Only I tell you why co-operation has failed up till now. It's because
you've been in too much of a hurry. I am going to appeal to you
presently, not for your own interests but in the interests of your
children and your children's children, because the better days that are
to come for you won't dawn yet awhile. It may be, even, that you will
be called upon to make sacrifices, instead of finding yourselves better
off. There are some great changes which time alone can govern."

"What about this strike?" some one shouted from the bottom of the
hall.

"You are quite right, sir," Maraton replied swiftly. "I've wandered a
little from my point. I think that the first thing I said to you was
that this strike, if it took place, would be like the pinprick on an
elephant's hide. I want to teach you how to stab!"

There was a murmur of voices--approving this time, at any rate.

"Can't you see," Maraton continued, "that Society can easily deal with
one strike at a time? That isn't the way to make yourself felt. What I
want to see in this country is a simultaneous strike of wharfingers,
dock labourers, railways, and all the means of communication; a strike
which will stop the pulses of the nation, a strike which will cost
hundreds of millions, a strike which may cost this country its place
amongst the nations, but which will mark the dawn of new conditions.
I'd put out your forge fires from Glasgow to Sheffield and Sheffield to
London. I'd take the big risks--the rioting, the revolutions, the
starvation, the misery that will surely come. I'd do that for the sake
of the new nation which would start again where the old one perished."