stematically the
elements of the ethical and economic problem in Pittsburg or
Sheffield, I could not do better than take these few words as a text,
and divide them up like the heads of a sermon. Let me note the points
in some rough fashion here.

1.--_Father._ This word is still in use among the more ignorant and
ill-paid of the industrial community; and is the badge of an old
convention or unit called the family. A man and woman having vowed to
be faithful to each other, the man makes himself responsible for all
the children of the woman, and is thus generically called "Father." It
must not be supposed that the poet or singer is necessarily one of the
children. It may be the wife, called by the same ritual "Mother." Poor
English wives say "Father" as poor Irish wives say "Himself," meaning
the titular head of the house. The point to seize is that among the
ignorant this convention or custom still exists. Father and the family
are the foundations of thought; the natural authority still comes
natural to the poet; but it is overlaid and thwarted with more
artificial authorities; the official, the schoolmaster, the
policeman, the employer, and so on. What these forces fighting the
family are we shall see, my dear brethren, when we pass to our second
heading; which is:--

2.--_Got the Sack._ This idiom marks a later stage of the history of
the language than the comparatively primitive word "Father." It is
needless to discuss whether the term comes from Turkey or some other
servile society. In America they say that Father has been fired. But
it involves the whole of the unique economic system under which Father
has now to live. Though assumed by family tradition to be a master, he
can now, by industrial tradition, only be a particular kind of
servant; a servant who has not the security of a slave. If he owned
his own shop and tools, he could not get the sack. If his master owned
him, he could not get the sack. The slave and the guildsman know where
they will sleep every night; it was only the proletarian of
individualist industrialism who could get the sack, if not in the
style of the Bosphorus, at least in the sense of the Embankment. We
pass to the third heading.

3.--_From the Water-works._ This detail of Father's life is very
important; for this is the reply to most of the Socialists, as the
last section is to so many of the Capitalists. The water-works which
employed Father is a very large, official and impersonal i