And now, as this book is drawing to a close, I will whisper in the
reader’s ear a horrible suspicion that has sometimes haunted me: the
suspicion that Hudge and Gudge are secretly in partnership. That the
quarrel they keep up in public is very much of a put-up job, and that
the way in which they perpetually play into each other’s hands is not
an everlasting coincidence. Gudge, the plutocrat, wants an anarchic
industrialism; Hudge, the idealist, provides him with lyric praises of
anarchy. Gudge wants women-workers because they are cheaper; Hudge calls
the woman’s work “freedom to live her own life.” Gudge wants steady
and obedient workmen, Hudge preaches teetotalism--to workmen, not to
Gudge--Gudge wants a tame and timid population who will never take arms
against tyranny; Hudge proves from Tolstoi that nobody must take
arms against anything. Gudge is naturally a healthy and well-washed
gentleman; Hudge earnestly preaches the perfection of Gudge’s washing
to people who can’t practice it. Above all, Gudge rules by a coarse and
cruel system of sacking and sweating and bi-sexual toil which is totally
inconsistent with the free family and which is bound to destroy
it; therefore Hudge, stretching out his arms to the universe with a
prophetic smile, tells us that the family is something that we shall
soon gloriously outgrow.
I do not know whether the partnership of Hudge and Gudge is conscious
or unconscious. I only know that between them they still keep the common
man homeless. I only know I still meet Jones walking the streets in
the gray twilight, looking sadly at the poles and barriers and low red
goblin lanterns which still guard the house which is none the less his
because he has never been in it.
*****