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Warren frowned. 'Surely the public assistance rates aren't so bad as that? They're revised from time to time, aren't they? You don't just have to starve?' She shook her head. 'No, you don't have to starve. The rates are all right--in theory, Mr. Warren. You can keep alive and fit on P.A.C. relief--if you happen to have been born an archangel.' 'What do you mean?' She stopped and faced him. 'It's like this. There's really nothing wrong with the rates of relief. If you are careful, and wise, and prudent, you can live on that amount of money fairly well. And you've got to be intelligent, and well educated, too, and rather selfish. If you were like that you'd get along all right--but you wouldn't have a penny to spare.' She paused. 'But if you were human--well, you'd be for it. If you got bored stiff with doing nothing so that you went and blued fourpence on going to the pictures--you just wouldn't have enough to eat that week. Or if you couldn't cook very well, and spoiled the food a bit, you'd go hungry. You'd go hungry if your wife had a birthday and you wanted to give her a little present costing a bob--you'd only get eighty percent of your food that week. And of course, if your wife gets ill and you want to buy her little fancy bits of things...' (72-3). 'I had time to think about all this when I was here in hospital. I was right away from it then, able to see my job from the outside. And it seemed to me then, as it does now, that there's only one thing really worth working for in the City. That's to create work. 'I don't know if you've ever thought about machines,' he said. 'Every machine that's put into a factory displaces labour. That's a very old story, of course. The man who's put to work the machine isn't any better off than he was before; the three men that are thrown out of a job are very much worse off....The cure is for somebody to buckle to and make a job for the three men. 'I believe that that's the thing most worth doing in this modern world,' he said quietly. 'To create jobs that men can work at, and be proud of, and make money by their work. There's no dignity, no decency, or health today for men that haven't got a job. All other things depend on work today: without work men are utterly undone' (167).

2023-01-24 10:08