for them to look upon labour and its results from any other point of
view than one--to wit, the ceaseless endeavour to expend the least
possible amount of labour on any article made, and yet at the same
time to make as many articles as possible. To this 'cheapening of
production', as it was called, everything was sacrificed: the
happiness of the workman at his work, nay, his most elementary
comfort and bare health, his food, his clothes, his dwelling, his
leisure, his amusement, his education--his life, in short--did not
weigh a grain of sand in the balance against this dire necessity of
'cheap production' of things, a great part of which were not worth
producing at all. Nay, we are told, and we must believe it, so
overwhelming is the evidence, though many of our people scarcely CAN
believe it, that even rich and powerful men, the masters of the poor
devils aforesaid, submitted to live amidst sights and sounds and
smells which it is in the very nature of man to abhor and flee from,
in order that their riches might bolster up this supreme folly. The
whole community, in fact, was cast into the jaws of this ravening
monster, 'the cheap production' forced upon it by the World-Market."

"Dear me!" said I. "But what happened? Did not their cleverness and
facility in production master this chaos of misery at last? Couldn't
they catch up with the World-Market, and then set to work to devise
means for relieving themselves from this fearful task of extra
labour?"

He smiled bitterly. "Did they even try to?" said he. "I am not
sure. You know that according to the old saw the beetle gets used to
living in dung; and these people, whether they found the dung sweet
or not, certainly lived in it."