r days people could stand such crudities, they were
nearer the barbaric by two hundred years."

They continued along one of the lower galleries of this cloisonne
factory, and came to a little bridge that spanned a vault. Looking
over the parapet, Graham saw that beneath was a wharf under yet more
tremendous archings than any he had seen. Three barges, smothered in
floury dust, were being unloaded of their cargoes of powdered felspar
by a multitude of coughing men, each guiding a little truck; the dust
filled the place with a choking mist, and turned the electric glare
yellow. The vague shadows of these workers gesticulated about their
feet, and rushed to and fro against a long stretch of white-washed wall.
Every now and then one would stop to cough.

A shadowy, huge mass of masonry rising out of the inky water, brought
to Graham's mind the thought of the multitude of ways and galleries and
lifts, that rose floor above floor overhead between him and the sky. The
men worked in silence under the supervision of two of the Labour Police;
their feet made a hollow thunder on the planks along which they went
to and fro. And as he looked at this scene, some hidden voice in the
darkness began to sing.

"Stop that!" shouted one of the policemen, but the order was disobeyed,
and first one and then all the white-stained men who were working there
had taken up the beating refrain, singing it defiantly, the Song of
the Revolt. The feet upon the planks thundered now to the rhythm of the
song, tramp, tramp, tramp. The policeman who had shouted glanced at
his fellow, and Graham saw him shrug his shoulders. He made no further
effort to stop the singing.

And so they went through these factories and places of toil, seeing many
painful and grim things. But why should the gentle reader be depressed?
Surely to a refined nature our present world is distressing enough
without bothering ourselves about these miseries to come. We shall not
suffer anyhow. Our children may, but what is that to us? That walk left
on Graham's mind a maze of memories, fluctuating pictures of swathed
halls, and crowded vaults seen through clouds of dust, of intricate
machines, the racing threads of looms, the heavy beat of stamping
machinery, the roar and rattle of belt and armature, of ill-lit
subterranean aisles of sleeping places, illimitable vistas of pin-point
lights. And here the smell of tanning, and here the reek of a brewery
and here, unprecedented reeks.