their condition still
more and still more, until at last the result would be a practical
equality (they were very fond of using the word 'practical'), because
'the rich' would be forced to pay so much for keeping 'the poor' in a
tolerable condition that the condition of riches would become no longer
valuable and would gradually die out. Do you follow me?"

"Partly," said I. "Go on."

Said old Hammond: "Well, since you follow me, you will see that as a
theory this was not altogether unreasonable; but 'practically,' it turned
out a failure."

"How so?" said I.

"Well, don't you see," said he, "because it involved the making of a
machinery by those who didn't know what they wanted the machines to do.
So far as the masses of the oppressed class furthered this scheme of
improvement, they did it to get themselves improved slave-rations--as
many of them as could. And if those classes had really been incapable of
being touched by that instinct which produced the passion for freedom and
equality aforesaid, what would have happened, I think, would have been
this: that a certain part of the working classes would have been so far
improved in condition that they would have approached the condition of
the middling rich men; but below them would have been a great class of
most miserable slaves, whose slavery would have been far more hopeless
than the older class-slavery had been."

"What stood in the way of this?" said I.

"Why, of course," said he, "just that instinct for freedom aforesaid. It
is true that the slave-class could not conceive the happiness of a free
life. Yet they grew to understand (and very speedily too) that they were
oppressed by their masters, and they assumed, you see how justly, that
they could do without them, though perhaps they scarce knew how; so that
it came to this, that though they could not look forward to the happiness
or peace of the freeman, they did at least look forward to the war which
a vague hope told them would bring that peace about."

"Could you tell me rather more closely what actually took place?" said I;
for I thought _him_ rather vague here.

"Yes," he said, "I can. That machinery of life for the use of people who
didn't know what they wanted of it, and which was known at the time as
State Socialism, was partly put in motion, though in a very piecemeal
way. But it did not work smoothly; it was, of course, resisted at every
turn by the capitalists; and no wonder, for it tend