| Title | The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists |
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| Page | 989 |
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| Chapter | -- |
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speechmaking was going on inside, a little crowd of grown-up children were gathered round outside the entrance, worshipping the motor car: and when the little party came out the crowd worshipped them also, going into imbecile ecstasies of admiration of their benevolence and their beautiful clothes. For several weeks everybody in the town was in raptures over this tea - or, rather, everybody except a miserable little minority of Socialists, who said it was bribery, an electioneering dodge, that did no real good, and who continued to clamour for a halfpenny rate. Another specious fraud was the `Distress Committee'. This body - or corpse, for there was not much vitality in it - was supposed to exist for the purpose of providing employment for `deserving cases'. One might be excused for thinking that any man - no matter what his past may have been - who is willing to work for his living is a `deserving case': but this was evidently not the opinion of the persons who devised the regulations for the working of |
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