This Lady Frances explained to him, with her usual vivacity, the while both kept an eye on some noisy Bermondsey infants, who were playing in the hall of the Board School.
“Other countries are getting ahead of us, my uncle says, and unless something is done at once, British trade (Now, children, do play without quarrelling, please, to oblige me!), British trade will go down, and down, and down, and there will be nothing left.”
“Are things really so bad?”
“Oh, they’re terrible,” declared Lady Frances, with great cheerfulness. “Apparently the bed-rock has almost been reached, and it is only by a great and a unanimous effort that Great Britain will ever again be enabled to get its head above water. So, at any rate, my uncle tells me.”
“I don’t know—(Young Tommy Gibbons, if I catch you at that again you know what will happen)—I don’t know that I’ve ever studied the subject in the large. My own society takes up nearly all my time, and other work I leave to other people.”
“Exactly, Mr. Barnes, exactly! I quite understand your position. But I have such faith in my uncle. Do you know that nearly everything he touches turns into money.”
“But the point is this, that nothing can be done unless capital and labour work in unison for a common end. One is affected quite as much as the other, and alone neither can do anything. British trades are being snapped up by America, by France, by Germany, even by Belgium, the only remedy, my uncle says, is for us to take some of their manufactures and plant them here.—(I was sure you’d fall down and hurt your knee, little boy. Come here and let me kiss the place and make it well)—I don’t know whether I make myself quite plain to you, Mr. Barnes?”
“In one sense you do,” said Erb. “Only thing I can’t see is, where your uncle imagines that I come in.”
A dispute between two children over a doll necessitated interference, based on the judgment of Solomon.