Do you stand there and ask me what about it, and haven't the sense to alter it? Couldn't you set up a proper Government to-morrow, if you liked? Couldn't you contrive that the pits belonged to you, instead of you belonging to the pits, like so many old pit-ponies that stop down till they are blind, and take to eating coal-slack for meadow-grass, not knowing the difference? If only you'd learn to think, I'd respect you. As you are, I can't, not if I try my hardest. All you can think of is to ask for another shilling a day. That's as far as your imagination carries you. And perhaps you get sevenpence ha'penny, but pay for it with half-a-crown's worth of sweat. The masters aren't fools--as you are. They'll give you two-thirds of what you ask for, but they'll get five-thirds of it back again--and they'll get it out of your flesh and blood, too, in jolly hard work. Shylock wasn't in it with them. He only wanted a pound of flesh. But you cheerfully give up a pound a week, each one of you, and keep on giving it up.--But you don't seem to see these things. You can't think beyond your dinners and your 'lowance. You think if you can get another shilling a day you're set up. You make me tired, I tell you. (JOB ARTHUR FREER: We think of others besides ourselves.) Hello, Job Arthur--are you there? I didn't recognise you without your frock-coat and silk hat--on the Sabbath.--What was that you said? You think of something else, besides yourselves?--Oh ay--I'm glad to hear it. Did you mean your own importance? (A motor car, GERALD BARLOW driving, OLIVER TURTON with him has pulled up.) JOB ARTHUR (glancing at the car). No, I didn't.

Willie Houghton Monologue from Touch and Go: A Play in Three Acts

Rehearse Willie Houghton's monologue