year, two hundred thousand, twenty thousand, or
any similar sum of cash for saying How;--that his wages are very
different, his work somewhat fitter for him. An Editor's
stipulated work is to apprise thee that it must be done. The
'way to do it,' is to try it, knowing that thou shalt die if it
be not done. There is the bare back, there is the web of cloth;
thou shalt cut me a coat to cover the bare back, thou whose trade
it is. 'Impossible?' Hapless Fraction, dost thou discern Fate
there, half unveiling herself in the gloom of the future, with
her gibbet-cords, her steel-whips, and very authentic Tailor's
Hell; waiting to see whether it is 'possible?' Out with thy
scissors, and cut that cloth or thy own windpipe!

Chapter IV

Captains of Industry

If I believed that Mammonism with its adjuncts was to continue
henceforth the one serious principle of our existence, I should
reckon it idle to solicit remedial measures from any Government,
the disease being insusceptible of remedy. Government can do
much, but it can in no wise do all. Government, as the most
conspicuous object in Society, is called upon to give signal of
what shall be done; and, in many ways, to preside over, further,
and command the doing of it. But the Government cannot do, by
all its signalling and commanding, what the Society is radically
indisposed to do.--In the long-run every Government is the exact
symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to
say, Like People like Government.--The main substance of this
immense Problem of Organising Labour, and first of all of
Managing the Working Classes, will, it is very clear, have to be
solved by those who stand practically in the middle of it; by
those who themselves work and preside over work. Of all that can
be enacted by any Parliament in regard to it, the germs must
already lie potentially extant in those two Classes, who are to
obey such enactment. A Human Chaos in which there is no light,
you vainly attempt to irradiate by light shed on it: order never
can arise there.

But it is my firm conviction that the 'Hell of England' will
_cease_ to be that of 'not making money;' that we shall get a
nobler Hell and a nobler Heaven! I anticipate light _in_ the
Human Chaos, glimmering, shining more and more; under manifold
true signals from without That light shall shine. Our deity no
longer being Mammon,--O Heavens, each man will then say to
himself: "Why su