"You go down to Cyfladd, Flynn," said the news editor, handing his cigarette-case to Barwell. "See what is doing there and write up good human stories dealing with the discontent of the workers. Do not be afraid to state things bluntly. Tell about their drinking and quarrelling, and if you come across miners who are in good circumstance don't fail to write about it."
"But suppose for a moment that he comes across men who are really poor, men who may not have had enough wages to make both ends meet, what is he to do?" asked loquacious Barwell, the socialistic Philistine, who played with ideas for the mere sake of the ideas. "For myself, I do not believe in the right to strike, and I admire the man who starves to death without making a fuss. Why should uncultured and uneducated miners create a fuss if they are starved to death in order to satisfy the needs of honourable and learned gentlemen? What right has a common worker to ask for higher wages? What right has he to take a wife and bring up children? The children of the poor should be fattened and served up on the tables of the rich, as advocated by Dean Swift in an age prior to the existence of the _Dawn_. The children of the poor who cannot become workers become wastrels; the rich wastrels wear eye-glasses and spats. We have no place in the scheme of things for the wastrels who wear neither eye-glasses nor spats, therefore I believe that it would be good for the nation if many of the children of the poor were fattened, killed, and eaten. But I am wandering from the point. Let us look at the highly improbable supposition of which I have spoken. It is highly improbable, of course, that there are poor people amongst the miners, for they have little time to spend the money which they take so long to earn. Now and again they die, leaving a week's wages lying at the pay-office. I have heard of cases like that several times. These men, who are out on strike, may leave a whole week's pay to their wives and children when they die, and for all that they grumble and go out on strike! But we cannot expect anything else from uneducated workmen. I am wandering from the point again, and the point is this: Suppose, for an instant, that Flynn doesn't find a rich, quarrelsome, and drunken miner in Cyfladd, what is he to do? Return again?"