"Yes--Insurance. I remember that was the older

word. They are insuring your life. Dozands of
people are taking out policies, myriads of lions are

being put on you. And further on other people are
buying annuities. They do that on everybody who is

at all prominent. Look there!"
A crowd of people surged and roared, and Graham

saw a vast black screen suddenly illuminated in still
larger letters of burning purple. "Anuetes on the

Propraiet'r---x 5 pr. G." The people began to boo
and shout at this, a number of hard breathing,

wildeyed men came running past, clawing with hooked
fingers at the air. There was a furious crush about a

little doorway.
Asano did a brief calculation. "Seventeen per cent

per annum is their annuity on you. They would not
pay so much per cent if they could see you now, Sire.

But they do not know. Your own annuities used to
be a very safe investment, but now you are sheer

gambling, of course. This is probably a desperate
bid. I doubt if people will get their money."

The crowd of would-be annuitants grew so thick
about them that for some time they could move neither

forward no backward. Graham noticed what appeared
to him to be a high proportion of women among the

speculators, and was reminded again of the economical
independence of their sex. They seemed remarkably

well able to take care of themselves in the crowd,
using their elbows with particular skill, as he learnt to

his cost. One curly-headed person caught in the
pressure for a space, looked steadfastly at him several

times, almost as if she recognized him, and then,
edging deliberately towards him, touched his hand

with her arm in a scarcely accidental manner, and
made it plain by a look as ancient as Chaldea that he

had found favour in her eyes. And then a lank, grey-
bearded man, perspiring copiously in a noble passion

of self-help, blind to all earthly things save that glaring,
bait, thrust between them in a cataclysmal rush towards

that alluring " x 5 pr. G."
"I want to get out of this," said Graham to Asano.

"This is not what I came to see. Show me the
workers. I want to see the people in blue. These

parasitic lunatics--"
He found himself wedged in a struggling mass c

people, and this hopefulsentence went unfinished.
CHAPTER XXI

THE UNDER SIDE
From the Business Quarter they presently passed

by the running ways into a remote quarter of the city,
where the bulk of the manufactures was done. On

their way the platforms crossed the Thames twice, and
passed in a broad viaduct across one of the great roads

that entered the city from the North. In both cases
his impression was swift and in both very vivid. The

river was a broad wrinkled glitter of black sea water,
overarched by buildings, and vanishing either way into

a blackness starred with receding lights. A string of
black barges passed seaward, manned by blue-clad

men. The road was a long and very broad and high
tunnel, along which big-wheeled machines drove

noiselessly and swiftly. Here, too, the distinctive" target="_blank" title="a.有区别的；有特色的">distinctive blue
of the Labour Company was in abundance. The

smoothness of the double tracks, the largeness and the
lightness of the big pneumatic wheels in proportion to

the vehicular body, struck Graham most vividly. One
lank and very high carriage with longitudinal metallic

rods hung with the dripping carcasses of many
hundred sheep arrested his attention unduly. Abruptly

the edge of the archway cut and blotted out the
picture.

Presently they left the way and descended by a lift
and traversed a passage that sloped downward, and

so came to a descending lift again. The appearance
of things changed. Even the pretence of architectural

ornament disappeared, the lights diminished in
number and size, the architecture became more and

more massive in proportion to the spaces as the
factory quarters were reached. And in the dusty biscuit-

making place of the potters, among the felspar mills
in the furnace rooms of the metal workers, among the

incandescent lakes of crude Eadhamite, the blue
canvas clothing was on man, woman and child.

Many of these great and dusty galleries were silent
avenues of machinery, endless raked out ashen furnaces

testified to the revolutionary dislocation, but
wherever there was work it was being done by slow-

moving workers in blue canvas. The only people not
in blue canvas were the overlookers of the work-places

and the orange-clad Labour Police. And fresh from
the flushed faces of the dancing halls, the voluntary

vigours of the business quarter, Graham could note
the pinched faces, the feeble muscles, and weary eyes

of many of the latter-day workers. Such as he saw at
work were noticeablyinferior in physique to the few

gaily dressed managers and forewomen who were
directing their labours. The burly labourers of the

Victorian times had followed the dray horse and all
such living force producers, to extinction; the place of

his costly muscles was taken by some dexterous
machine. The latter-day labourer, male as well as

female, was essentially a machine-minder and feeder,
a servant and attendant, or an artist under direction.

The women, in comparison with those Graham
remembered, were as a class distinctly" target="_blank" title="ad.清楚地，明晰地">distinctly plain and flat-

chested. Two hundred years of emancipation from
the moral restraints of Puritanical religion, two

hundred years of city life, had done their work in
eliminating the strain of feminine beauty and vigour from

the blue canvas myriads. To be brilliant physically
or mentally, to be in any way attractive or exceptional,

had been and was still a certain way of emancipation
to the drudge, a line of escape to the Pleasure City

and its splendours and delights, and at last to the
Euthanasy and peace. To be steadfast against such

inducements was scarcely to be expected of meanly
nourished souls. In the young cities of Graham's

former life, the newly aggregated labouring mass had
been a diversemultitude, still stirred by the tradition

of personal honour and a high morality; now it was
differentiating into a distinct class, with a moral and

physical difference of its own--even with a dialect of
its own.

They penetrated downward, ever downward, towards
the working places. Presently they passed underneath

one of the streets of the moving ways, and saw its
platforms running on their rails far overhead, and chinks

of white lights between the transverse slits. The
factories that were not working were sparsely lighted;

to Graham they and their shrouded aisles of giant