Presently he learnt from a Silvertown employer what that concealed aspect was. Dowd was "that sort of man who makes trouble," disposed to strike rather than not upon a grievance, with a taste for open-air meetings, a member, obstinately adherent in spite of friendly remonstrance, of the Social Democratic Party. This in spite of his clear duty to a wife and two small white knobby children. For a time he would not talk to Trafford of anything but business--Trafford was so manifestly the enemy, not to be trusted, the adventurous plutocrat, the exploiter--when at last Dowd did open out he did so defiantly, throwing opinions at Trafford as a mob might hurl bricks at windows. At last they achieved a sort of friendship and understanding, an amiability as it were, in hostility, but never from first to last would he talk to Trafford as one gentleman to another; between them, and crossed only by flimsy, temporary bridges, was his sense of incurable grievances and fundamental injustice. He seemed incapable of forgetting the disadvantages of his birth and upbringing, the inferiority and disorder of the house that sheltered him, the poor food that nourished him, the deadened air he breathed, the limited leisure, the inadequate books. Implicit in his every word and act was the assurance that but for this handicap he could have filled Trafford's place, while Trafford would certainly have failed in his. For all these things Dowd made Trafford responsible; he held him to that inexorably. "_You_ sweat us," he said, speaking between his teeth; "_you_ limit us, _you_ stifle us, and away there in the West-end, _you_ and the women you keep waste the plunder." Trafford attempted palliation. "After all," he said, "it's not me so particularly----" "But it is," said Dowd. "It's the system things go upon." "You're the responsible part of it. _You_ have freedom, _you_ have power and endless opportunity--" Trafford shrugged his shoulders. "It's because your sort wants too much," said Dowd, "that my sort hasn't enough." "Tell me how to organize things better." "Much you'd care. They'll organize themselves. Everything is drifting to class separation, the growing discontent, the growing hardship of the masses.... Then you'll see." "Then what's going to happen?" "Overthrow. And social democracy." "How is that going to work?" Dowd had been cornered by that before. "I don't care if it _doesn't_ work," he snarled, "so long as we smash up this. We're getting too sick to care what comes after." "Dowd," said Trafford abruptly, "_I'm_ not so satisfied with things." Dowd looked at him askance. "You'll get reconciled to it," he said. "It's ugly here--but it's all right there--at the spending end.... Your sort has got to grab, your sort has got to spend--until the thing works out and the social revolution makes an end of you." "And then?" Dowd became busy with his work. Trafford stuck his hands in his pockets and stared out of the dingy factory window.