"In England we do not flog our white slaves. We only break their nerves, crush their spirit, and bully the manhood out of them. Two of my fellow-workers went out of their minds; one of us took his own life. You look incredulous--you think that sort of thing uncommon. They haven't enough mind left, most of them, to go out of it, so abject and cringing and timid do they become; and they haven't enough pluck left in them--broken-spirited as they are--to take their lives. So they only die, the weakly ones, or drag out their wretched lives, the strong ones, in daily terror of being discharged and of being thrown homeless, moneyless, to starve upon the streets. Perhaps to starve, and so to make an end of it, would be the best thing that could happen to them. For many employers, in addition to the sweating, encourage a system which leaves their employees with less spirit to call their own than a dog, less soul in their wretched bodies than a worm. "In many business houses a system of espionage is established by which the wretched workers are encouraged to sneak and pry and play the cut-throat upon each other. If your fellow-slave gets two shillings a week more than you get, and you can detect him in a moment's slackness, a single mistake, and report it to the employer, it is possible that the poor wretch may be discharged and you may get his post and his extra pay. But you, in your turn, know that the man immediately below you is watching you greedily and in the same way, lest you, also, be guilty of a slip or an omission that, by reporting the matter to his principals, he may work you out, as you had worked out your predecessor, and so he may slip into your vacant shoes and your pay. "It is a system of infamy--a system which breeds men and women who are lower in the scale of being than a louse. You think I exaggerate. But do you know what it is to wake up each morning so weary that you had scarce the strength to struggle up that you might go forth to work for the day's bread? "I do, and so do tens of thousands in this London to-day. "Do you know what it is to be so broken of spirit, so weary of the cringing and the fawning, as to feel, each morning, that if death had come to you in the night, and so spared you this waking, you had counted it a happy release? "I do, and so do tens of thousands in this London to-day. "And, more terrible still, do you know what it is to be so abject a thing, so infamous a creature, that you are content to play the cut-throat to your fellow-slave, to pry and spy and carry tales, in the hope that you may be appointed to replace him, and so put another shilling a week in your own pocket, and another sovereign in that of the tyrant and blood-sucker, to curry favour with whom you are ready to do this infamous thing? "Again I say I do; again I say, and so do tens of thousands in this city of London to-day.