“Speaking a horrible dialect, coarse and weak.”
“I have heard it.”
“They are the slaves—your slaves. They are the slaves of the Labour Department you own.”
“The Labour Department! In some way—that is familiar. Ah! now I remember. I saw it when I was wandering about the city, after the lights returned, great fronts of buildings coloured pale blue. Do you really mean—?”
“Yes. How can I explain it to you? Of course the blue uniform struck you. Nearly a third of our people wear it—more assume it now every day. This Labour Department has grown imperceptibly.”
“What is this Labour Department?” asked Graham.
“In the old times, how did you manage with starving people?”
“There was the workhouse—which the parishes maintained.”
“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.”