In a thousand ways he cut down the expenditure, in ways so fine as to be hardly noticeable to the men.The miners must pay for the cartage of their coals, heavy cartage too; they must pay for their tools, for the sharpening, for the care of lamps, for the many trifling things that made the bill of charges against every man mount up to a shilling or so in the week.It was not grasped very definitely by the miners, though they were sore enough.But it saved hundreds of pounds every week for the firm.
Gradually Gerald got hold of everything.And then began the great reform.
Expert engineers were introduced in every department.An enormous electric plant was installed, both for lighting and for haulage underground, and for power.The electricity was carried into every mine.New machinery was brought from America, such as the miners had never seen before, great iron men, as the cutting machines were called, and unusual appliances.The working of the pits was thoroughly changed, all the control was taken out of the hands of the miners, the butty system was abolished.Everything was run on the most accurate and delicate scientific method, educated and expert men were in control everywhere, the miners were reduced to mere mechanical instruments.They had to work hard, much harder than before, the work was terrible and heart-breaking in its mechanicalness.
But they submitted to it all.The joy went out of their lives, the hope seemed to perish as they became more and more mechanised.And yet they accepted the new conditions.They even got a further satisfaction out of them.At first they hated Gerald Crich, they swore to do something to him, to murder him.But as time went on, they accepted everything with some fatal satisfaction.Gerald was their high priest, he represented the religion they really felt.His father was forgotten already.There was a new world, a new order, strict, terrible, inhuman, but satisfying in its very destructiveness.
The men were satisfied to belong to the great and wonderful machine, even whilst it destroyed them.It was what they wanted.It was the highest that man had produced, the most wonderful and superhuman.They were exalted by belonging to this great and superhuman system which was beyond feeling or reason, something really godlike.Their hearts died within them, but their souls were satisfied.It was what they wanted.Otherwise Gerald could never have done what he did.He was just ahead of them in giving them what they wanted, this participation in a great and perfect system that subjected life to pure mathematical principles.This was a sort of freedom, the sort they really wanted.It was the first great step in undoing, the first great phase of chaos, the substitution of the mechanical principle for the organic, the destruction of the organic purpose, the organic unity, and the subordination of every organic unit to the great mechanical purpose.It was pure organic disintegration and pure mechanical organisation.This is the first and finest state of chaos.
Gerald was satisfied.He knew the colliers said they hated him.But he had long ceased to hate them.When they streamed past him at evening, their heavy boots slurring on the pavement wearily, their shoulders slightly distorted, they took no notice of him, they gave him no greeting whatever, they passed in a grey-black stream of unemotional acceptance.They were not important to him, save as instruments, nor he to them, save as a supreme instrument of control.As miners they had their being, he had his being as director.He admired their qualities.But as men, personalities, they were just accidents, sporadic little unimportant phenomena.And tacitly, the men agreed to this.For Gerald agreed to it in himself.