And who dares to say that it is not
criminally mismanaged, this big house, when five men can produce bread
for a thousand, and yet millions have not enough to eat?
CHAPTER XXVI--DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND THRIFT
The English working classes may be said to be soaked in beer. They are
made dull and sodden by it. Their efficiency is sadly impaired, and they
lose whatever imagination, invention, and quickness may be theirs by
right of race. It may hardly be called an acquired habit, for they are
accustomed to it from their earliest infancy. Children are begotten in
drunkenness, saturated in drink before they draw their first breath, born
to the smell and taste of it, and brought up in the midst of it.
The public-house is ubiquitous. It flourishes on every corner and
between corners, and it is frequented almost as much by women as by men.
Children are to be found in it as well, waiting till their fathers and
mothers are ready to go home, sipping from the glasses of their elders,
listening to the coarse language and degrading conversation, catching the
contagion of it, familiarising themselves with licentiousness and
debauchery.
Mrs. Grundy rules as supremely over the workers as she does over the
bourgeoisie; but in the case of the workers, the one thing she does not
frown upon is the public-house.
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