he upturned pails and the drawers of the dresser. The
floor unswept and littered with dirt, scraps of paper, bits of plaster,
pieces of lead pipe and dried mud; and in the midst, the steaming
bucket of stewed tea and the collection of cracked cups, jam-jam and
condensed milk tins. And on the seats the men in their shabby and in
some cases ragged clothing sitting and eating their coarse food and
cracking jokes.

It was a pathetic and wonderful and at the same time a despicable
spectacle. Pathetic that human beings should be condemned to spend the
greater part of their lives amid such surroundings, because it must be
remembered that most of their time was spent on some job or other.
When 'The Cave' was finished they would go to some similar 'job', if
they were lucky enough to find one. Wonderful, because although they
knew that they did more than their fair share of the great work of
producing the necessaries and comforts of life, they did not think they
were entitled to a fair share of the good things they helped to create!
And despicable, because although they saw their children condemned to
the same life of degradation, hard labour and privation, yet they
refused to help to bring about a better state of affairs. Most of them
thought that what had been good enough for themselves was good enough
for their children.

It seemed as if they regarded their own children with a kind of
contempt, as being only fit to grow up to be the servants of the
children of such people as Rushton and Sweater. But it must be
remembered that they had been taught self-contempt when they were
children. In the so-called 'Christian' schools, they attended then
they were taught to 'order themselves lowly and reverently towards
their betters', and they were now actually sending their own children
to learn the same degrading lessons in their turn! They had a vast
amount of consideration for their betters, and for the children of
their betters, but very little for their own children, for each other,
or for themselves.

That was why they sat there in their rags and ate their coarse food,
and cracked their coarser jokes, and drank the dreadful tea, and were
content! So long as they had Plenty of Work and plenty
of--Something--to eat, and somebody else's cast-off clothes to wear,
they were content! And they were proud of it. They gloried in it.
They agreed and assured each other that the good things of life were
not intended for the 'Likes