Page:Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence.djvu/195

 at the black-lidded houses of Tevershall crawling like some serpent up the hill. From the old brown church the bells were tinging: Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

"But will the men let you dictate terms?" she said.

"My dear, they will have to: if one does it gently." "But mightn't there be a mutual understanding?" "Absolutely: when they realize that the industry comes before the individual." "But must you own the industry?" she said. "I don't. But to the extent I do own it, yes, most decidedly. The ownership of property has now become a religious question: as it has been since Jesus and St. Francis. The point is not: take all thou hast and give to the poor, but use all thou hast to encourage the industry and give work to the poor. It's the only way to feed all the mouths and clothe all the bodies. Giving away all we have to the poor spells starvation for the poor just as much as for us. And universal starvation is no high aim. Even general poverty is no lovely thing. Poverty is ugly." "But the disparity?" "That is fate. Why is the star Jupiter bigger than the star Neptune? You can't start altering the makeup of things!" "But when this envy and jealousy and discontent has once started," she began.

"Do your best to stop it. Somebody's got to be boss of the show."

"But who is boss of the show?" she asked. "The men who own and run the industries." There was a long silence. "It seems to me they're a bad boss," she said. "Then you suggest what they should do."

"They don't take their boss-ship seriously enough," she said.

"They take it far more seriously than you take your ladyship," he said.

"That's thrust upon me. I don't really want it," she blurted out. He stopped the chair and looked at her.

"Who's shirking their responsibility now!" he said. "Who is trying to get away now from the responsibility of their own boss-ship, as you call it?"

"But I don't want any boss-ship," she protested.

"Ah! But that is funk. You've got it: fated to it. And you should