She repeated her remark. "I went over a model factory last week ... a cocoa and chocolate works ... and I'd rather be a tramp than work in it," she went on.
"But isn't it rather wonderfully organised?" Roger asked.
"Oh, yes, it's marvellously arranged. There are baths and gymnasia and continuation classes and free medical inspection and model houses and savings banks and all the rest of it ... but I'd rather be a tramp, I tell you.... You see, even with the best of employers, genuinely philanthropic people eager to deal justly with the workers who make their fortunes for them, the factory system remains a rotten one. You can't make a decent, human thing out of it because it's fundamentally vile!..."
"My dear Rachel!..." Roger began, but she would not listen to interruptions.
"They look just as pale and 'peeked' in model factories as they do in bad ones. They're cleaner, that's all. The firm sees that they wash, but it can't prevent them from becoming ill, and they're all ill. They don't look any better than the people in the bad factories. They look worse, because they're cleaner and you can see their illness more easily. But that isn't all. They have no hope of ever controlling the firm ... they'll never be allowed to own the factory ... that will always belong to the Family. The best that the clever ones can look forward to is a little managership. Most of them can't look forward to anything but being drilled and washed and medically inspected and modelly housed and morally controlled.... Oh, it isn't worth it, it isn't worth it. I'd rather be a dirty, insanitary tramp!"
A kind of moral fury possessed her, and they sat still, listening to her without interrupting her.
"I saw three girls at a machine," she went on, "and one of them did some little thing to a chocolate box and then passed it on to the second girl who did a further little thing to it and then passed it to the third girl who did another little thing to it, and then it was finished, and that was all. They do that every day, and the man who took me round told me that the firm had to catch 'em young, otherwise they can't acquire the knack of it. I saw girls putting pieces of chocolate into tinfoil so quickly that you could hardly see their movements; and they do that all day. And they have to be caught young ... before they've properly tasted life. They wouldn't do it otherwise, I suppose. That's your factory system for you! And think of the things they produce. Chocolate boxes full of sweets! There was one girl who spent the whole of her working days in pasting photographs of grinning chorus girls on to box-lids. I should go mad if I had to look at that soppy grin all day long...."
Mrs. Graham murmured gently, but her words were not audible. Rachel would not have heard them if they had been.
"Well," said Gilbert, "what do you want to do about it?"
"I'm a reactionary," Rachel answered. "I'm against all this ... this progress. We're simply eating up people's lives, and paying meanly for them. I'd destroy all these factories ... the whole lot. They aren't worth the price. And I'd go back to decent piggery. What is the good of a plate when it means that some girl has been poisoned so that it can be bought cheaply?"