Our processes are
hasty, imperfect, barbaric--and their result is vast and rapid
production: but also waste, refuse, in the shape of a dangerous class.
We know well how, in some manufactures, a certain amount of waste is
profitable--that it pays better to let certain substances run to refuse,
than to use every product of the manufacture; as in a steam mill, where
it pays better not to consume the whole fuel, to let the soot escape,
though every atom of soot is so much wasted fuel. So it is in our
present social system. It pays better, capital is accumulated more
rapidly, by wasting a certain amount of human life, human health, human
intellect, human morals, by producing and throwing away a regular
percentage of human soot--of that thinking, acting dirt, which lies
about, and, alas! breeds and perpetuates itself in foul alleys and low
public houses, and all dens and dark places of the earth.
But, as in the case of the manufactures, the Nemesis comes, swift and
sure. As the foul vapours of the mine and the manufactory destroy
vegetation and injure health, so does the Nemesis fall on the world of
man; so does that human soot, these human poison gases, infect the whole
society which has allowed them to fester under its feet.
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