almost uncanny cleverness of the modern technical mind, as if really the
devil himself had lent fiend's wits to the technical scientists of industry.
It was far more interesting than art, than literature, poor emotional
half-witted stuff, was this technical science of industry. In this field,
men were like gods, or demons, inspired to discoveries, and fighting to
carry them out. In this activity, men were beyond atty mental age
calculable. But Clifford knew that when it did come to the emotional and
human life, these self-made men were of a mental age of about thirteen,
feeble boys. The discrepancy was enormous and appalling.
But let that be. Let man slide down to general idiocy in the emotional
and `human' mind, Clifford did not care. Let all that go hang. He was
interested in the technicalities of modern coal-mining, and in pulling
Tevershall out of the hole.
He went down to the pit day after day, he studied, he put the general
manager, and the overhead manager, and the underground manager, and the
engineers through a mill they had never dreamed of. Power! He felt a new
sense of power flowing through him: power over all these men, over the
hundreds and hundreds of colliers. He was finding out: and he was getting
things into his grip.
And he seemed verily to be re-born. Now life came into him! He had been
gradually dying, with Connie, in the isolated private life of the artist and
the conscious being. Now let all that go. Let it sleep. He simply felt life
rush into him out of the coal, out of the pit. The very stale air of the
colliery was better than oxygen to him. It gave him a sense of power, power.
He was doing something: and he was going to do something. He was going to
win, to win: not as he had won with his stories, mere publicity, amid a
whole sapping of energy and malice. But a man's victory.
At first he thought the solution lay in electricity: convert the coal
into electric power. Then a new idea came. The Germans invented a new
locomotive engine with a self feeder, that did not need a fireman. And it
was to be fed with a new fuel, that burnt in small quantities at a great
heat, under peculiar conditions.
The idea of a new concentrated fuel that burnt with a hard slowness at
a fierce heat was what first attracted Clifford. There must be some sort of
external stimulus of the burning of such fuel, not merely air supply. He
began to experiment, and got a clever young fellow, who had proved brilliant
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