his head, and staring at him. "Dead!"

The people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the Marquis. There was nothing revealed by the many eyes that looked at him but watchfulness and eagerness; there was no visible menacing or anger. Neither did the people say anything; after the first cry, they had been silent, and they remained so. The voice of the submissive man who had spoken, was flat and tame in its extreme submission. Monsieur the Marquis ran his eyes over them all, as if they had been mere rats come out of their holes.

He took out his purse.

"It is extraordinary to me," said he, "that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for ever in the way. How do I know what injury you have done my horses. See! Give him that."

He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the heads craned forward that all the eyes might look down at it as it fell. The tall man called out again with a most unearthly cry, "Dead!"

Paris

BY ÉMILE ZOLA

(French novelist, 1840-1902, founder of the school of "Naturalism." The present is one of his later works, in which he indicates his hope of the regeneration of French society. The hero is a Catholic priest who first attempts to reform the Church, and then leaves it)

Pierre remembered that frightful house in the Rue des Saules, where so much want and suffering were heaped up. He saw again the yard filthy like a quagmire, the evil-smelling staircases, the sordid, bare, icy rooms, the families fighting for messes which even stray dogs would not have eaten; the mothers, with exhausted breasts, carrying screaming children to and fro; the old men who fell in corners like brute beasts, and died of hunger amidst filth. And then came his other hours with the magnificence or the quietude or the gaiety of the _salons_ through which he had passed, the whole insolent display of financial Paris, and political Paris, and society Paris. And at last he came to the dusk, and to that Paris-Sodom and Paris-Gomorrah before him, which was lighting itself up for the night, for the abominations of that accomplice night which, like fine dust, was little by little submerging the expanse of roofs. And the hateful monstrosity of it all howled aloud under the pale sky where the first pure, twinkling stars were gleaming.

A great shudder came upon Pierre as he thought of all that mass of iniquity and suffering, of all that went on below amid wealth and vice. The _bourgeoisie_, wielding power, would relinquish naught of the sovereignty which it had conquered, wholly stolen; while the people, the eternal dupe, silent so long, clenched its fists and growled, claiming its legitimate share. And it was that frightful injustice which filled the growing gloom with anger. From what dark-breasted cloud would the thunderbolt fall? For years he had been waiting for that thunderbolt, which low rumbles announced on all points of the horizon. And if he had written a book full of candour and hope, if he had gone in all innocence to Rome, it was to avert that thunderbolt and its frightful consequences. But all hope of the kind was dead within him; he felt that the thunderbolt was inevitable, that nothing henceforth could stay the catastrophe. And never before had he felt it to be so near, amidst the happy impudence of some, and the exasperated distress of others. It was gathering, and it would surely fall over that Paris, all lust and bravado, which, when evening came, thus stirred up its furnace.

King Hunger

BY LEONID ANDREYEV

(Russian novelist and dramatist of social protest; born 1871. In this grim symbolical drama is voiced the despair of Russia's intellectuals after the tragic failure of the Revolution. In the first scene King Hunger is shown inciting the starving factory-slaves to revolt; in the second, he presides over a gathering of the outcasts of society, who meet in a cellar to discuss projects of ferocious vengeance upon the idlers in the ball-room over their heads, but break up in a drunken brawl instead. In the present scene, King Hunger turns traitor to his victims, and presides as a judge passing sentence upon them. The leisure class attend as spectators in the court-room, the women in evening gowns and jewels, "the men in dress coats and surtouts, carefully shaven and dressed at the wig-makers")

KING HUNGER:--Show in the first starveling.

(_The first starveling, a ragged old man with lacerated feet, is conducted into the court-room. A wire muzzle encases his face._)

KING HUNGER:--Take the muzzle off the starveling. What's your offense, Starveling?

OLD MAN (_speaking in a broken voice_):--Theft.

KING HUNGER:--How much did you steal?

OLD MAN:--I stole a five-pound loaf, but it was wrested from me. I had only time to bite a small piece of it. Forgive me, I will never again----

KING HUNGER:--How? Have you acquired an inheritance? Or won't you eat hereafter?

OLD MAN:--No. It was wrested from me. I only chewed off a small piece----

KING HUNGER:--But how won't you steal? Why haven't you been working?

OLD MAN:--There's no work.

KING HUNGER:--But where's your brood, Starveling? Why don't they support you?

OLD MAN:--My children died of hunger.

KING HUNGER:--Why did you not starve to death, as they?

OLD MAN:--I don't know. I had a mind to live.

KING HUNGER:--Of what use is life to you, Starveling?

(_Voices of Spectators._)

--Indeed, how do they live? I don't comprehend it.

--To work.

--To glorify God and be confirmed in the consciousness that life--

--Well, I don't suppose they exalt Him.

--It were better if he were dead.

--A rather wearisome old fellow. And what style of trousers!

--Listen! Listen!

KING HUNGER (_rising, speaks aloud_):--Now, ladies and gentlemen, we will feign to meditate. Honorable judges, I beg you to simulate a meditative air.

(_The judges for a brief period appear in deep thought--they knit their brows, gaze up at the ceiling, prop up their noses, sigh and obviously endeavor to think. Venerable silence. Then with faces profoundly solemn and earnest, silent as before, the judges rise, and simultaneously they turn around facing Death. And all together they bow low and lingering, stretching themselves forward._)

KING HUNGER (_with bent head_):--What is your pleasure?

DEATH (_swiftly rising, wrathfully strikes the table with his clenched fist and speaks in a grating voice_):--Condemned--in the name of Satan!

(_Then as quickly he sits down and sinks into a malicious inflexibility. The judges resume their places._)

KING HUNGER:--Starveling, you're condemned.

OLD MAN:--Have mercy!

KING HUNGER:--Put the muzzle over him. Bring the next starveling....

(_The next starveling is led into the room. She is a graceful, but extremely emaciated young woman, with a face pallid and tragic to view. The black, fine eyebrows join over her nose; her luxuriant hair is negligently tied in a knot, falling down her shoulders. She makes no bows nor looks around, is as if seeing nobody. Her voice is apathetic and dull._)

KING HUNGER:--What's your offense, Starveling?

YOUNG WOMAN:--I killed my child.

(_Spectators._)

--Oh, horrors! This woman is altogether destitute of motherly feelings.

--What do you expect of them? You astonish me.

--How charming she is. There's something tragical about her.

--Then marry her.

--Crimes of infanticide were not regarded as such in ancient times, and were looked upon as a natural right of parents. Only with the introduction of humanism into our customs----

--Oh, please, just a second, professor.

--But science, my child----

KING HUNGER:--Tell us, Starveling, how it happened.

(_With drooping hands and motionless, the woman speaks up dully and dispassionately._)

YOUNG WOMAN:--One night my baby and I crossed the long bridge over the river. And since I had long before decided, so then approaching the middle, where the river is deep and swift, I said: "Look, baby dear, how the water is a-roaring below." She said, "I can't reach, mamma, the railing is so high." I said, "Come, let me lift you, baby dear." And when she was gazing down into the black deep, I threw her over. That's all.

KING HUNGER:--Did she grip you?

YOUNG WOMAN:--No.

KING HUNGER:--She screamed?

YOUNG WOMAN:--Yes, once.

KING HUNGER:--What was her name?

YOUNG WOMAN:--Baby dear.

KING HUNGER:--No, her name. How was she called?

YOUNG WOMAN:--Baby dear.

KING HUNGER (_covering his face, he speaks in sad, quivering voice_):--Honorable judges, I beg you to simulate a meditative air. (_The judges knit their brows, gaze on the ceiling, chew their lips. Venerable silence. Then they rise and gravely bow to Death._)

DEATH:--Condemned--in the name of Satan!

KING HUNGER (_rising, speaks aloud, extending his hands to the woman, as if veiling her in an invisible, black shroud_):-- You're condemned, woman, do you hear? Death awaits you. In blackest hell you will be tormented and burnt on everlasting, slakeless fires! Devils will rack your heart with their iron talons! The most venomous serpents of the infernal abyss will suck your brain and sting, sting you, and nobody will heed your agonizing cries, for you'll be silenced. Let eternal night be over you. Do you hear, Starveling?

YOUNG WOMAN:--Yes.

KING HUNGER:--Muzzle her.

(_The starveling is led away. King Hunger addresses the spectators in a frank and joyous manner._) Now, ladies and gentlemen, I propose recess for luncheon. Adjudication is a fatiguing affair, and we need to invigorate ourselves. (_Gallantly._) Especially our charming matrons and the young ladies. Please!

(_Joyful exclamations._)

--To dine! To dine!

--'Tis about time!

--Mamma dear, where are the bonbons?

--Your little mind is only on bonbons!

--Which--is tried? (_Waking up._)

--Dinner is ready, Your Excellency.

--Ah! Why didn't you wake me up before?

(_Everything assumes at once a happy, amiable, homelike aspect. The judges pull off their wigs, exposing their bald heads, and gradually they lose themselves in the crowd, shake hands, and with feigned indifference they look askance, contemplating the dining. Portly waiters in rich liveries, with difficulty and bent under the weight of immense dishes, bring gigantic portions; whole mutton trunks, colossal hams, high, mountain-like roasts. Before the stout man, on a low stool, they place a whole roasted pig, which is brought in by three. Doubtful, he looks at it._)

--Would you assist me, Professor?

--With pleasure, Your Excellency.

--And you, Honorable Judge?

--Although I am not hungry--but with your leave--

--I may, perhaps, be suffered to--(_the Abbot modestly speaks, his mouth watering._)

(_The four seat themselves about the pig and silently they carve it greedily with their knives. Occasionally the eyes of the Professor and of the Abbot meet, and with swollen cheeks, powerless to chew, they are smitten with reciprocal hatred and contempt. Then choking, they ardently champ on. Everywhere small groups eating. Death produces a dry cheese sandwich from his pocket and eats in solitude. A heavy conversation of full-crammed mouths. Munching._)

London

BY HEINRICH HEINE

(German poet and essayist, one of the most musical and most unhappy of singers; 1797-1856)

It is in the dusky twilight that Poverty with her mates, Vice and Crime, glide forth from their lairs. They shun daylight the more anxiously, the more cruelly their wretchedness contrasts with the pride of wealth which glitters everywhere; only Hunger sometimes drives them at noonday from their dens, and then they stand with silent, speaking eyes, staring beseechingly at the rich merchant who hurries along, busy and jingling gold, or at the lazy lord who, like a surfeited god, rides by on his high horse, casting now and then an aristocratically indifferent glance at the mob below, as though they were swarming ants, or, at all events, a mass of baser beings, whose joys and sorrows have nothing in common with his feelings....

Poor Poverty! how agonizing must thy hunger be where others swell in scornful superfluity! And when some one casts with indifferent hand a crust into thy lap, how bitter must the tears be wherewith thou moistenest it! Thou poisonest thyself with thine own tears. Well art thou in the right when thou alliest thyself to Vice and Crime. Outlawed criminals often bear more humanity in their hearts than those cold, blameless citizens of virtue, in whose white hearts the power of evil is quenched; but also the power of good. I have seen women on whose cheeks red vice was painted, and in whose hearts dwelt heavenly purity.

London

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

(English poet and painter of strange and terrible visions. 1757-1827)

I wander through each chartered street, Near where the chartered Thames does flow; A mark in every face I meet, Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man, In every infant's cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forged manacles I hear:

How the chimney-sweeper's cry Every blackening church appals, And the hapless soldier's sigh Runs in blood down palace-walls.

But most, through midnight streets I hear How the youthful harlots curse Blasts the new-born infant's tear, And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.

A Life for a Life[A]

[A] By permission of the Macmillan Co.

BY ROBERT HERRICK

(American novelist, professor in the University of Chicago; born 1868. In this novel a young American, hungering for success and about to marry the daughter a great captain of industry, is taken by a strange man, "the bearded Anarch," and shown the horrors of American industrialism)

And thus this strange pilgrimage, like another descent into purgatory and even unto hell, continued,--the shabby bearded Anarch leading his companion from factory, warehouse, and mill to mine and railroad and shop, teaching him by the sight of his own eyes what life means to the silent multitude upon whose bent shoulders the fabric of society rests,--what that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"--brave aspirations of the forefathers--has brought to the common man in this land of destiny and desire.

The wanderer breathed the deadly fumes of smelter and glass works, saw where men were burned in great converters, or torn limb from limb upon the whirling teeth of swift machines,--done to death in this way and that, or maimed and cast useless upon the rubbish heap of humanity,--waste product of the process.

"For," as his guide repeated, "in this country, where Property is sacred, nothing is cheaper than human life. For, remember, the supply of raw labor is inexhaustible."

He recalled the words of a sleek and comfortable man of business, at the end of the day, with his good dinner comfortably in his belly and a fat cigar between his lips: "There's too much sentimentalism in the air. Some religion less effeminate than Christ's is needed to fit the facts of life. In the struggle the weak must go under, and it is a crime to interfere with natural law." The weak must go under! Surely if that were the law, any religion that would offer an anodyne to the hopeless were a blessing. But again and again the question rose unanswered to his lips,--who are the weak? And the sleek one with his cigar said, "Those who go under!" ...

So they passed on their way through squalid factory towns reeking with human vice and disease, through the network of railroad terminals crowded with laden cars rolling forth to satisfy desires. They loitered in busy city stores, in dim basement holes where bread and clothes were making, in filthy slaughter-houses where beasts were slain by beasts....

At sunset of a glowing day the two sat upon an upper ridge of the hills. All the imperial colors of the firmament dyed the western heavens among the broken peaks of the mountains. Below in the lonely valleys were the excoriations of the mines, the refuse, the smudged stains of the rough surface of the earth. The guide pointed into the distance where the huge smelter of Senator Dexter's mine sent a yellow cloud upward.

"Near that is the charred debris where the miners blew up the old works. Below the brow of yonder hills lies that stockade where miners, with their women and children, were penned for weeks like wild animals, guarded by the troops of the nation. Beyond is the edge of the great desert, into whose waterless waste others were driven to their death. Of these I was one that escaped. Men were shot and women raped. But I tell over old tales known to all. In this place it has been truly a life for a life according to the primitive text--but more honest than the cunning and hidden ways of the law. Here the eaten is face to face, at least, with the eater."

The twilight came down like a curtain, hiding the scars of man's dominion over the earth. The two sat in silent thought. This was the apex of their journey together, and the end. Behind this lofty table-land of the continent began the grim desert, not yet subdued by man, and beyond came other fertile valleys and other mountains, and finally another ocean. Thither had been carried the same civilization, the same spirit of conquest and greed, and that noble aspiration after "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" bore the same fruit in the blood of man. Wherever the victorious race had forced its way, it sowed the seeds of hate and industrial crime. And the flower must bloom, early or late, upon the lonely cattle ranch, in the primeval forest, the soft southern grove, or the virgin valley of the "promised land."

Thus spoke the Anarch.

In the glimmering twilight the fierce eyes of the bearded one rested upon the wanderer.

"Have you seen enough?"

"Enough! God knows."

"So at last you understand the meaning of it all!"

"Not yet!" And from the depth of his being there flashed the demand, "Why have you shown me the sore surface of life? What have you to do with it? And what have I?"

His guide replied, "So you still long for the smooth paths of prosperity? You would like to shield your eyes from the disagreeable aspects of a world that is good to you? You would still have your comfort and your heart's desire? Your ambitious fancy still turns to the daughter of privilege, dainty and lovely and sweet to the eyes?"

* * * * *

(The young man returns to the rich woman whom he had meant to marry.)

He knelt and taking the hem of her garment held it in his hands.

"See!" He crushed the soft fabric in his hand. "Silk with thread of gold. It is the tears! See!" He touched her girdle with his hands. "Gold and precious stones. They are the groans! See!" He put his fingers upon the golden hair. "A wreath of pure gold! Tears and groans and bloody sweat! You are a tissue of the lives of others, from feet to the crown upon your hair.... See!" His hot hands crushed the orchids at her breast. "Even the flower at your breast is stained with blood.... I see the tears of others on your robe. I hear their sighs in your voice. I see defeated desires in the light of your eyes. You are the Sacrifice of the many--I cannot touch!"

Isabella, or The Pot of Basil

BY JOHN KEATS

(One of the loveliest of English poets, 1795-1821; a chemist's assistant, who lived unrecognized and died despairing)

With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt, Enrichèd from ancestral merchandise, And for them many a weary hand did swelt In torchèd mines and noisy factories, And many once proud-quiver'd loins did melt In blood from stinging whip,--with hollow eyes Many all day in dazzling river stood, To take the rich-ored driftings of the flood.

For them the Ceylon diver held his breath, And went all naked to the hungry shark; For them his ears gushed blood; for them in death The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark Lay full of darts; for them alone did seethe A thousand men in troubles wide and dark; Half-ignorant, they turn'd an easy wheel, That set sharp wracks at work, to pinch and peel.

The Sons of Martha

BY RUDYARD KIPLING

(Under this title the English poet has written a striking picture of the social chasm. He figures the world's toilers as the "Sons of Martha," who, because their mother "was rude to the Lord, her Guest," are condemned forever to unrequited toil. "It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and cushion the shock." The poem goes on to tell of the ignorance and torment in which they live--while the Sons of Mary, who "have inherited that good part," live in ease upon their toil.)

"They sit at the Feet--and they hear the Word--they see how truly the promise runs. They have cast their burdens upon the Lord, and--the Lord He lays them on Martha's sons."

On the other hand the sons of Martha have to face reality.

"They do not preach that their God will rouse them an hour before the nuts work loose, They do not teach that His pity allows them to leave their work when they damn-well choose."

The entire poem may be found in the 1918 Collected Edition of Mr. Kipling's poems.

Reflections Upon Poverty

(_From "The New Grub Street"_)

BY GEORGE GISSING

(Novelist of English middle-class life, 1857-1903. Few have ever equalled him in the portrayal of the sordid, every-day realities of poverty. The story of his own tragic life is told in a novel called "The Private Life of Henry Maitland," by Morley Roberts)

As there was sunshine Amy accompanied her husband for his walk in the afternoon; it was long since they had been out together. An open carriage that passed, followed by two young girls on horseback, gave a familiar direction to Reardon's thoughts.

"If one were as rich as those people. They pass so close to us; they see us, and we see them; but the distance between is infinity. They don't belong to the same world as we poor wretches. They see everything in a different light; they have powers which would seem supernatural if we were suddenly endowed with them."

"Of course," assented his companion with a sigh.

"Just fancy, if one got up in the morning with the thought that no reasonable desire that occurred to one throughout the day need remain ungratified! And that it would be the same, any day and every day, to the end of one's life! Look at those houses; every detail, within and without, luxurious. To have such a home as that!"

"And they are empty creatures who live there."

"They do _live_, Amy, at all events. Whatever may be their faculties, they all have free scope. I have often stood staring at houses like these until I couldn't believe that the people owning them were mere human beings like myself. The power of money is so hard to realize, one who has never had it marvels at the completeness with which it transforms every detail of life. Compare what we call our home with that of rich people; it moves one to scornful laughter. I have no sympathy with the stoical point of view; between wealth and poverty is just the difference between the whole man and the maimed. If my lower limbs are paralyzed I may still be able to think, but then there is no such thing in life as walking. As a poor devil I may live nobly; but one happens to be made with faculties of enjoyment, and those have to fall into atrophy. To be sure, most rich people don't understand their happiness; if they did, they would move and talk like gods--which indeed they are."

Amy's brow was shadowed. A wise man, in Reardon's position, would not have chosen this subject to dilate upon.

"The difference," he went on, "between the man with money and the man without is simply this: the one thinks, 'How shall I use my life?' and the other, 'How shall I keep myself alive?' A physiologist ought to be able to discover some curious distinction between the brain of a person who has never given a thought to the means of subsistence, and that of one who has never known a day free from such cares. There must be some special cerebral development representing the mental anguish kept up by poverty."

"I should say," put in Amy, "that it affects every function of the brain. It isn't a special point of suffering, but a misery that colors every thought."

"True. Can I think of a single object in all the sphere of my experience without the consciousness that I see it through the medium of poverty? I have no enjoyment which isn't tainted by that thought, and I can suffer no pain which it doesn't increase. The curse of poverty is to the modern world just what that of slavery was to the ancient. Rich and destitute stand to each other as free man and bond. You remember the line of Homer I have often quoted about the demoralizing effect of enslavement; poverty degrades in the same way."

"It has had its effect upon me--I know that too well," said Amy, with bitter frankness.

Reardon glanced at her, and wished to make some reply, but he could not say what was in his thoughts.

The Veins of Wealth

BY JOHN RUSKIN

(English art critic and university professor, 1819-1900; author of many works upon social questions, and master of perhaps the greatest English prose style)

Primarily, which is very notable and curious, I observe that men of business rarely know the meaning of the word "rich." At least if they know, they do not in their reasonings allow for the fact, that it is a relative word, implying its opposite "poor" as positively as the word "north" implies its opposite "south." Men nearly always speak and write as if riches were absolute, and it were possible, by following certain scientific precepts, for everybody to be rich. Whereas riches are a power like that of electricity, acting only through inequalities or negations of itself. The force of the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbor's pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you; the degree of power it possesses depends accurately upon the need or desire he has for it,--and the art of making yourself rich, in the ordinary mercantile economist's sense, is therefore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbor poor.

Lynggaard & Co.

BY HJALMAR BERGSTRÖM

(Contemporary Danish dramatist, born 1868. The present play deals with the modern industrial struggle. The wife of a great manufacturer has become the victim of melancholia after a strike)

MRS. LYNGGAARD (_absorbed in her memories_):--I shall never forget the day when the people went back to work. I was watching them from my bedroom window. For four months they had been starving--starving, do you understand?--they and theirs. Then they turned up again one winter morning before daylight, and there they stood and shivered in the yards. They had no over-clothes, of course, and they were shaking both from cold and from weakness. And then their faces were all covered with beards, so that one couldn't recognize them. There they stood and waited a long time, a very long time.... At last Heymann [the manager] appeared in the doorway and read something from a paper. It was the conditions of surrender, I suppose. None of them looked up. Then, as they were about to walk in and begin working, Heymann stopped them by holding up his hand, and he said something I couldn't hear. But after a little while I saw Olsen [the strike-leader] standing all by himself in a cleared place. (_A shiver runs through her at the recollection._) Once I saw a picture of an execution in a prison yard.... It lasted only a few seconds. Then Olsen said a few words to his comrades and walked away, looking white as a ghost. The crowd opened up to let him pass through. Then the rest stood there for a while looking so strangely depressed and not knowing what to do. And at last they went in, one by one, bent and broken.

MIKKELSEN:--Olsen wasn't allowed to go back to work?

MRS. LYNGGAARD:--It was he who had been their leader, and it was his fault that they had held out as long as they did. And then Olsen began to look for work elsewhere, but none of the other companies would have anything to do with him.

MIKKELSEN (_shrugging his shoulders_):--War is war.

MRS. LYNGGAARD:--A few months later, as I was taking a walk, I was stopped on the street by Olsen's wife. I tell you, the way she looked made my heart shrink within me. Her husband was completely broken down, she told me. And on top of it all he had taken to drink. Everything she and the children could scrape together, he spent on whiskey. She herself was so far gone with her eighth child that she would soon have to quit work.... Then I went home to my husband and begged and prayed him to take Olsen back and make a man of him again. It was the first time during our marriage that I saw him beside himself with rage. There came into his eyes such an evil expression that I wish I had never seen it, for I have never since been able to forget it entirely. But, of course, I guessed who was back of it. (_With emphasis._) Then I did the most humiliating thing I have ever done: I went in secret to Heymann and pleaded for that discharged workman.

MIKKELSEN:--Well, and Heymann?

MRS. LYNGGAARD:--Since that moment I hate Heymann. There I was, humbling myself before him. And he measured me with cold eyes and said: "If I am to be in charge of this plant, madam, I must ask once for all and absolutely, that no outsiders interfere with the running of it."

MIKKELSEN:--I don't see that he could have done anything else.

MRS. LYNGGAARD:--What I cannot forgive myself is that I let myself be imposed upon by that man. I behaved like a coward. At that moment I should have gone to my husband and said: "This is what has happened--now you must choose between Heymann and me!" But I was so cowardly, that I didn't even tell my husband what I had done.

MIKKELSEN:--Nor was it proper for you to go behind your husband's back like that.

MRS. LYNGGAARD (_with an expression of abject horror in her fixed gaze_):--A little afterwards this thing happened. It was one of the first warm summer days, and I was walking in the garden with Jacob. At that time a splendid old chestnut tree was growing in one corner. And there, in the midst of green leaves, and singing birds, Olsen was hanging, cold and dead. And the flies were crawling in and out of his face.... (_She trembles visibly._)

MIKKELSEN:--Yes, life is cruel.

MRS. LYNGGAARD:--And there I perceived for the first time how utterly poor a human being may become. Anything so pitiful and miserable I had never seen before. There was no sign of underclothing between his trousers and the vest. And I don't know why, but it seemed almost as if this was what hurt me most--much more than that he had hanged himself.... And since that day I haven't known a single hour of happiness.

My Religion

BY LEO TOLSTOY

(From an essay in which the Russian novelist and reformer, 1828-1910, has set forth the creed by which he lived)

What is the law of nature? Is it to know that my security and that of my family, all my amusements and pleasures, are purchased at the expense of misery, deprivation, and suffering to thousands of human beings--by the terror of the gallows; by the misfortune of thousands stifling within prison walls; by the fears inspired by millions of soldiers and guardians of civilization, torn from their homes and besotted by discipline, to protect our pleasures with loaded revolvers against the possible interference of the famishing! Is it to purchase every fragment of bread that I put in my mouth and the mouths of my children by the numberless privations that are necessary to procure my abundance? Or is it to be certain that my piece of bread only belongs to me when I know that everyone else has a share, and that no one starves while I eat?

The Octopus[A]

[A] By permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.

BY FRANK NORRIS

(The young American novelist, 1870-1902, planned this as the first of a trilogy of novels, the "Epic of the Wheat." The second volume, "The Pit," was written, but his death interrupted the third. The present story narrates the long struggle between the farmers of the San Joaquin valley and the railroad "octopus." The farmers have been beaten, and several of them killed while resisting eviction from their homes. The hero is at a dinner party in San Francisco, at the same time that the widow and child of one of the victims are wandering the streets outside)

All around the table conversations were going forward gayly. The good wines had broken up the slight restraint of the early part of the evening and a spirit of good humor and good fellowship prevailed. Young Lambery and Mr. Gerard were deep in reminiscences of certain mutual duck-shooting expeditions. Mrs. Gerard and Mrs. Cedarquist discussed a novel--a strange mingling of psychology, degeneracy, and analysis of erotic conditions--which had just been translated from the Italian. Stephen Lambert and Beatrice disputed over the merits of a Scotch collie just given to the young lady. The scene was gay, the electric bulbs sparkled, the wine flashing back the light. The entire table was a vague glow of white napery, delicate china, and glass as brilliant as crystal. Behind the guests the serving-men came and went, filling the glasses continually, changing the covers, serving the entrées, managing the dinner without interruption, confusion, or the slightest unnecessary noise.

But Presley could find no enjoyment in the occasion. From that picture of feasting, that scene of luxury, that atmosphere of decorous, well-bred refinement, his thoughts went back to Los Muertos and Quien Sabe and the irrigating ditch at Hooven's. He saw them fall, one by one, Harran, Annixter, Osterman, Broderson, Hooven. The clink of the wine glasses was drowned in the explosion of revolvers. The Railroad might indeed be a force only, which no man could control and for which no man was responsible, but his friends had been killed, but years of extortion and oppression had wrung money from all the San Joaquin, money that had made possible this very scene in which he found himself. Because Magnus had been beggared, Gerard had become Railroad King; because the farmers of the valley were poor, these men were rich.

The fancy grew big in his mind, distorted, caricatured, terrible. Because the farmers had been killed at the irrigating ditch, these others, Gerard and his family, fed full. They fattened on the blood of the People, on the blood of the men who had been killed at the ditch. It was a half-ludicrous, half-horrible "dog eat dog," an unspeakable cannibalism. Harran, Annixter, and Hooven were being devoured there under his eyes. These dainty women, his cousin Beatrice and little Miss Gerard, frail, delicate; all these fine ladies with their small fingers and slender necks, suddenly were transfigured in his tortured mind into harpies tearing human flesh. His head swam with the horror of it, the terror of it. Yes, the People _would_ turn some day, and, turning, rend those who now preyed upon them. It would be "dog eat dog" again, with positions reversed, and he saw for an instant of time that splendid house sacked to its foundations, the tables overturned, the pictures torn, the hangings blazing, and Liberty, the red-handed Man in the Street, grimed with powder smoke, foul with the gutter, rush yelling, torch in hand, through every door.

* * * * *

At ten o'clock Mrs. Hooven fell.

Luckily she was leading Hilda by the hand at the time and the little girl was not hurt. In vain had Mrs. Hooven, hour after hour, walked the streets. After a while she no longer made any attempt to beg; nobody was stirring, nor did she even try to hunt for food with the stray dogs and cats. She had made up her mind to return to the park in order to sit upon the benches there, but she had mistaken the direction, and, following up Sacramento Street, had come out at length, not upon the park, but upon a great vacant lot at the very top of the Clay Street hill. The ground was unfenced and rose above her to form the cap of the hill, all overgrown with bushes and a few stunted live-oaks. It was in trying to cross this piece of ground that she fell....

"You going to sleep, mammy?" inquired Hilda, touching her face.

Mrs. Hooven roused herself a little.

"Hey? Vat you say? Asleep? Yais, I guess I wass asleep."

Her voice trailed unintelligibly to silence again. She was not, however, asleep. Her eyes were open. A grateful numbness had begun to creep over her, a pleasing semi-insensibility. She no longer felt the pain and cramps of her stomach, even the hunger was ceasing to bite.

* * * * *

"These stuffed artichokes are delicious, Mrs. Gerard, murmured young Lambert, wiping his lips with a corner of his napkin. "Pardon me for mentioning it, but your dinner must be my excuse."

"And this asparagus--since Mr. Lambert has set the bad example," observed Mrs. Cedarquist, "so delicate, such an exquisite flavor. How _do_ you manage?"

"We get all our asparagus from the southern part of the State, from one particular ranch," explained Mrs. Gerard. "We order it by wire and get it only twenty hours after cutting. My husband sees to it that it is put on a special train. It stops at this ranch just to take on our asparagus. Extravagant, isn't it, but I simply can not eat asparagus that has been cut more than a day."

"Nor I," exclaimed Julian Lambert, who posed as an epicure. "I can tell to an hour just how long asparagus has been picked."

"Fancy eating ordinary market asparagus," said Mrs. Gerard, "that has been fingered by Heaven knows how many hands."

* * * * *

"Mammy, mammy, wake up," cried Hilda, trying to push open Mrs. Hooven's eyelids, at last closed. "Mammy, don't. You're just trying to frighten me."

Feebly Hilda shook her by the shoulder. At last Mrs. Hooven's lips stirred. Putting her head down, Hilda distinguished the whispered words:

"I'm sick. Go to schleep.... Sick.... Noddings to eat."

* * * * *

The dessert was a wonderful preparation of alternate layers of biscuit, glacés, ice cream, and candied chestnuts.

"Delicious, is it not?" observed Julian Lambert, partly to himself, partly to Miss Cedarquist. "This _Moscovite fouetté_--upon my word, I have never tasted its equal."

"And you should know, shouldn't you?" returned the young lady.

* * * * *

"Mammy, mammy, wake up," cried Hilda. "Don't sleep so. I'm frightened."

Repeatedly she shook her; repeatedly she tried to raise the inert eyelids with the point of her finger. But her mother no longer stirred. The gaunt, lean body, with its bony face and sunken eye-sockets, lay back, prone upon the ground, the feet upturned and showing the ragged, worn soles of the shoes, the forehead and gray hair beaded with fog, the poor, faded bonnet awry, the poor, faded dress soiled and torn.

Hilda drew close to her mother, kissing her face, twining her arms around her neck. For a long time she lay that way, alternately sobbing and sleeping. Then, after a long time, there was a stir. She woke from a doze to find a police officer and two or three other men bending over her. Some one carried a lantern. Terrified, smitten dumb, she was unable to answer the questions put to her. Then a woman, evidently the mistress of the house on the top of the hill, arrived and took Hilda in her arms and cried over her.

"I'll take the little girl," she said to the police officer. "But the mother, can you save her? Is she too far gone?"

"I've sent for a doctor," replied the other.

* * * * *

Just before the ladies left the table, young Lambert raised his glass of Madeira. Turning towards the wife of the Railroad King, he said:

"My best compliments for a delightful dinner."

The doctor, who had been bending over Mrs. Hooven, rose.

"It's no use," he said; "she has been dead some time--exhaustion from starvation."

BY ANATOLE FRANCE

The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.

Progress and Poverty

BY HENRY GEORGE

(One of the most widely-read treatises upon economics ever published, this book was the fountain head of the single-tax movement. The writer was a California journalist, 1839-1897, who devoted all his life to the propaganda of economic justice)

Unpleasant as it may be to admit it, it is at last becoming evident that the enormous increase in productive power which has marked the present century and is still going on with accelerating ratio, has no tendency to extirpate poverty or to lighten the burdens of those compelled to toil. It simply widens the gulf between Dives and Lazarus, and makes the struggle for existence more intense. The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamed. But in factories where labor-saving machinery has reached its most wonderful development, little children are at work; wherever the new forces are anything like fully utilized, large classes are maintained by charity or live on the verge of recourse to it; amid the greatest accumulations of wealth, men die of starvation, and puny infants suckle dry breasts; while everywhere the greed of gain, the worship of wealth, shows the force of the fear of want. The promised land flies before us like the mirage. The fruits of the tree of knowledge turn, as we grasp them, to apples of Sodom that crumble at the touch....

This association of poverty with progress is the great enigma of our times. It is the central fact from which spring industrial, social, and political difficulties that perplex the world, and with which statesmanship and philanthropy and education grapple in vain. From it come the clouds that overhang the future of the most progressive and self-reliant nations. It is the riddle which the Sphinx of Fate puts to our civilization, and which not to answer is to be destroyed. So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent. The reaction must come. The tower leans from its foundations, and every new story but hastens the final catastrophe. To educate men who must be condemned to poverty, is but to make them restive; to base on a state of most glaring social inequality political institutions under which men are theoretically equal, is to stand a pyramid on its apex.