Touch and Go | Page 7

a number of compounds, such as they keep niggers in in South Africa, and there you'll be kept. And every one of you'll have a little brass collar round his neck, with a number on it. You won't have names any more. And you'll go from the compound to the pit, and from the pit back again to the compound. You won't be allowed to go outside the gates, except at week-ends. They'll let you go home to your wives on Saturday nights, to stop over Sunday. But you'll have to be in again by half-past nine on Sunday night; and if you're late, you'll have your next week-end knocked off. And there you'll be-- and you'll be quite happy. They'll give you plenty to eat, and a can of beer a day, and a bit of bacca--and they'll provide dominoes and skittles for you to play with. And you'll be the most contented set of men alive.--But you won't be men. You won't even be animals. You'll go from number one to number three thousand, a lot of numbered slaves--a new sort of slaves---
VOICE. An' wheer shall thee be, Willie?
WILLIE. Oh, I shall be outside the palings, laughing at you. I shall have to laugh, because it'll be your own faults. You'll have nobody but yourself to thank for it. You don't WANT to be men. You'd rather NOT be free--much rather. You're like those people spoken of in Shakespeare: "Oh, how eager these men are to be slaves!" I believe it's Shakespeare--or the Bible--one or the other--it mostly is---
ANABEL WRATH (she was passing to church). It was Tiberius.
WILLIE. Eh?
ANABEL. Tiberius said it.
WILLIE. Tiberius!--Oh, did he? (Laughs.) Thanks! Well, if Tiberius said it, there must be something in it. and he only just missed being in the Bible anyway. He was a day late, or they'd have had him in. "Oh, how eager these men are to be slaves!"--It's evident the Romans deserved all they got from Tiberius--and you'll deserve all you get, every bit of it. But don't you bother, you'll get it. You won't be at the mercy of Tiberius, you'll be at the mercy of something a jolly sight worse. Tiberius took the skin off a few Romans, apparently. But you'll have the soul taken out of you--every one of you. And I'd rather lose my skin than my soul, any day. But perhaps you wouldn't.
VOICE. What art makin' for, Willie? Tha seems to say a lot, but tha goes round it. Tha'rt like a donkey on a gin. Tha gets ravelled.
WILLIE. Yes, that's just it. I am precisely like a donkey on a gin-- a donkey that's trying to wind a lot of colliers up to the surface. There's many a donkey that's brought more colliers than you up to see daylight, by trotting round.--But do you want to know what I'm making for? I can soon tell you that. You Barlow & Wasall's men, you haven't a soul to call your own. Barlow & Wasall's have only to say to one of you, Come, and he cometh, Go, and he goeth, Lie VOICE. Ay--an' what about it? Tha's got a behind o' thy own, hasn't yer?
WILLIE. Do you stand there and ask me what about it, and haven't the sense to alter it? Couldn't you set up a proper Government to-morrow, if you liked? Couldn't you contrive that the pits belonged to you, instead of you belonging to the pits, like so many old pit-ponies that stop down till they are blind, and take to eating coal-slack for meadow-grass, not knowing the difference? If only you'd learn to think, I'd respect you. As you are, I can't, not if I try my hardest. All you can think of is to ask for another shilling a day. That's as far as your imagination carries you. And perhaps you get sevenpence ha'penny, but pay for it with half-a-crown's worth of sweat. The masters aren't fools--as you are. They'll give you two-thirds of what you ask for, but they'll get five-thirds of it back again--and they'll get it out of your flesh and blood, too, in jolly hard work. Shylock wasn't in it with them. He only wanted a pound of flesh. But you cheerfully give up a pound a week, each one of you, and keep on giving it up.--But you don't seem to see these things. You can't think beyond your dinners and your 'lowance. You think if you can get another shilling a day you're set up. You make me tired, I tell you.
JOB ARTHUR FREER. We think of others besides ourselves.
WILLIE. Hello, Job Arthur--are you there? I didn't recognise you without your frock-coat and silk hat--on the Sabbath.--What was that you said? You think of something else, besides yourselves?--Oh ay-- I'm glad to