products in 'exchange,' as this form of robbery was called, and
thereby he 'created new wants,' to supply which (that is, to be
allowed to live by their new masters) the hapless, helpless people
had to sell themselves into the slavery of hopeless toil so that they
might have something wherewith to purchase the nullities of
'civilisation.' Ah," said the old man, pointing the dealings of to
the Museum, "I have read books and papers in there, telling strange
stories indeed of civilisation (or organised misery) with 'non-
civilisation'; from the time when the British Government deliberately
sent blankets infected with small-pox as choice gifts to inconvenient
tribes of Red-skins, to the time when Africa was infested by a man
named Stanley, who--"

"Excuse me," said I, "but as you know, time presses; and I want to
keep our question on the straightest line possible; and I want at
once to ask this about these wares made for the World-Market--how
about their quality; these people who were so clever about making
goods, I suppose they made them well?"

"Quality!" said the old man crustily, for he was rather peevish at
being cut short in his story; "how could they possibly attend to such
trifles as the quality of the wares they sold? The best of them were
of a lowish average, the worst were transparent make-shifts for the
things asked for, which nobody would have put up with if they could
have got anything else. It was a current jest of the time that the
wares were made to sell and not to use; a jest which you, as coming
from another planet, may understand, but which our folk could not."

Said I: "What! did they make nothing well?"