or seek some way of death. The Euthanasy is beyond their means--for
the poor there is no easy death. And at any hour in the day or night
there is food, shelter and a blue uniform for all comers--that is the
first condition of the Company's incorporation--and in return for a
day's shelter the Company extracts a day's work, and then returns the
visitor's proper clothing and sends him or her out again."

"Yes?"

"Perhaps that does not seem so terrible to you. In your days men starved
in your streets. That was bad. But they died--men. These people in
blue--. The proverb runs: 'Blue canvas once and ever.' The Company
trades in their labour, and it has taken care to assure itself of the
supply. People come to it starving and helpless--they eat and sleep for
a night and day, they--work for a day, and at the end of the day they go
out again. If they have worked well they have a penny or so--enough
for a theatre or a cheap dancing place, or a kinematograph story, or
a dinner or a bet. They wander about after that is spent. Begging is
prevented by the police of the ways. Besides, no one gives. They come
back again the next day or the day after--brought back by the same
incapacity that brought them first. At last their proper clothing wears
out, or their rags get so shabby that they are ashamed. Then they must
work for months to get fresh. If they want fresh. A great number of
children are born under the Company's care. The mother owes them a
month thereafter--the children they cherish and educate until they
are fourteen, and they pay two years' service. You may be sure these
children are educated for the blue canvas. And so it is the Company
works."

"And none are destitute in the city?"

"None. They are either in blue canvas or in prison."

"If they will not work?"

"Most people will work at that pitch, and the Company has powers. There
are stages of unpleasantness in the work--stoppage of food--and a man or
woman who has refused to work once is known by a thumb-marking system
in the Company's offices all over the world. Besides, who can leave the
city poor? To go to Paris costs two Lions. And for insubordination
there are the prisons--dark and miserable--out of sight below. There are
prisons now for many things."

"And a third of the people wear this blue canvas?"

"More than a third. Toilers, living without pride or delight or hope,
with the stories of Pleasure Cities ringing in their ears, mocking their
shameful liv