s only ambition is to get a bit of work and keep it. At the best
he develops into the average working-man of the regions I have called
unknown. Mr. Paterson thus describes the class:

"These are the steady bulk of the community, insuring the
peace of the district by their habits and opinions far more
effectively than any vigilance of police or government. Yet,
if they are indeed satisfactory, how low are the civic standards
of England, how fallen the ideals and beauties of Christianity!
No man that has dreams can rest content because the English
worker has reached his high level of regular work and rare
intoxication."

One does not rest content; far from it. But the perpetual wonder is, not
that "the lower classes are brutalised," but that this brutality is so
tempered with generosity and sweetness. It is not their crime that
surprises, but their virtue; not their turbulence or discontent, but
their inexplicable acquiescence. And yet there are still people who
sneer at "the mob," "the vulgar herd," "the great unwashed," as though
principles, gentility, and soap were privileges in reward of merit, and
not the accidental luck of money's chaotic distribution.

XI

THE WORTH OF A PENNY

A year or two ago, some wondered why strike had arisen out of strike;
why the whole world of British labour had suddenly and all at once begun
to heave restlessly as though with earthquake; why the streams of
workpeople had in quick succession left the grooves along which they
usually ran from childhood to the grave. "It is entirely ridiculous,"
said the _Times_, with the sneer of educated scorn, "it is entirely
ridiculous to suppose that the whole industrial community has been
patiently enduring real grievances which are simultaneously discovered
to be intolerable." But to all outside the circle of the _Times_, the
only ridiculous part of the situation was that the industrial community
should patiently have endured their grievances so long.

That working people should simultaneously discover them to be
intolerable, is nothing strange. It is all very well to lie in gaol,
from which there seems no chance of escape. Treadmill, oakum, skilly,
and the rest--one may as well go through with them quietly, for fear of
something worse. But if word goes round that one or two prisoners have
crept out of gaol, who would not burn to follow? Would not grievances
then be simultaneously discovered to be intolerable? The seamen