n. Tha gets ravelled.

WILLIE. Yes, that's just it. I am precisely like a donkey on a gin--a
donkey that's trying to wind a lot of colliers up to the surface.
There's many a donkey that's brought more colliers than you up to see
daylight, by trotting round.--But do you want to know what I'm making
for? I can soon tell you that. You Barlow & Wasall's men, you haven't a
soul to call your own. Barlow & Wasall's have only to say to one of you,
Come, and he cometh, Go, and he goeth, Lie VOICE. Ay--an' what about it?
Tha's got a behind o' thy own, hasn't yer?

WILLIE. Do you stand there and ask me what about it, and haven't the
sense to alter it? Couldn't you set up a proper Government to-morrow, if
you liked? Couldn't you contrive that the pits belonged to you, instead
of you belonging to the pits, like so many old pit-ponies that stop down
till they are blind, and take to eating coal-slack for meadow-grass, not
knowing the difference? If only you'd learn to think, I'd respect you.
As you are, I can't, not if I try my hardest. All you can think of is
to ask for another shilling a day. That's as far as your imagination
carries you. And perhaps you get sevenpence ha'penny, but pay for it
with half-a-crown's worth of sweat. The masters aren't fools--as you
are. They'll give you two-thirds of what you ask for, but they'll get
five-thirds of it back again--and they'll get it out of your flesh and
blood, too, in jolly hard work. Shylock wasn't in it with them. He only
wanted a pound of flesh. But you cheerfully give up a pound a week, each
one of you, and keep on giving it up.--But you don't seem to see these
things. You can't think beyond your dinners and your 'lowance. You think
if you can get another shilling a day you're set up. You make me tired,
I tell you.

JOB ARTHUR FREER. We think of others besides ourselves.

WILLIE. Hello, Job Arthur--are you there? I didn't recognise you without
your frock-coat and silk hat--on the Sabbath.--What was that you said?
You think of something else, besides yourselves?--Oh ay--I'm glad to
hear it. Did you mean your own importance?

(A motor car, GERALD BARLOW driving, OLIVER TURTON with him has
pulled up.)

JOB ARTHUR (glancing at the car). No, I didn't.

WILLIE. Didn't you, though?--Come, speak up, let us have it. The more
the merrier. You were going to say something.

JOB ARTHUR. Nay, you were doing the talking.

WILLIE. Yes, so I was, till you interrupted, with a g