A People's Man Part 23

Maraton, with the peculiar sensitiveness of the artist to an altered atmosphere, was keenly conscious of the change when Julia had left the room and the delegates had entered. One by one they shook hands with Maraton and took their places around the table. They had no appearance of men charged with a great mission. Henneford, who had met them at the station, was beaming with hospitality. Peter Dale was full of gruff good-humour and jokes. Graveling alone entered with a scowl and sat with folded arms and the air of a dissentient. Borden, who complained of feeling train-sick, insisted upon drinks being served, and Culvain, with a notebook upon his knee, ostentatiously sharpened a pencil. It was very much like a meeting of a parish council. Ross alone amongst the delegates had the absorbed air of a man on the threshold of great things, and Aaron, from his seat behind Maraton, watched his master all the time with strained and pa.s.sionate attention.

"In the first place," Peter Dale began, "we've no wish to commence this meeting with any unpleasantness. At the same time, Mr. Maraton, we did think that after that letter of ours you'd have seen your way clear to come up to London and cut short that visit to Mr. Foley. We were all there waiting for you, and there were some of us that didn't take it altogether in what I might call a favourable spirit, that you chose to keep away."

"To tell you the truth," Maraton replied calmly, "I did not see the faintest reason why I should shorten my visit to Mr. Foley. We had arranged to meet here to-day and that seemed to me to be quite sufficient."

Peter Dale tugged at his beard for a moment.

"I am not wishful," he reiterated, "to commence a discussion which might lead to disagreement between us. We'll drop the matter for the present.

Is that agreeable to everybody?"

There was a little murmur of a.s.sent. Graveling only was stolidly silent. Peter Dale struck the table with his fist.

"Now then, lads," he said, "let's get on with it."

"This being mainly my show," John Henneford declared, "I'll come and sit at your right hand, Mr. Maraton. You've got all the papers I've sent you about the cotton workers?"

"I have looked them through," Maraton replied, "but most of their contents were familiar to me. I made a study of the condition of all your industries so far as I could, last year."

"Between you and me," Peter Dale grumbled, "this meeting ought to have been held in Newcastle and not Manchester. These cotton chaps of yours, Henneford, ain't doing so badly. It's my miners that want another leg up."

Henneford struck the table with his fist.

"Rot!" he exclaimed. "Your miners have just had a turn. Half-a-crown a week extra, and a minimum wage--what more do you want? And a piece of plate and a nice fat cheque for Mr. Dale," he added, turning to the others and winking.

Peter Dale beamed good-humouredly upon them.

"Well," he retorted, "I earned it. You fellows should organise in the same way. It took me a good many years' hard work, I can tell you, to bring my lot up to the scratch. Anyway, here we are, and Manchester it's got to be this time. In an hour, Mr. Maraton, the secretary of the Manchester Labour Party will be here. He's got two demand scales made out for you to look through. Your job is to work the people up so that they drop their tools next Sat.u.r.day night."

"There was an idea," Maraton reminded them quietly, "that I should speak to-night not only to the operatives of Manchester but to Labour throughout the Empire; that I should make a p.r.o.nouncement which should have in it something of a common basis for all industries--which would, in short, unsettle Labour in every great centre."

They all looked a little blank. Henneford shook his head.

"It can't be done," he affirmed. "One job at a time's our way. You're going to speak to cotton to-night, and we want the mills emptied by the end of the week. We've got a scheme amongst the Unions, as you know, for helping one another, and as soon as we ye finished with cotton, then we'll go for iron."

"That's an old promise," Weavel declared st.u.r.dily.

"What about the potteries?" Mr. Borden exclaimed. "It's six years since we had any sort of a dust-up, and my majority was the smallest of the lot of you, last election. Something's got to be done down my way.

My chaps won't go paying in and paying in forever. We've fifty-nine thousand pounds waiting, and the condition of our girl labour is beastly."

"Iron comes next," Weavel persisted stolidly. "That's been settled amongst ourselves. And as for your fifty-nine thousand, Borden, what about our hundred and thirty thousand? We shall all have to be lending up here, too, to work this thing properly."

"Let's get on," Peter Dale proposed, rapping on the table. "Now listen here, all of you. What I propose is, if we're satisfied with Mr.

Maraton's address to-night, as I've no doubt we shall be," he added, bowing to Maraton with clumsy politeness, "that we appoint him kind of lecturer to the Unions, and we make out a sort of itinerary for him, to kind of pave the way, and then he gives one of these Chicago orations of his at the last moment in each of the princ.i.p.al centres. We'd fix a salary--no need to be mean about it--and get to work as soon as this affair's over. And meanwhile, while this strike's on, Mr. Maraton might address a few meetings in other centres on behalf of these fellows, and rope in some coin. There are one or two matters we shall have to have an understanding about, however, and one as had better be cleared up right now. I'll ask you, Mr. Maraton, to explain to us just what you meant down at the Clarion the other night? We weren't expecting you there and you rather took us aback, and we didn't find what you said altogether helpful or particularly lucid. Now what's this business about a universal strike?"

Maraton sat for a moment almost silent. He looked down the table, along the line of faces, coa.r.s.e faces most of them, of varying strength, plebeian, forceful here and there, with one almost common quality of stubbornness. They were men of the people, all of them, men of the narrow ways. What words of his could take them into the further land?

He raised his head. He felt curiously depressed, immeasurably out of touch with these who should have been his helpmates. The sight of Julia just then would have been a joy to him.

"Perhaps," Maraton began, with a little sigh, "I had better first explain my own position. You are each of you Members of Parliament for a particular district. The interests of each of you are bound up in the welfare of the operatives who send you to Parliament. It's your job to look after them, and I've no doubt you do it well. Only, you see, it's a piecemeal sort of business to call yourselves the representatives of Labour in its broadest sense. I belong more, I am afraid, to the school of theorists. In my mind I bring all Labour together, all the toilers of the world who are slaves to the great Moloch, Capital. You have an immense middle cla.s.s here in England, who are living in fatness and content. The keynote of my creed is that these people have twice the incomes they ought to have, and Labour half as much. That, of course, is just the simple, oldfas.h.i.+oned, illogical Socialism with which you probably all started life, and which doubtless lies in some forgotten chamber of the minds of all of you. You've given it up because you've decided that it was unpractical. I haven't. I believe that if we were to pull down the pillars which hold up the greatness of this nation, I believe that if we were to lay her in ruins about us, that in the years to come--perhaps I ought to say the generations to come--the rebuilding, stone by stone, would be on the sane principle which, once established, would last for eternity, of an absolute partners.h.i.+p between Capital and Labour, a partners.h.i.+p which I say would be eternal because, in course of time, the two would become one."

They all looked at one another a little blankly. Peter Dale grunted with expressionless face and relit his pipe, which had gone out during these few moments of intense listening. Graveling reached out his hand and took a cigar from a box which had been placed upon the table.

Henneford and his neighbour exchanged glances, which culminated in a stealthy wink. Alone at the table David Ross sat like a figure of stone, his mouth a little open, something of the light in his face.

"I'm too much of an Englishman, for one," Graveling said, "to want to pull the country down. Now where does this universal strike come in?"

"The universal strike," Maraton explained quietly, "is the doctrine I came to England to preach. It is the doctrine I meant to preach to-night. If your coal strike and your iron strike and your railway strike were declared within the next few days, the pillars would indeed be pulled down."

"Why, I should say so!" Peter Dale declared gruffly. "Half the people in the country would be starving; there'd be no subscriptions to the Unions; the blooming Germans would be over here in no time, and we should lose our jobs."

"It wouldn't do, Mr. Maraton," Borden said briskly. "It's our job to improve the position of our const.i.tuents, but it's jolly certain we shouldn't do that by bringing ruin upon the country."

David Ross suddenly struck the table with his fist.

"You are wrong, all of you," he cried hoa.r.s.ely. "You are ignorant men, thick-headed, fat, narrow fools, full of self-interest and prejudice.

You want your jobs; they come first. I tell you that the man's right.

Purge the country; get rid of the poison of ill-distributed capital, start again a new nation and a new morning."

Dale looked across the table, pityingly.

"What you need, Ross, is a drink," he remarked. "I noticed you weren't doing yourself very well coming down."

David Ross rose heavily to his feet. His arm was stretched out towards Dale and it was the arm of an accuser.

"Doing myself well!" he repeated, with fierce contempt. "That's the keynote of your lives, you lazy, self-satisfied swine, who call yourselves people's men! What do you know or care about the people?

how many of you have walked by day and night in the wilderness and felt your heart die away within you? How many of you have watched the people hour by hour--the broken people, the vicious people, the cripples, the white slaves of crueler days than the most barbarous countries in history have ever permitted to their children? You understand your jobs, and you do yourselves well; that's your motto and your epitaph.

There's only one amongst you who's a people's man and that's him."

He pointed to Maraton and sat down. Peter Dale removed his pipe from his mouth.

"It's just as well, David Ross, for you to remember," he said gruffly, "that you're here on sufferance. Seems to me there's a bit of the dog in the manger about your whining. I don't know as it matters to any one particularly what your opinion is, but if you expect to be taken in along of us, you'll have to alter your style a bit. It's all very well for the platform, but it don't go down here. Now, lads, let's get on with business. What I say is this. If Mr. Maraton is going on the platform to-night to talk anarchy, why then we'd best stop it. We want subscriptions, we want the sympathy of the British public in this strike, and there's nothing would make them b.u.t.ton up their pockets quicker than for Mr. Maraton there to go and talk about bringing ruin upon the Empire for the sake of the people who ain't born yet. That's what I call thinking in the clouds. There's nowt of good in it for us,"

he added, with a momentary and vigorous return into his own vernacular.

"Get it out of thy head, lad, or pack thy bag and get thee back to America." There was a brief silence. Most of those present had drawn a little sigh of relief. It was obvious that they were entirely in agreement with Dale. Only Ross was leaning across the table, his eyes blinking, drumming upon the tablecloth with the palm of his hand.

"That's right," he muttered, "that's right. Send him away, the only one who sees the truth. Send him away. It's dangerous; you might lose your jobs!"

Then Maraton spoke quietly from his place.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I gather one thing, at least, from our brief conference. You are not extremists. I will bear that in mind. But as to what I may or may not say to-night, I make no promises."

"If you're not going to support the strike," Peter Dale declared st.u.r.dily, "then thou shalt never set foot upon the platform. We've had our fears that this might be the result of your spending the week-end with Mr. Foley. There's six of us here, all accredited representatives of great industrial centres, and he's never thought fit to ask one of us to set foot under his roof. Never mind that. We, perhaps," he added, with a slow glance at Maraton, "haven't learnt the knack of wearing our Sunday coats. But just you listen. If Mr. Foley's been getting at you about this cotton strike, and you mean to throw cold water upon it to-night, then I tell ye that you're out for trouble. These Lancas.h.i.+re lads don't stick at a bit. They'll pull you limb from limb if you give them any of Mr. Foley's soft sawder. We're out to fight--in our own way, perhaps, but to fight."

"It is true that I have spent the week-end with Mr. Foley," Maraton admitted. "I had thought, perhaps, to have reported to you to-day the substance of our conversation. I feel now, though," he continued, "that it would be useless. You call yourselves Labour Members, and in your way you are no doubt excellent machines. I, too, call myself a Labour man, but we stand far apart in our ideas, in our methods. I think, Mr.

Peter Dale and gentlemen, that we will go our own ways. We will fight for the people as seems best to us. I do not think that an alliance is possible."

They stared at him, a little amazed.

"Look here, young man," Peter Dale expostulated, "what's it all about?

What do you want from us? I spoke of a job as lecturer just now. If you've really got the gift of speaking that they say you have, that'll bring you into Parliament in time, and I reckon you'll settle down fast enough with the rest of us then. Until then, what is it you want? We are sensible men. We all know you can't go spouting round the country for nothing, whether it's for the people, or woman's suffrage, or any old game. Open your mouth and let's hear what you have to say."

Maraton rose to his feet.