are always at the mercy of our masters,
and always in dread of the sack.'

'Any more questions?' said the chairman.

'Do you mean to say as the time will ever come when the gentry will mix
up on equal terms with the likes of us?' demanded the man behind the
moat, scornfully.

'Oh, no,' replied the lecturer. When we get Socialism there won't be
any people like us. Everybody will be civilized.'

The man behind the moat did not seem very satisfied with this answer,
and told the others that he could not see anything to laugh at.

'Is there any more questions?' cried Philpot. 'Now is your chance to
get some of your own back, but don't hall speak at once.'

'I should like to know who's goin' to do all the dirty work?' said
Slyme. 'If everyone is to be allowed to choose 'is own trade, who'd be
fool enough to choose to be a scavenger, a sweep, a dustman or a sewer
man? nobody wouldn't want to do such jobs as them and everyone would be
after the soft jobs.'

'Of course,' cried Crass, eagerly clutching at this last straw. 'The
thing sounds all right till you comes to look into it, but it wouldn't
never work!'

'It would be very easy to deal with any difficulty of that sort,'
replied Barrington, 'if it were found that too many people were
desirous of pursuing certain callings, it would be known that the
conditions attached to those kinds of work were unfairly easy, as
compared with other lines, so the conditions in those trades would be
made more severe. A higher degree of skill would be required. If we
found that too many persons wished to be doctors, architects, engineers
and so forth, we would increase the severity of the examinations. This
would scare away all but the most gifted and enthusiastic. We should
thus at one stroke reduce the number of applicants and secure the very
best men for the work--we should have better doctors, better
architects, better engineers than before.

'As regards those disagreeable tasks for which there was a difficulty
in obtaining volunteers, we should adopt the opposite means. Suppose
that six hours was the general thing; and we found that we could not
get any sewer men; we should reduce the hours of labour in that
department to four, or if necessary to two, in order to compensate for
the disagreeable nature of the work.

'Another way out of such difficulties would be to have a separate
division of the Industrial army to do all such work, and to make it
obligatory for every