"These are the steady bulk of the community, insuring the
peace of the district by their habits and opinions far more
effectively than any vigilance of police or government. Yet,
if they are indeed satisfactory, how low are the civic standards
of England, how fallen the ideals and beauties of Christianity!
No man that has dreams can rest content because the English
worker has reached his high level of regular work and rare
intoxication."

One does not rest content; far from it. But the perpetual wonder is, not
that "the lower classes are brutalised," but that this brutality is so
tempered with generosity and sweetness. It is not their crime that
surprises, but their virtue; not their turbulence or discontent, but
their inexplicable acquiescence. And yet there are still people who
sneer at "the mob," "the vulgar herd," "the great unwashed," as though
principles, gentility, and soap were privileges in reward of merit, and
not the accidental luck of money's chaotic distribution.




XI


THE WORTH OF A PENNY

A year or two ago, some wondered why strike had arisen out of strike;
why the whole world of British labour had suddenly and all at once begun
to heave restlessly as though with earthquake; why the streams of
workpeople had in quick succession left the grooves along which they