Imagine this poor London clerk, whose house stands on land owned by a peer worth L300,000 a year, whose "boss" makes L50,000 a year out of timber or coals, whose pipe pays four shillings taxes on every shilling's worth of tobacco (while the rich man's cigar pays a tax of five shillings in the pound), whose children go to the board school, while those of the coalowner, the company promoter, the railway director, and the landlord go to the university. Imagine this man, anxious, worried, overworked, poor, and bled by a horde of rich parasites. Imagine him standing in a well-dressed crowd, amongst the diamond shops, fur shops, and costly furniture shops of Regent Street, and asking with a bitter sneer where John Burns got his new suit of clothes. Is it not marvellous? He does not ask who gets the 4s. on his pound of smoking mixture! Nor why he pays 4s. a thousand for bad gas (as I did in Finchley) while the Manchester clerk gets good gas for 2s. 2d.! Nor does he ask why the Duke of Bedford should put a tax on his wife's apple pudding or his children's bananas! He does not even ask what became of the L80,000,000 which the coal-owners wrung out of the public when he, the poor clerk, was paying 2s. per cwt. for coal for his tiny parlour grate! No. The question he asks is: Where Ben Tillett got his new straw hat! How the Duke, and the Coalowner, and the Money-lender, and the Jerry-builder must laugh! Yet so it is. It is not the landlord, the company promoter, the coalowner, the jerry-builder, and all the other useless rich who prey upon his wife and his children whom he mistrusts. His enemies, poor man, are the Socialists; the men and women who work for him, teach him, sacrifice their health, their time, their money, and their prospects to awaken his manhood, to sting his pride, to drive the mists of prejudice from his worried mind and give his common sense a chance. _These_ are the men and women he despises and mistrusts. And he reads the _Daily Mail_, and shudders at the name of the _Clarion_; and he votes for Mr. Facing-both-ways and Lord Plausible, and is filled with bitterness because of honest John's summer trousers. Again I tell you, Mr. Smith, that I do not wish to stir up class hatred. Lady Dedlock, wife of the great ground landlord, is a charming lady, handsome, clever, and very kind to the poor. But if I were a docker, and if my wife had to go out in leaky boots, or if my delicate child could not get sea air and nourishing food, I should be apt to ask whether his lordship, the great ground landlord, could not do with less rent and his sweet wife with fewer pearls. I should ask that. I should not think myself a man if I did not ask it; nor should I feel happy if I did not strain every nerve to get an answer.