ip of wealth had still
to come. Half the men in the world still lived out upon the free
countryside. The cities had still to devour them. I have heard the
stories out of the old books--there was nobility! Common men led lives
of love and faithfulness then--they did a thousand things. And you--you
come from that time."

"It was not--. But never mind. How is it now--?"

"Gain and the Pleasure Cities! Or slavery--unthanked, unhonoured,
slavery."

"Slavery!" he said.

"Slavery."

"You don't mean to say that human beings are chattels."

"Worse. That is what I want you to know, what I want you to see. I know
you do not know. They will keep things from you, they will take you
presently to a Pleasure City. But you have noticed men and women and
children in pale blue canvas, with thin yellow faces and dull eyes?"

"Everywhere."

"Speaking a horrible dialect, coarse and weak."

"I have heard it."

"They are the slaves--your slaves. They are the slaves of the Labour
Company you own."

"The Labour Company! In some way--that is familiar. Ah! now I remember.
I saw it when I was wandering about the city, after the lights returned,
great fronts of buildings coloured pale blue. Do you really mean--?"

"Yes. How can I explain it to you? Of course the blue uniform struck
you. Nearly a third of our people wear it--more assume it now every day.
This Labour Company has grown imperceptibly."

"What is this Labour Company?" asked Graham.

"In the old times, how did you manage with starving people?"

"There was the workhouse--which the parishes maintained."

"Workhouse! Yes--there was something. In our history lessons. I remember
now. The Labour Company ousted the workhouse. It grew--partly--out
of something--you, perhaps, may remember it--an emotional religious
organisation called the Salvation Army--that became a business company.
In the first place it was almost a charity. To save people from
workhouse rigours. Now I come to think of it, it was one of the earliest
properties your Trustees acquired. They bought the Salvation Army and
reconstructed it as this. The idea in the first place was to give work
to starving homeless people."

"Yes."

"Nowadays there are no workhouses, no refuges and charities, nothing but
that Company. Its offices are everywhere. That blue is its colour.
And any man, woman or child who comes to be hungry and weary and with
neither home nor friend nor resort, must go to the Company in the
end--