It was a happy inspiration that made Mr. Gibson call these scenes _Daily Bread_; for it is the struggle, not for comfort, but for existence, that drives these men from mother, wife, and child into the thick of the fight. Many novels and plays are written nowadays against "big business," where, among other real and imagined evils, the Business itself is represented as the villain in the home, alienating the husband's affections from wife and children. Whatever may be the case with the private soldiers, the Captain of Industry does not, and by the nature of things cannot, confine his labours to an eight-hour day--when he finally comes home, he brings the business with him, forming a more well-founded cause of jealousy than the one usually selected for conventional drama. Mr. Gibson, however, is not interested in the tragic few, but in the tragic many, and in his poems the man of the house leaves early and returns late. The industrial war caused by social conditions takes him from home as surely and as perilously as though he were drafted into an expeditionary force. The daily parting is poignant, for every member of the family knows he may not come back. Perhaps the most dramatic illustration of this corroding worry is seen in _The Night-Shift_, where four women with a newly-born baby spend a night of agonized waiting, only to have their fears confirmed in the dawn. The wife, weak from childbirth, sits up in bed, and speaks: Will no one stop that tapping? I cannot sleep for it. I think that someone is shut in somewhere, And trying to get out. Will no one let them out, And stop the tapping? It keeps on tapping, tapping.... Tap ... tap ... tap ... tap.... And I can scarcely breathe, The darkness is so thick. It stifles me, And weighs so heavily upon me, And drips, and drips.... My hair is wet already; There's water all about my knees.... As though great rocks were hanging overhead! And dripping, dripping.... I cannot lift my feet, The water holds them, It's creeping ... creeping ... creeping.... My wet hair drags me down. Ah, God! Will no one stop that tapping.... I cannot sleep.... And I would sleep Till he comes home.... Tap ... tap ... tap ... tap.... These poems were, of course, composed before the war. In the greater tragedy, some of the lesser ones disappear. For example, Mr. Gibson represents young, able-bodied, healthy and temperate men as unable to find work of any kind; their wives and children starve because of the absence of employment. Surely, since August, 1914, this particular cause of suffering has been removed.