Review of Reviews, 1/8/06. 



In the Days of the Gotnet. 



205 



for one"s own distended needs, and shift a portion 

 of one's punishment upon him. This operation of 

 spasmodic underselling was known as " dumping." 

 The American ironmasters w^ere now dumping on the 

 British market. The British employers were, of 

 course, taking their loss out of their workpeople as 

 much as possible, but in addition they were agitating 

 for some legislation that would prevent — not stupid 

 relative excess in production, but " dumping " — not 

 the disease, but the consequences of the disease. 

 The necessary knowledge to prevent either dumping 

 or its cause, the uncorrected production of commo- 

 dities, did not exist, but this hardly weighed with 

 them at all ; and in response to their demands there 

 had arisen a curious party of retaliatory-protection- 

 ists who combined vague proposals for spasmodic 

 responses to these convulsive attacks from foreign 

 manufacturers, with the very evident intention of 

 achie\ing financial adventures. The dishonest and 

 reckless element were, indeed, so evident in this 

 movement as to add verji greatly to the general at- 

 mosphere of distrust and. insecurity, and in the re- 

 coil from the prospect of fiscal power in the hands 

 of the class of men know'n as the " New Financiers " 

 one heard frightened, old-fashioned statesmen assert- 

 ing with passion that " dumping " didn't occur, or 

 that it was a very charming sort of thing to happen. 

 Nobody would face and handle the rather intricate 

 truth of the business. The whole effect upon the 

 mind of a cool observer was of a covey of unsub- 

 stantial jabbering minds drifting over a series of ir- 

 rational economic cataclysnxs, prices and employment 

 tumbled about like towers in an earthquake, and 

 amidst the shifting mass were the common work- 

 people going on with their lives as well as they could, 

 suffering, perplexed, unorganised, and for anything 

 but violent, fruitless protests, impotent. You can- 

 not hope now to understand the infinite want of ad- 

 justment in the old order of things. At one time 

 there were people dying of actual starvation in India 

 while men were burning unsaleable wheat in Ameri- 

 ca. It sounds like the account of a particularly mad 

 dream, does it not? It was a dream, a dream from 

 which no one on earth expected an awakening. 



To us youngsters with the positiveness, the ra- 

 tionalism, of youth, it seemed that the strikes and 

 lock-outs, the over-production and misery, could not 

 pcssibly result simply from ignorance and want of 

 thought and feeling. We needed miore dramatic fac- 

 tors than these mental fogs, these mere atmospheric 

 devils. We fled therefore to that common refuge of 

 the unhappy ignorant, a belief in callous, insensate 

 plots — we called them " plots " — against the poor. 



You can still see how we figured it by looking up 

 in anv museum the caricatures of capital and labour 

 that adorned the German and American socialistic 

 papers of the old time. 



II. 



I had cast Nettie off in an eloquent epistle, had 

 really imagined the affair was over for ever — " I've 



done with women," I said to Parload — and then 

 there was silence for more than a week. 



Before that week was over, I was wondering with 

 a growing emotion what next would happen between 

 us. 



1 found myself thinking constantly of Nettie, pic- 

 turing hei — sometimes with stern satisfaction, some- 

 times with sympatheic remorse — mourning, regret- 

 ting, realising the absolute end that had come be- 

 tween us. At the bottom of my heart I no more 

 believed that there was an end between us than that 

 an end would come to the w'orld. Had we not 

 kissed each other, had we not achieved an atmo- 

 sphere of whispering nearness? Of course she was 

 mine, of course I was hers, and separations and final 

 quarrels and harshness and distance were no more 

 than flourishes upon that eternal fact. So at least I 

 felt the thing, however I shaped my thought ! 



Whenever my imagination got to work as that 

 week drew to its close, she came in as a matter of 

 course ; I thought of her reairrently all day and 

 dreamed of her at night. On Saturday night I 

 dieamed of her very vividly. In the morning I had 

 a raging thirst to see her. 



That Sunday, my mother wanted me to go to 

 church very particularly. She had a double reason 

 for that; she thought that it would certainly exer- 

 cise a favourable influence upon my search for a 

 situation throughout the next week, and in addition 

 Mr. Gabbitas, with a certain mystery behind his 

 glasses, had promised to see what he could do for 

 me, and she w-anted to keep him up to that promise. 

 I half consented, and then my desire for Nettie took 

 hold of me. I told my mother I wasn't going to 

 church, and set off about eleven to walk the seven- 

 teen miles to Checkshill. 



I got some bread and cheese at a little inn upon 

 the way, and w-as in Checkshill park somewhere 

 about four. I did not go by the road past the house 

 and so round to the gardens, but cut over the crest 

 beyond the second keeper's cottage, along a path 

 Nettie used to call her own. It was a mere deer 

 track. It led up a miniature valley and through a 

 pretty dell in which we had been accustomed to meet, 

 and so through the hollies and along a narrow path 

 close bv the wall of the shrubliery to the gardens. 



In my memory, that walk through the park be- 

 fore I came ujion Nettie stands out very vividly. 

 The long tramp before it is foreshortened to a mere 

 effect of dusty road and painful boot, but the 

 bracken valley and a sudden tumult of doubts and 

 unwonted expectations that came to me, stands out 

 now as something significant, as something unforget- 

 table, something essential to the meaning of all that 

 followed. Where should I meet her? What would 

 she say ? I had asked these questions before and 

 found an answer. Now they came again, with a 

 trail of fresh implications, and I had no answer for 

 them at all. As I approached Nettie, she ceased 



