What more have any of us but travelling
expenses for our life's journey?
MRS HUSHABYE. But you have factories and capital and things?
MANGAN. People think I have. People think I'm an industrial
Napoleon. That's why Miss Ellie wants to marry me. But I tell you
I have nothing.
ELLIE. Do you mean that the factories are like Marcus's tigers?
That they don't exist?
MANGAN. They exist all right enough. But they're not mine. They
belong to syndicates and shareholders and all sorts of lazy
good-for-nothing capitalists. I get money from such people to
start the factories. I find people like Miss Dunn's father to
work them, and keep a tight hand so as to make them pay. Of
course I make them keep me going pretty well; but it's a dog's
life; and I don't own anything.
MRS HUSHABYE. Alfred, Alfred, you are making a poor mouth of it
to get out of marrying Ellie.
MANGAN. I'm telling the truth about my money for the first time
in my life; and it's the first time my word has ever been
doubted.
LADY UTTERWORD. How sad! Why don't you go in for politics, Mr
Mangan?
MANGAN. Go in for politics! Where have you been living? I am in
politics.
LADY UTTERWORD. I'm sure I beg your pardon. I never heard of you.
MANGAN. Let me tell you, Lady Utterword, that the Prime Minister
of this country asked me to join the Government without even
going through the nonsense of an election, as the dictator of a
great public department.
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