There's many a donkey that's brought more colliers than you up to see
daylight, by trotting round.--But do you want to know what I'm making
for? I can soon tell you that. You Barlow & Wasall's men, you
haven't a soul to call your own. Barlow & Wasall's have only to say
to one of you, Come, and he cometh, Go, and he goeth, Lie
VOICE. Ay--an' what about it? Tha's got a behind o' thy own, hasn't
yer?

WILLIE. Do you stand there and ask me what about it, and haven't the
sense to alter it? Couldn't you set up a proper Government to-morrow,
if you liked? Couldn't you contrive that the pits belonged to you,
instead of you belonging to the pits, like so many old pit-ponies that
stop down till they are blind, and take to eating coal-slack for
meadow-grass, not knowing the difference? If only you'd learn to
think, I'd respect you. As you are, I can't, not if I try my hardest.
All you can think of is to ask for another shilling a day. That's as
far as your imagination carries you. And perhaps you get sevenpence
ha'penny, but pay for it with half-a-crown's worth of sweat. The
masters aren't fools--as you are. They'll give you two-thirds of
what you ask for, but they'll get five-thirds of it back again--and
they'll get it out of your flesh and blood, too, in jolly hard work.
Shylock wasn't in it with them. He only wanted a pound of flesh.
But you cheerfully give up a pound a week, each one of you, and keep
on giving it up.--But you don't seem to see these things. You can't
think beyond your dinners and your 'lowance. You think if you can get
another shilling a day you're set up. You make me tired, I tell you.

JOB ARTHUR FREER. We think of others besides ourselves.

WILLIE. Hello, Job Arthur--are you there? I didn't recognise you