the value of
the most celebrated pictures has not been questioned more than that
of any straight furrow in the arable world--as if it did not take an
apprenticeship of as many years to train the hand and eye of a mason or
blacksmith as of an artist--as if, in short, the fellow were a god, as
canting brain worshippers have for years past been assuring him he is.
Artists are the high priests of the modern Moloch. Nine out of ten of
them are diseased creatures, just sane enough to trade on their own
neuroses. The only quality of theirs which extorts my respect is a
certain sublime selfishness which makes them willing to starve and to
let their families starve sooner than do any work they don't like."

"INDEED you are quite wrong, Sidney. There was a girl at the Slade
school who supported her mother and two sisters by her drawing. Besides,
what can you do? People were made so."

"Yes; I was made a landlord and capitalist by the folly of the people;
but they can unmake me if they will. Meanwhile I have absolutely no
means of escape from my position except by giving away my slaves to
fellows who will use them no better than I, and becoming a slave myself;
which, if you please, you shall not catch me doing in a hurry. No, my
beloved, I must keep my foot on their necks for your sake as well as for
my own. But you do not care about all this prosy stuff. I am consumed
with remorse for having bored my darling. You want to know why I am
living here like a hermit in a vulgar two-roomed hovel instead of
tasting the delights of London society with my beautiful and devoted
young wife."

"But you don't intend to stay here, Sidney?"

"Yes, I do; and I will tell you why. I am helping to liberate those
Manchester laborers who were my father's slaves. To bring that
about, their fellow slaves all over the world must unite in a vast
international association of men pledged to share the world's work
justly; to share the produce of the work justly; to yield not a
farthing--charity apart--to any full-grown and able-bodied idler
or malingerer, and to treat as vermin in the commonwealth persons
attempting to get more than their share of wealth or give less than
their share of work. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish,
because working-men, like the people called their betters, do not always
understand their own interests, and will often actually help their
oppressors to exterminate their saviours to the tune of 'Rule
Britannia,' or so