"
"Workhouse! Yes--there was something. In our history lessons. I remember
now. The Labour Department ousted the workhouse. It grew--partly--out of
something--you, perhaps, may remember it--an emotional religious
organisation called the Salvation Army--that became a business company.
In the first place it was almost a charity. To save people from workhouse
rigours. There had been a great agitation against the workhouse. Now I
come to think of it, it was one of the earliest properties your Trustees
acquired. They bought the Salvation Army and reconstructed it as this.
The idea in the first place was to organise the labour of starving
homeless people."
"Yes."
"Nowadays there are no workhouses, no refuges and charities, nothing but
that Department. Its offices are everywhere. That blue is its colour. And
any man, woman or child who comes to be hungry and weary and with neither
home nor friend nor resort, must go to the Department in the end--or seek
some way of death. The Euthanasy is beyond their means--for the poor
there is no easy death. And at any hour in the day or night there is
food, shelter and a blue uniform for all comers--that is the first
condition of the Department's incorporation--and in return for a day's
shelter the Department extracts a day's work, and then returns the
visitor's proper clothing and sends him or her out again."
"Yes?"
"Perhaps that does not seem so terrible to you.
Pages:
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215