ve got to
find the money.'

'Oh, for God's sake don't start no more arguments,' cried Harlow,
addressing Owen. 'We 'ad enough of that last week. You can't expect a
boss to employ a man when 'e's too old to work.'

'Of course not,' said Crass.

Philpot said--nothing.

'I don't see no sense in always grumblin',' Crass proceeded. 'These
things can't be altered. You can't expect there can be plenty of work
for everyone with all this 'ere labour-savin' machinery what's been
invented.'

'Of course,' said Harlow, 'the people what used to be employed on the
work what's now done by machinery, has to find something else to do.
Some of 'em goes to our trade, for instance: the result is there's too
many at it, and there ain't enough work to keep 'em all goin'.'

'Yes,' cried Crass, eagerly. 'That's just what I say. Machinery is
the real cause of the poverty. That's what I said the other day.'

'Machinery is undoubtedly the cause of unemployment,' replied Owen,
'but it's not the cause of poverty: that's another matter altogether.'

The others laughed derisively.

'Well, it seems to me to amount to the same thing,' said Harlow, and
nearly everyone agreed.

'It doesn't seem to me to amount to the same thing,' Owen replied. 'In
my opinion, we are all in a state of poverty even when we have
employment--the condition we are reduced to when we're out of work is
more properly described as destitution.'

'Poverty,' continued Owen after a short silence, 'consists in a
shortage of the necessaries of life. When those things are so scarce
or so dear that people are unable to obtain sufficient of them to
satisfy all their needs, those people are in a condition of poverty. If
you think that the machinery, which makes it possible to produce all
the necessaries of life in abundance, is the cause of the shortage, it
seems to me that there must be something the matter with your minds.'

'Oh, of course we're all bloody fools except you,' snarled Crass. 'When
they were servin' out the sense, they give you such a 'ell of a lot,
there wasn't none left for nobody else.'

'If there wasn't something wrong with your minds,' continued Owen, 'you
would be able to see that we might have "Plenty of Work" and yet be in
a state of destitution. The miserable wretches who toil sixteen or
eighteen hours a day--father, mother and even the little
children--making match-boxes, or shirts or blouses, have "plenty of
work", but I for one don't env