g enough,
when he would be unable to work any more.

He thought of his child. Was he to be a slave and a drudge all his
life also?

It would be better for the boy to die now.

As Owen thought of his child's future there sprung up within him a
feeling of hatred and fury against the majority of his fellow workmen.

THEY WERE THE ENEMY. Those who not only quietly submitted like so many
cattle to the existing state of things, but defended it, and opposed
and ridiculed any suggestion to alter it.

THEY WERE THE REAL OPPRESSORS--the men who spoke of themselves as 'The
likes of us,' who, having lived in poverty and degradation all their
lives considered that what had been good enough for them was good
enough for the children they had been the cause of bringing into
existence.

He hated and despised them because the calmly saw their children
condemned to hard labour and poverty for life, and deliberately refused
to make any effort to secure for them better conditions than those they
had themselves.

It was because they were indifferent to the fate of THEIR children that
he would be unable to secure a natural and human life for HIS. It was
their apathy or active opposition that made it impossible to establish
a better system of society under which those who did their fair share
of the world's work would be honoured and rewarded. Instead of helping
to do this, they abased themselves, and grovelled before their
oppressors, and compelled and taught their children to do the same.
THEY were the people who were really responsible for the continuance of
the present system.

Owen laughed bitterly to himself. What a very comical system it was.

Those who worked were looked upon with contempt, and subjected to every
possible indignity. Nearly everything they produced was taken away
from them and enjoyed by the people who did nothing. And then the
workers bowed down and grovelled before those who had robbed them of
the fruits of their labour and were childishly grateful to them for
leaving anything at all.

No wonder the rich despised them and looked upon them as dirt. They
WERE despicable. They WERE dirt. They admitted it and gloried in it.

While these thoughts were seething in Owen's mind, his fellow workmen
were still patiently toiling on downstairs. Most of them had by this
time dismissed Hunter from their thoughts. They did not take things so
seriously as Owen. They flattered themselves that they had more sen