n altogether, but supplied
practically all but the very highest and most responsible labour
throughout the world. Nearly a third of the population of the world were
its serfs and debtors from the cradle to the grave.

In this practical, unsentimental way the problem of the unemployed had
been most satisfactorily met and overcome. No one starved in the public
ways, and no rags, no costume less sanitary and sufficient than the
Labour Company's hygienic but inelegant blue canvas, pained the eye
throughout the whole world. It was the constant theme of the
phonographic newspapers how much the world had progressed since
nineteenth-century days, when the bodies of those killed by the
vehicular traffic or dead of starvation, were, they alleged, a common
feature in all the busier streets.

Denton and Elizabeth sat apart in the waiting-room until their turn
came. Most of the others collected there seemed limp and taciturn, but
three or four young people gaudily dressed made up for the quietude of
their companions. They were life clients of the Company, born in the
Company's _creche_ and destined to die in its hospital, and they had
been out for a spree with some shillings or so of extra pay. They talked
vociferously in a later development of the Cockney dialect, manifestly
very proud of themselves.

Elizabeth's eyes went from these to the less assertive figures. One
seemed exceptionally pitiful to her. It was a woman of perhaps
forty-five, with gold-stained hair and a painted face, down which
abundant tears had trickled; she had a pinched nose, hungry eyes, lean
hands and shoulders, and her dusty worn-out finery told the story of her
life. Another was a grey-bearded old man in the costume of a bishop of
one of the high episcopal sects--for religion was now also a business,
and had its ups and downs. And beside him a sickly, dissipated-looking
boy of perhaps two-and-twenty glared at Fate.

Presently Elizabeth and then Denton interviewed the manageress--for the
Company preferred women in this capacity--and found she possessed an
energetic face, a contemptuous manner, and a particularly unpleasant
voice. They were given various checks, including one to certify that
they need not have their heads cropped; and when they had given their
thumb-marks, learnt the number corresponding thereunto, and exchanged
their shabby middle-class clothes for duly numbered blue canvas suits,
they repaired to the huge plain dining-room for their fir