I'll tell you what'll happen to you chaps. I'll give you a little
picture of what you'll be like in the future. Barlow & Walsall's 'll
make a number of compounds, such as they keep niggers in in South
Africa, and there you'll be kept. And every one of you'll have a little
brass collar round his neck, with a number on it. You won't have names
any more. And you'll go from the compound to the pit, and from the
pit back again to the compound. You won't be allowed to go outside the
gates, except at week-ends. They'll let you go home to your wives on
Saturday nights, to stop over Sunday. But you'll have to be in again
by half-past nine on Sunday night; and if you're late, you'll have your
next week-end knocked off. And there you'll be--and you'll be quite
happy. They'll give you plenty to eat, and a can of beer a day, and a
bit of bacca--and they'll provide dominoes and skittles for you to play
with. And you'll be the most contented set of men alive.--But you won't
be men. You won't even be animals. You'll go from number one to number
three thousand, a lot of numbered slaves--a new sort of slaves---

VOICE. An' wheer shall thee be, Willie?

WILLIE. Oh, I shall be outside the palings, laughing at you. I shall
have to laugh, because it'll be your own faults. You'll have nobody but
yourself to thank for it. You don't WANT to be men. You'd rather NOT be
free--much rather. You're like those people spoken of in Shakespeare:
"Oh, how eager these men are to be slaves!" I believe it's
Shakespeare--or the Bible--one or the other--it mostly is---

ANABEL WRATH (she was passing to church). It was Tiberius.

WILLIE. Eh?

ANABEL. Tiberius said it.

WILLIE. Tiberius!--Oh, did he? (Laughs.) Thanks! Well, if Tiberius said
it, there must be something in it, and he only just missed being in the
Bible anyway. He was a day late, or they'd have had him in. "Oh, how
eager these men are to be slaves!"--It's evident the Romans deserved all
they got from Tiberius--and you'll deserve all you get, every bit of
it. But don't you bother, you'll get it. You won't be at the mercy
of Tiberius, you'll be at the mercy of something a jolly sight worse.
Tiberius took the skin off a few Romans, apparently. But you'll have
the soul taken out of you--every one of you. And I'd rather lose my skin
than my soul, any day. But perhaps you wouldn't.

VOICE. What art makin' for, Willie? Tha seems to say a lot, but tha goes
round it. Tha'rt like a donkey on a gi