ceding year had thrust great masses of the proletariat beneath the
starvation line, and the continued and wide-reaching disorder had but
sunk them deeper. Millions of people were starving, while the oligarchs
and their supporters were surfeiting on the surplus.* We called these
wretched people the people of the abyss,** and it was to alleviate their
awful suffering that the socialists had introduced the unemployed bill.
But this was not to the fancy of the Iron Heel. In its own way it was
preparing to set these millions to work, but the way was not our way,
wherefore it had issued its orders that our bill should be voted down.
Ernest and his fellows knew that their effort was futile, but they
were tired of the suspense. They wanted something to happen. They were
accomplishing nothing, and the best they hoped for was the putting of an
end to the legislative farce in which they were unwilling players.
They knew not what end would come, but they never anticipated a more
disastrous end than the one that did come.

* The same conditions obtained in the nineteenth century
A.D. under British rule in India. The natives died of
starvation by the million, while their rulers robbed them of
the fruits of their toil and expended it on magnificent
pageants and mumbo-jumbo fooleries. Perforce, in this
enlightened age, we have much to blush for in the acts of
our ancestors. Our only consolation is philosophic. We
must accept the capitalistic stage in social evolution as
about on a par with the earlier monkey stage. The human had
to pass through those stages in its rise from the mire and
slime of low organic life. It was inevitable that much of
the mire and slime should cling and be not easily shaken
off.

** The people of the abyss--this phrase was struck out by
the genius of H. G. Wells in the late nineteenth century
A.D. Wells was a sociological seer, sane and normal as well
as warm human. Many fragments of his work have come down to
us, while two of his greatest achievements, "Anticipations"
and "Mankind in the Making," have come down intact. Before
the oligarchs, and before Everhard, Wells speculated upon
the building of the wonder cities, though in his writings
they are referred to as "pleasure cities."

I sat in the gallery that day. We all knew that something terrible was
imminent. It was in the air, and its p