"INDEED you are quite wrong, Sidney. There was a girl at the Slade
school who supported her mother and two sisters by her drawing. Besides,
what can you do? People were made so."

"Yes; I was made a landlord and capitalist by the folly of the people;
but they can unmake me if they will. Meanwhile I have absolutely no
means of escape from my position except by giving away my slaves to
fellows who will use them no better than I, and becoming a slave myself;
which, if you please, you shall not catch me doing in a hurry. No, my
beloved, I must keep my foot on their necks for your sake as well as for
my own. But you do not care about all this prosy stuff. I am consumed
with remorse for having bored my darling. You want to know why I am
living here like a hermit in a vulgar two-roomed hovel instead of
tasting the delights of London society with my beautiful and devoted
young wife."

"But you don't intend to stay here, Sidney?"

"Yes, I do; and I will tell you why. I am helping to liberate those
Manchester laborers who were my father's slaves. To bring that
about, their fellow slaves all over the world must unite in a vast
international association of men pledged to share the world's work
justly; to share the produce of the work justly; to yield not a
farthing--charity apart--to any full-grown and able-bodied idler
or malingerer, and to treat as vermin in the commonwealth persons
attempting to get more than their share of wealth or give less than
their share of work. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish,
because working-men, like the people called their betters, do not always
understand their own interests, and will often actually help their