"But what I do see here in this England of ours is that labour is dissociating itself from work. It is labouring all day, and bringing forth--as little as it can! It claims the right to do this little. Well! let it if it likes! But why should it deny to any man the right to work at the rate of which he was born physically capable? Why should it make a swift worker take eight hours to do what he can do in four? If I were to put any one of you on oath, you would admit that it is far harder work to dawdle through eight hours than to work through eight hours. I've seen many bricklayers, painters, plasterers lately hard put to it how to eke out the time, and yet preserve an air of occupation, and I have no doubt you have most of you felt this. Now, think what this means. It is labour, _hard labour!_ this, the enslavement of free work. Neither body nor mind gain full exercise, muscles and brain decay, the type goes down. But this is the system of the day; we begin it in school, where we let children dawdle eleven years over what they ought to learn in half the time. It greets the boy in his first workshop--it dogs his footsteps everywhere, turning work into labour. Work is--is play! Labour is--is the Devil! What beats me is this. Why, instead of slaving and dawdling, shouldn't the good workman, classed together, of course, be allowed to work, say, four hours, and then go their way? It would give us some chance of breeding a type of Englishman that is now fast dying out, that soon must pass away altogether. Men! don't be fools! Men! don't be slaves. "That is all I have to say. Now for the payment. This is a free deed of gift of these works, made out, with a few necessary legal restrictions, in the name of you delegates, to be held in trust for the workers therein, and this is a cheque for the capital necessary to work it for six months. I have already signed both. I was so certain, you see, that your friend and leader, Mr. Green, would reject my other very reasonable proposals that I came prepared. Will you take them, Mr. Green? My solicitor is here, and you can arrange with him: my part is done!" "Am I to understand----" almost gasped Mr. Green. Lord Blackborough's face sharpened to the keenest edge of contempt. "Yes! You are to understand, sir, that, tired of being abused up hill and down dale in your organs for behaving like a sensible man, I am behaving like a fool. Well, men! Labour and Capital have for once met and kissed each other. See that they don't fall out again!" Mr. Green stood with the papers in his hand for a second then he flung them on the table. "You fling our own money to us as if we were dogs!" he began hotly.