2 04 



The Review of Reviews. 



August 1, 1306, 



Science or socialism ? It was, of course, like argu- 

 ing which is right, left-handedness or a taste for 

 onions — it was an altogether impossible opposition. 

 But the range of my rhetoric enabled me at last to 

 exasperate Parload, and his mere repudiation of my 

 conclusions sufficed to exasperate me, and we ended 

 in the key of a positive quarrel. " Oh, very well !" 

 said I. "So long as 1 know where we are !" 



I slammed his door as though I dynamited his 

 house, and went raging down the street, but I felt 

 he was already back at the window worshipping his 

 blessed line in the green before I got round the 

 corner. 



I had to walk for an hour or so before I was cool 

 enough to go home. 



And it was Parload had first introduced me to 

 socialism ! 



Recreant ! 



The most extraordinary things used to run through 

 my head in those wild days. I will confess that my 

 mind ran persistently that evening upon revolutions 

 after the best French pattern, and I sat on a com- 

 mittee of safety and tried backsliders. Parload was 

 there, among the prisoners, backsliderissimus, aware 

 too late of the error of his ways. His hands were 

 tied behind his back ready for the shambles; through 

 the open door one heard the voice of justice, the rude 

 Justice of the people. I was sorry, but I had to do 

 my duty. 



" If we punish those who would betray us to 

 kings," said I, with a sorrowful deliberation, "how 

 much the more must we punish those who would give 

 over the State to the pursuit of useless knowledge," 

 and so with a gloomy satisfaction sent him off to 

 the guillotine. 



"Ah. Parload! Parload! If only you'd listened 

 to me earlier. Parload." . . . 



None the less, that quarrel made me extremely 

 unhappy. Parload was mv only gossip, and it cost 

 me much to keep away from him and think evil of 

 him with no one to listen to me, evening after even- 

 ing. 



That was a very miserable time for me, even be- 

 fore my last visit to Checkshill. My long unem- 

 ployed hours hung heavily on my hands. I kept 

 away from home all day. partlv to support a fiction 

 that I was sedulously seeking another situation, and 

 partly to escape the persistent question in my 

 mother's eyes. " Why did you quarrel with Mr. 

 Rawdon ? Why did you ? Why do you keep on 

 going about with a sullen face and risk offending 

 // more?" I spent most of the morning in the 

 newspaper-room of the public library, writing im- 

 possible applications for impossible posts. I remem- 

 ber that, among other things of that sort, I offered 

 my services to a firm of private detectives, a sinister 

 breed of traders upon base jealousies now happily 

 vanished from the world ; and wrote, a propos of 

 an advertisement for " stevedores," that I did not 

 know what the duties of a stevedore might be, but 



that I was apt and willing to learn. And in the 

 afternoon and evenings I wandered through the 

 strange lights and shadows of my native valley and 

 hated all created things. Until my wanderings were 

 checked by the discovery that I was wearing out my 

 boots. 



The stagnant, inconclusive malaria of that time ! 



I perceive I was an evil-tempered, ill-disposed 

 youth with a great capacity for hatred ; hut 



There was an excuse for hate. 



It was wrong for me to hate individuals — to be 

 rude, harsh and vindictive to this person or that — 

 but indeed it would have been equally wrong to have 

 taken the manifest offer life made me without re- 

 sentment. I see now clearly and calmly, what I 

 then felt obscurely and with an unbalanced intensity, 

 that mv conditions were intolerable. My work was 

 tedious and laborious, and it took up an unreason- 

 able proportion of my time; I was ill clothed, ill 

 fed, ill housed, ill educated and ill trained; my will 

 was suppressed and cramped to the pitch of torture; 

 I had no reasonable pride in myself, and no reason- 

 able chance of putting anything right. It was a life 

 hardly worth living. That a large proportion of the 

 people about had no better lot, that many had a 

 worse, does not affect these facts. It was a life in 

 which contentment would have been disgraceful. If 

 some of them were contented or resigned, so much 

 the worse for everyone. No doubt it was hasty and 

 foolish of me to throw up my situation, but every- 

 thing was so obviously aimless and foolish in our 

 social organisation that I do not feel disposed to 

 blame myself even for that, except in so far as it 

 pained my mother and caused her anxiety. 



Think of the one comprehensive fact of the lock- 

 out ! 



■ That year was a bad year, a year of world-wide 

 economic disorganisation. Through their want of in- 

 telligent direction, the great " trust " of American 

 ironmasters, a gang of energetic, narrow-minded fur- 

 nace-owners, had smelted far more iron than the 

 whole world had any demand for. (In those days 

 there existed no means of estimating any need of that 

 sort beforehand.) They had done this without even 

 consulting the ironmasters of any other country. 

 During their period of activity they had drawn into 

 their employment a great numlier of workers, and 

 had erected a huge productive plant. It is mani- 

 festly just that people who do headlong stupid things 

 of this sort should suffer, but in the old days it was 

 quite possible, it was customary, for the real blun- 

 derers in such disasters to shift nearly all the con- 

 sequences of their incapacity. No one thought it 

 wrong for a light-witted " captain of industry " who 

 had led his workpeople into over-production — into 

 the disproportionate manufacture, that is to say, of 

 seme particular article — to abandon and dismiss 

 them. Nor was there anj-thing to prevent the sudden 

 frantic underselling of some trade rival in order to 

 surprise and destroy his trade, secure his customers 



