"Not fair to pay them more than their wages!"
"No, of course it's not. Don't you see half the idea of the Act is to help these people to learn thrift and forethought—to learn the wisdom of putting by for a rainy day. And to encourage their independence. When you go and pay what they ought to pay, you're simply taking away their independence."
She gave her sudden burst of laughter. "You're the first person I've ever heard say that the lower classes want their independence encouraged. It's just what's wrong with them—independence."
He began to talk with animation. This was one of the things that much interested him. He seemed to have quite forgotten the origin of the conversation. "No, it isn't, Mabel—it isn't. That's jolly interesting, that point. It's their dependence that's wrong with them. They're nearly all of them absolutely dependent on an employer, and that's bad, fatal, for anybody. It's the root of the whole trouble with the less-educated classes, if people would only see it. What they want is pride in themselves. They just slop along taking what they can get, and getting so much for nothing—votes and free this, that and the other—that they don't value it in the least. They're dependent all the time. What you want to help them to is independence, pride in themselves and confidence in themselves—that sort of independence. You know, all this talk that they put up, or that's put up for them, about their right to this and their right to that—of course you can't have a right to anything without earning it. That's what they want to be shown, see? And that's what they want to be given—the chance to earn the right to things, see? Well, this Insurance Act business—"
She laughed again. "I was beginning to wonder if you were ever coming back to that."
He noticed nothing deprecatory in her remark. "Yes, rather. Well, this Insurance Act business—that's really a jolly good example of the way to do things. You see, it's not giving them the right to free treatment when they're ill; it's giving them the chance to earn the right. That's what you want to explain to High and Low. See—you want to say to them, 'This is your show. Your very own. Fine. You're building this up, I'm helping. You're helping all sorts of poor devils and you're helping yourself at the same time. You're stacking up a great chunk of the State and it belongs to you. England's yours and you want to pile it up all you know'—"
He was quite flushed.
"That's the sort of thing I'm putting into that book of mine. 'England's yours', you know. Precious beyond price; and therefore grand to be making more precious and more your own. I wish you'd like to see how the book's getting on; would you?"
"What book?"
"Why 'England.' I told you, you know. That history."