ABSTRACT
Richard Mutimer is, perhaps unconsciously, at least at first, a sham from first to last-a sham revealed by that crucial test, the sudden acquisition of wealth; for there is no greater fallacy than a belief a man's character is changed by his becoming suddenly wealthy. The change simply brings out what is in him, by removing restraints imposed by less independent circumstances. Mutimer, the zealous champion of the oppressed wage-earning class, become a capitalist, professes to devote his wealth to the benefit of 'the Propaganda'; is by no means a specially lenient master; is feverishly anxious for vulgar applause, and personal prominence, and in order to associate himself more closely with the class he has denounced, is guilty of the meanest treachery. The sudden collapse of his fortune is evidently just in time to prevent it from being withdrawn from the service of 'the cause', and devoted to more personal uses. There is keen irony in two incidents in the course of the story. First, in the evident willingness ofMutimer, the man born and bred as a mechanic, to commit a felony, rather than give up his own possession of that capital which he had denounced as an iniquitous thing; while his wife, one of the hateful upper class, will willingly face the life of a mechanic's wife in London, in order that justice may be done. Second, in the final catastrophe coming to pass through Mutimer, back in his old character as a social agitator, inciting a large number of the working class to invest their savings in just one of those schemes which would be impossible but for the existence of that accumulated capital which he has spent his life in denouncing.
