the hall, why we of the outer world had not thought to produce pictures
in similar vein to entertain our dogs and horses.

~5~

As I returned to my own quarters, I tried to recall the description I
had read of the "Children of the Abyss," the dwellers in ancient city
slums. There was a certain kinship, no doubt, between those former
submerged workers in the democratic world and this labour breed of
Berlin. Yet the enslaved and sweated workers of the old regime were
always depicted as suffering from poverty, as undersized, ill-nourished
and afflicted with disease. The reformers of that day were always
talking of sanitary housing, scientific diet and physical efficiency.
But here was a race of labourers whose physical welfare was as well
taken care of as if they had been prize swine or oxen. There was a
paleness of countenance among these labourers of Berlin that to me
seemed suggestive of ill health, but I knew that was merely due to lack
of sun and did not signify a lack of physical vitality. Mere
sun-darkened skin does not mean physiological efficiency, else the negro
were the most efficient of races. Men can live without sun, without
rain, without contact with the soil, without nature's greenery and the
brotherhood of fellow species in wild haunts. The whole climb of
civilization had been away from these primitive things. It had merely
been an artificial perfecting of the process of giving the living
creature that which is needed for sustenance and propagation in the most
concentrated and most economical form, the elimination of Nature's
superfluities and wastes.

As I thought of these things it came over me that this unholy
imprisonment of a race was but the logical culmination of mechanical and