course, none of those women were COMPELLED to engage in that
glorious cause. No one is compelled to accept any particular set of
conditions in a free country like this. Mr Trafaim--the manager of
Sweater's Homework Department--always put the matter before them in the
plainest, fairest possible way. There was the work: that was the
figure! And those who didn't like it could leave it. There was no
compulsion.

Sometimes some perverse creature belonging to that numerous class who
are too lazy to work DID leave it! But as the manager said, there were
plenty of others who were only too glad to take it. In fact, such was
the enthusiasm amongst these women--especially such of them as had
little children to provide for--and such was their zeal for the Cause,
that some of them have been known to positively beg to be allowed to
work!

By these and similar means Adam Sweater had contrived to lay up for
himself a large amount of treasure upon earth, besides attaining
undoubted respectability; for that he was respectable no one
questioned. He went to chapel twice every Sunday, his obese figure
arrayed in costly apparel, consisting--with other things--of grey
trousers, a long garment called a frock-coat, a tall silk hat, a
quantity of jewellery and a morocco-bound gilt-edged Bible. He was an
official of some sort of the Shining Light Chapel. His name appeared
in nearly every published list of charitable subscriptions. No
starving wretch had ever appealed to him in vain for a penny soup
ticket.

Small wonder that when this good and public-spirited man offered his
services to the town--free of charge--the intelligent working men of
Mugsborough accepted his offer with enthusiastic applause. The fact
that he had made money in business was a proof of his intellectual
capacity. His much-advertised benevolence was a guarantee that his
abilities would be used to further not his own private interests, but
the interests of every section of the community, especially those of
the working classes, of whom the majority of his constituents was
composed.

As for the shopkeepers, they were all so absorbed in their own
business--so busily engaged chasing their employees, adding up their
accounts, and dressing themselves up in feeble imitation of the
'Haristocracy'--that they were incapable of taking a really intelligent
interest in anything else. They thought of the Town Council as a kind
of Paradise reserved exclusively for jerry