| Title | The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists |
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| Page | 1207 |
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| Chapter | -- |
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| Text |
and some of them even paid for the pamphlets they obtained from Owen, and after reading them themselves, passed them on to others, and also occasionally `got up' arguments on their own accounts. Others were simply indifferent, or treated the subject as a kind of joke, ridiculing the suggestion that it was possible to abolish poverty. They repeated that there had `always been rich and poor in the world and there always would be, so there was an end of it'. But the majority were bitterly hostile; not to Owen, but to Socialism. For the man himself most of them had a certain amount of liking, especially the ordinary hands because it was known that he was not a `master's man' and that he had declined to `take charge' of jobs which Misery had offered to him. But to Socialism they were savagely and malignantly opposed. Some of those who had shown some symptoms of Socialism during the past winter when they were starving had now quite recovered and were stout defenders of the Present System. |
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