ant soul and Ghetto greed, this fool's "efficiency," that rules our
world to-day.

Then Susan lunged for a time at the waitress life her sister led. "She
has 'er 'ome with us, but some--they haven't homes."

"They make a fuss about all this White Slave Traffic," said Susan, "but
if ever there were white slaves it's the girls who work for a living and
keep themselves respectable. And nobody wants to make an example of the
men who get rich out of _them_...."

And after some hearsay about the pressure in the bake-houses and the
accidents to the van-men, who worked on a speeding-up system that Sir
Isaac had adopted from an American business specialist, Susan's mental
discharge poured out into the particulars of the waitresses' strike and
her sister's share in that. "She _would_ go into it," said Susan, "she
let herself be drawn in. I asked her never to take the place. Better
Service, I said, a thousand times. I begged her, I could have begged her
on my bended knees...."

The immediate cause of the strike it seemed was the exceptional
disagreeableness of one of the London district managers. "He takes
advantage of his position," repeated Susan with face aflame, and Lady
Harman was already too wise about Susan's possibilities to urge her
towards particulars....

Now as Lady Harman listened to all this confused effective picturing of
the great catering business which was the other side of her husband and
which she had taken on trust so long, she had in her heart a quite
unreasonable feeling of shame that she should listen at all, a shyness,
as though she was prying, as though this really did not concern her. She
knew she had to listen and still she felt beyond her proper
jurisdiction. It is against instinct, it is with an enormous reluctance
that women are bringing their quick emotions, their flashing unstable
intelligences, their essential romanticism, their inevitable profound
generosity into the world of politics and business. If only they could
continue believing that all that side of life is grave and wise and
admirably managed for them they would. It is not in a day or a
generation that we shall un-specialize women. It is a wrench nearly as
violent as birth for them to face out into the bleak realization that
the man who goes out for them into business, into affairs, and returns
so comfortably loaded with housings and wrappings and trappings and
toys, isn't, as a matter of fact, engaged in benign creativeness while