“Yes, but rebel against what?”
“Oh! the whole system.”
“They have votes.”
“They get humbugged, they say. They do, you know. The party system is a swindle, and everybody understands that. Why don’t we clean it up? P.R.’s the only honest method. They don’t understand how it is rigged, but they know it is rigged. When you talk about Parliament they laugh.”
“But they have their Unions.”
“They don’t trust their leaders. They say they are got at. They say they are old-fashioned and bluffed by the politicians.... They are....”
“Then what do they want?”
“Just to be out of all this. They are bored to tears by their work, by the world they have to live in, by the pinched mean lives they have to lead—in the midst of plenty and luxury—bored by the everlasting dulness and humbug of it all.”
“But how are they going to alter it?”
“That’s all vague. Altogether vague. Cole and Mellor and those Cambridge chaps preach Guild Socialism to them, but I don’t know how far they take it in—except that they agree that profit is unnecessary. But the fundamental fact is just blind boredom and the desire to smash up things. Just on the off chance of their coming better. The employer has been free to make the world for them, and this is the world he has made. Damn him! That’s how they look at it. They are bored by his face, bored by his automobile, bored by his knighthood, bored by his country house and his snob of a wife——”