G."
"I want to get out of this," said Graham to Asano. "This is not what I
came to see. Show me the workers. I want to see the people in blue. These
parasitic lunatics--"
He found himself wedged into a straggling mass of people.
CHAPTER XXI
THE UNDER-SIDE
From the Business Quarter they presently passed by the running ways into
a remote quarter of the city, where the bulk of the manufactures was
done. On their way the platforms crossed the Thames twice, and passed in
a broad viaduct across one of the great roads that entered the city from
the North. In both cases his impression was swift and in both very vivid.
The river was a broad wrinkled glitter of black sea water, overarched by
buildings, and vanishing either way into a blackness starred with
receding lights. A string of black barges passed seaward, manned by
blue-clad men. The road was a long and very broad and high tunnel, along
which big-wheeled machines drove noiselessly and swiftly. Here, too, the
distinctive blue of the Labour Department was in abundance. The
smoothness of the double tracks, the largeness and the lightness of the
big pneumatic wheels in proportion to the vehicular body, struck Graham
most vividly. One lank and very high carriage with longitudinal metallic
rods hung with the dripping carcasses of many hundred sheep arrested his
attention unduly. Abruptly the edge of the archway cut and blotted out
the picture.
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