A Prince of Sinners E. Phillips Oppenheim BOOK 1 CHAPTER 4 Đây là một tác phẩm anh ngữ nổi tiếng với những từ vựng nâng cao chuyên ngành văn chương. Nhằm giúp các bạn yêu thich tiếng anh luyện tập và củng cố thêm kỹ năng đọc tiếng anh . | A Prince of Sinners E Philips Oppenheim BOOK 1 CHAPTER 4 A QUESTION FOR THE COUNTRY For the first time in many years it seemed certain that the Conservatives had lost their hold upon the country. The times were ripe for a change of any sort. An ill-conducted and ruinous war had drained the empire of its surplus wealth and every known industry was suffering from an almost paralyzing depression--Medchester perhaps as severely as any town in the United Kingdom. Its staple manufactures were being imported from the States and elsewhere at prices which the local manufacturers declared to be ruinous. Many of the largest factories were standing idle a great majority of the remainder were being worked at half or three-quarters time. Thoughtful men looking ten years ahead saw the cloud which even now was threatening enough grow blacker and blacker and shuddered at the thought of the tempest which before long must break over the land. Meanwhile the streets were filled with unemployed whose demeanour day by day grew less and less pacific. People asked one another helplessly what was being done to avert the threatened crisis. The manufacturers openly threatened by their discharged employees and cajoled by others higher in authority and by public opinion still pronounced themselves helpless to move without the aid of legislation. For the first time for years Protection was openly spoken of from a political platform. Henslow a shrewd man and a politician of some years standing was one of the first to read the signs of the times and rightly to appreciate them. He had just returned from a lengthened visit to the United States and what he had seen there he kept at first very much to himself. But at a small committee meeting held when his election was still a matter of doubt he unbosomed himself at last to some effect. The vote we want he said is the vote of those people who are losing their bread and who see ruin and starvation coming in upon them. I mean the middle-class .
