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“‘Ullo,’ I says, ‘glad to see you ‘aven’t lost your job. Nothin’ like stickin’ to it, when you’ve dropped into somethin’ that really suits you.’

“‘What do you mean, Martha?’ ‘e says. ‘E’s not one of what I call your smart sort. It takes a bit of sarcasm to get through ‘is ‘ead.

“‘Well,’ I says, ‘you’re still on the old track, I see, looking for work. Take care you don’t ‘ave an accident one of these days and run up agen it before you’ve got time to get out of its way.’

“‘It’s these miserable foreigners,’ ‘e says. ‘Look at ’em,’ ‘e says.

“‘There’s enough of you doing that,’ I says. ‘I’ve got my room to put straight and three hours needlework to do before I can get to bed. But don’t let me ‘inder you. You might forget what work was like, if you didn’t take an opportunity of watching it now and then.’

“‘They come over ‘ere,’ ‘e says, ‘and take the work away from us chaps.’

“‘Ah,’ I says, ‘poor things, perhaps they ain’t married.’

“‘Lazy devils! ‘e says. ‘Look at ’em, smoking cigarettes. I could do that sort of work. There’s nothing in it. It don’t take ‘eathen foreigners to dab a bit of tar about a road.’

“‘Yes,’ I says, ‘you always could do anybody else’s work but your own.’

“‘I can’t find it, Martha,’ ‘e says.

“‘No,’ I says, ‘and you never will in the sort of places you go looking for it. They don’t ‘ang it out on lamp-posts, and they don’t leave it about at the street corners. Go ‘ome,’ I says, ‘and turn the mangle for your poor wife. That’s big enough for you to find, even in the dark.’

“Looking for work!” snorted Mrs. Wilkins with contempt; “we women never ‘ave much difficulty in finding it, I’ve noticed. There are times when I feel I could do with losing it for a day.”

“But what did he reply, Mrs. Wilkins,” I asked; “your brass-finishing friend, who was holding forth on the subject of Chinese cheap labour.” Mrs. Wilkins as a conversationalist is not easily kept to the point. I was curious to know what the working classes were thinking on the subject.

“Oh, that,” replied Mrs. Wilkins, “‘e did not say nothing. ‘E ain’t the sort that’s got much to say in an argument. ‘E belongs to the crowd that ‘angs about at the back, and does the shouting. But there was another of ’em, a young fellow as I feels sorry for, with a wife and three small children, who ‘asn’t ‘ad much luck for the last six months; and that through no fault of ‘is own, I should say, from the look of ‘im. ‘I was a fool,’ says ‘e, ‘when I chucked a good situation and went out to the war. They told me I was going to fight for equal rights for all white men. I thought they meant that all of us were going to ‘ave a better chance, and it seemed worth making a bit of sacrifice for, that did. I should be glad if they would give me a job in their mines that would enable me to feed my wife and children. That’s all I ask them for!'”

“It is a difficult problem, Mrs. Wilkins,” I said. “According to the mine owners–“

“Ah,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “They don’t seem to be exactly what you’d call popular, them mine owners, do they? Daresay they’re not as bad as they’re painted.”

“Some people, Mrs. Wilkins,” I said, “paint them very black. There are those who hold that the South African mine-owner is not a man at all, but a kind of pantomime demon. You take Goliath, the whale that swallowed Jonah, a selection from the least respectable citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah at their worst, Bluebeard, Bloody Queen Mary, Guy Fawkes, and the sea-serpent–or, rather, you take the most objectionable attributes of all these various personages, and mix them up together. The result is the South African mine-owner, a monster who would willingly promote a company for the putting on the market of a new meat extract, prepared exclusively from new-born infants, provided the scheme promised a fair and reasonable opportunity of fleecing the widow and orphan.”