VOICES.  You want bullying.—­You’ll get bullying, you will.

OLIVER.  Can’t you see it’s no good, either side?  It’s no mortal use.  We might as well all die to-morrow, or to-day, or this minute, as go on bullying one another, one side bullying the other side, and the other side bullying back.  We’d BETTER all die.

WILLIE.  And a great deal better.  I’m damned if I’ll take sides with anybody against anything, after this.  If I’m to die, I’ll die by myself.  As for living, it seems impossible.

JOB ARTHUR.  Have the men nothing to be said for their side?

OLIVER.  They have a great deal—­but not EVERYTHING, you see.

JOB ARTHUR.  Haven’t they been wronged?  And AREN’T they wronged?

OLIVER.  They have—­and they are.  But haven’t they been wrong themselves, too?—­and aren’t they wrong now?

JOB ARTHUR.  How?

OLIVER.  What about this affair?  Do you call it right?

JOB ARTHUR.  Haven’t we been driven to it?

OLIVER.  Partly.  And haven’t you driven the masters to it, as well?

JOB ARTHUR.  I don’t see that.

OLIVER.  Can’t you see that it takes two to make a quarrel?  And as long as each party hangs on to its own end of the stick and struggles to get full hold of the stick, the quarrel will continue.  It will continue till you’ve killed one another.  And even then, what better shall you be?  What better would you be, really, if you’d killed Gerald Barlow just now?  You wouldn’t, you know.  We’re all human beings, after all.  And why can’t we try really to leave off struggling against one another, and set up a new state of things?

JOB ARTHUR.  That’s all very well, you see, while you’ve got the goods.

OLIVER.  I’ve got very little, I assure you.

JOB ARTHUR.  Well, if you haven’t, those you mix with have.  They’ve got the money, and the power, and they intend to keep it.

OLIVER.  As for power, somebody must have it, you know.  It only rests with you to put it into the hands of the best men, the men you REALLY believe in.—­And as for money, it’s life, it’s living that matters, not simply having money.

JOB ARTHUR.  You can’t live without money.

OLIVER.  I know that.  And therefore why can’t we have the decency to agree simply about money—­just agree to dispose of it so that all men could live their own lives.

JOB ARTHUR.  That’s what we want to do.  But the others, such as Gerald Barlow, they keep the money—­AND the power.

OLIVER.  You see, if you wanted to arrage things so that money flowed more naturally, so that it flowed naturally to every man, according to his needs, I think we could all soon agree.  But you don’t.  What you want is to take it away from one set and give it to another—­or keep it yourselves.

JOB ARTHUR.  We want every man to have his proper share.