‘Come, Victoria, look on the bright side, and don’t go back on yourself. Where shall we put your father’s palace? He will want a palace, or a castle, or something of the sort, in time. He cannot always live with Thomas and Richard and the other one, down there. Suppose we put him on the other Point, facing this. Then we will build a little arbour here for you, and rail it off, and you shall have it all to yourself.’
She answered never a word, but soon I wanted no one to answer, for the excitement of laying out this domain for the higher civilisation was enough in itself. ‘We will keep all this northern half of the Island for the governing classes, and put the people on the other. The views are so much prettier on our side. If you could persuade your good folk to give up the settlement altogether, it would make a sweet little park for the castle; and the market-place, below, might easily be rigged up as a preserve. I should put a factory on the popular section. It would amuse them. The chimney need never show, if you know how to choose your site.’
‘What is a factory?’ asked Victoria.
‘What is a factory? Well, a factory is—a factory. Dear me, fair Islander, you are sometimes too elementary for profitable talk! A factory is a place where a number of people work together to simplify the process of appropriating their earnings to one. You give them a little of it back, for provender, and keep as much as you can for yourself. What you keep back is called capital. They make it all, of course, or some of their forerunners made it, every sou or cent. You get it—that is the main point. Your share is claimed as cost of superintendence, charge for the loan of your brains, or, by-and-by, as interest on your savings—a very superior plea. But it all comes out of labour—all, all, ALL. Labour does not mind, poor thing, if you give it just enough to go on with. According to the best authorities, there must be, at least, one meal a day. The half-meal experiment is discredited: it cuts things too fine. This is the starting-point—just what will keep people alive. How much more they will insist on having is a matter of bargain between you and them. But only fight hard against their greediness, and it is astonishing how you can keep it down.’
‘But why do you want to keep it down, and take so much for yourself?’
‘For the use of your precious brains, for direction, for vigilance, for keeping your eye on ’em. Think how they would idle, else! There’s a good deal of idling in this settlement. I caught two the other day—supposed to be hoeing potatoes—really pelting each other with wild flowers. It was in the great dip of green turf and shrubbery, just beyond the gorge. And now I think of it, why not put the factory there—on the slope; so that all you will have to do with your refuse is to shoot it out at the back door? It will take years to fill up the hollow, and when it is filled up, there are others just as good, to right and left. That is the way they make the valleys useful in Lancashire; I have seen it done. The people can have their little cottages on the edge; and, as the rubbish hardens, it makes a handy playground for the children, right under the mother’s eye. Keep your eye on ’em all round, from the cradle to the grave—that’s the essence of the system. So, there is your factory, Victoria, and now what are you going to manufacture? Tappa cloth! Turn it out cheap, and run it as a new kind of shoddy? Potatoes! Potato spirit! How did that man make his tipple—the fellow that went mad, and jumped off the steep place? Import machinery, and get the whiskey monopoly of the South Seas? Sugar! Are we quite in the right place for that? Taro! Why, of course:—“Taro, the new Vegetable Food! Testimonial from his Excellency the Governor of Pitcairn.” How do you like that for a poster? Birds, beasts, and fishes—what can you do in that way? Sea birds! If we could get up something for ladies’ hats, your father might be a rich man in ten years.’
‘Oh, bother!’ said she.
‘I need hardly remind you, Victoria, that this is not the language of economical discussion.’
‘Well, I cannot help it; you seem so fond of beginning at the wrong end.’
‘Excuse me, that is just what I was going to say about your people here. It is all the fault of their unhappy geographical situation. Quite upside down, you know. I could show you in an instant, if I had a map.’