Page:Tyranny of Shams (1916).djvu/251

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THE EDUCATION OF THE ADULT
235

class consists of those who dread a higher intelligence in the workers because it leads to discontent with their condition. To which one may reply that this concern comes too late. One needs little intelligence to perceive the inequalities of the distribution of wealth. The workers of the world have perceived it, and, although only an extreme Socialist minority demands equalisation, the mass of the workers demand a higher reward. Midway between Australia and England, on the deck of a liner, I heard a group of middle-class men and women contrasting the menace of the Australian workers with the industrial content of the mother-country. We landed, to find from the journals that the whole United Kingdom was punctuated by strikes, agitations, and demands. It is too late. A distinguished Belgian prelate was taken into a large foundry, and, observing the workers, he impulsively cried: “What a slave’s life!” “Hush, they will hear you,” said the manager. In repeating the experience he added: “They have heard: it is too late.” It will be better now if, in the industrial struggle of the future, there is intelligence as well as principle on both sides. If any large proportion of work in the human economy requires the sacrifice of the intelligence, there is something wrong with the work.

Curiously enough, the other class of people who are impatient of the design to stimulate their minds consists of the mass of the workers themselves. After eight or nine or ten hours of heavy