oed Crass's
sentiments, but Owen laughed contemptuously.

'Yes, it's quite true that we gets a lot of stuff from foreign
countries,' said Harlow, 'but they buys more from us than we do from
them.'

'Now you think you know a 'ell of a lot,' said Crass. ''Ow much more
did they buy from us last year, than we did from them?'

Harlow looked foolish: as a matter of fact his knowledge of the subject
was not much wider than Crass's. He mumbled something about not having
no 'ed for figures, and offered to bring full particulars next day.

'You're wot I call a bloody windbag,' continued Crass; 'you've got a
'ell of a lot to say, but wen it comes to the point you don't know
nothin'.'

'Why, even 'ere in Mugsborough,' chimed in Sawkins--who though still
lying on the dresser had been awakened by the shouting--'We're overrun
with 'em! Nearly all the waiters and the cook at the Grand Hotel where
we was working last month is foreigners.'

'Yes,' said old Joe Philpot, tragically, 'and then thers all them
Hitalian horgin grinders, an' the blokes wot sells 'ot chestnuts; an'
wen I was goin' 'ome last night I see a lot of them Frenchies sellin'
hunions, an' a little wile afterwards I met two more of 'em comin' up
the street with a bear.'

Notwithstanding the disquieting nature of this intelligence, Owen again
laughed, much to the indignation of the others, who thought it was a
very serious state of affairs. It was a dam' shame that these people
were allowed to take the bread out of English people's mouths: they
ought to be driven into the bloody sea.

And so the talk continued, principally carried on by Crass and those
who agreed with him. None of them really understood the subject: not
one of them had ever devoted fifteen consecutive minutes to the earnest
investigation of it. The papers they read were filled with vague and
alarming accounts of the quantities of foreign merchandise imported
into this country, the enormous number of aliens constantly arriving,
and their destitute conditions, how they lived, the crimes they
committed, and the injury they did to British trade. These were the
seeds which, cunningly sown in their minds, caused to grow up within
them a bitter undiscriminating hatred of foreigners. To them the
mysterious thing they variously called the 'Friscal Policy', the
'Fistical Policy', or the 'Fissical Question' was a great Anti-Foreign
Crusade. The country was in a hell of a state, poverty, hunger and