Thanks to _Ruth's_ pleading, the firm of _James How & Son_ is willing to take _Falder_ back in their employ, on condition that he give up _Ruth_. _Falder_ resents this: _Falder._ I couldn't give her up. I couldn't! Oh, sir! I'm all she's got to look to. And I'm sure she's all I've got. It is then that _Falder_ learns the awful news that the woman he loves had been driven by the chariot wheel of Justice to sell herself. _Ruth._ I tried making skirts ... cheap things. It was the best I could get, but I never made more than ten shillings a week, buying my own cotton and working all day; I hardly ever got to bed till past twelve. I kept at it for nine months.... It was starvation for the children.... And then ... my employer happened--he's happened ever since. At this terrible psychologic moment the police appear to drag _Falder_ back to prison for failing to report to the authorities as ticket-of-leave man. Completely overcome by the inexorability of his fate, _Falder_ throws himself down the stairs, breaking his neck. The socio-revolutionary significance of "Justice" consists not only in the portrayal of the inhuman system which grinds the Falders and Honeywills, but even more so in the utter helplessness of society as expressed in the words of the Senior Clerk, _Cokeson_, "No one'll touch him now! Never again! He's safe with gentle Jesus!" THE PIGEON John Galsworthy calls this play a fantasy. To me it seems cruelly real: it demonstrates that the best human material is crushed in the fatal mechanism of our life. "The Pigeon" also discloses to us the inadequacy of charity, individual and organized, to cope with poverty, as well as the absurdity of reformers and experimenters who attempt to patch up effects while they ignore the causes. _Christopher Wellwyn_, an artist, a man deeply in sympathy with all human sorrow and failings, generously shares his meager means with everyone who applies to him for help. His daughter _Ann_ is of a more practical turn of mind. She cannot understand that giving is as natural and necessary to her father as light and air; indeed, the greatest joy in life. Perhaps _Ann_ is actuated by anxiety for her father who is so utterly "hopeless" that he would give away his "last pair of trousers." From her point of view "people who beg are rotters": decent folk would not stoop to begging. But _Christopher Wellwyn's_ heart is too full of humanity to admit of such a straight-laced attitude. "We're not all the same.... One likes to be friendly. What's the use of being alive if one isn't?"