Now, you speak of the free evenings; people always do, when they're asking why the working classes don't educate themselves.

Do you understand what that free evening means?
He gets home, say, at six o'clock, tired out; he has to be up again perhaps at five next morning.
What can he do but just lie about half asleep?
Why, that's the whole principle of the capitalist system of employment; it's calculated exactly how long a man can be made to work in a day without making him incapable of beginning again on the day following--just as it's calculated exactly how little a man can live upon, in the regulation of wages.

If the workman returned home with strength to spare, employers would soon find it out, and workshop legislation would be revised--because of course it's the capitalists that make the laws.

The principle is that a man shall have no strength left for himself; it's all paid for, every scrap of it, bought with the wages at each week end.
What religion can such men have?
Religion, I suppose, means thankfulness for life and its pleasures--at all events, that's a great part of it--and what has a wage-earner to be thankful for ?' 'It sounds very shocking,' observed Mrs.Waltham, somewhat disturbed by the speaker's growing earnestness.

Richard paid no attention and continued to address Adela.
'I dare say you've heard of the early trains--workmen's trains--that they run on the London railways.