n the fight!

[The crowd sags nearer, looking eagerly up.]

[With withering scorn.] You've felt the pinch o't in your bellies.
You've forgotten what that fight 'as been; many times I have told
you; I will tell you now this once again. The fight o' the country's
body and blood against a blood-sucker. The fight of those that spend
themselves with every blow they strike and every breath they draw,
against a thing that fattens on them, and grows and grows by the law
of merciful Nature. That thing is Capital! A thing that buys the
sweat o' men's brows, and the tortures o' their brains, at its own
price. Don't I know that? Wasn't the work o' my brains bought for
seven hundred pounds, and has n't one hundred thousand pounds been
gained them by that seven hundred without the stirring of a finger.
It is a thing that will take as much and give you as little as it
can. That's Capital! A thing that will say--"I'm very sorry for
you, poor fellows--you have a cruel time of it, I know," but will not
give one sixpence of its dividends to help you have a better time.
That's Capital! Tell me, for all their talk, is there one of them
that will consent to another penny on the Income Tax to help the
poor? That's Capital! A white-faced, stony-hearted monster! Ye
have got it on its knees; are ye to give up at the last minute to
save your miserable bodies pain? When I went this morning to those
old men from London, I looked into their very 'earts. One of them
was sitting there--Mr. Scantlebury, a mass of flesh nourished on us:
sittin' there for all the world like the shareholders in this
Company, that sit not moving tongue nor finger, takin' dividends a
great dumb ox that can only be roused when its food is threatened.
I looked into his eyes and I saw he was afraid--afraid for himself
and his dividends; afraid for his fees, afraid of the very
shareholders he stands for; and all but one of them's afraid--like
children that get into a wood at night, and start at every rustle of
the leaves. I ask you, men--[he pauses, holding out his hand till
there is utter silence]--give me a free hand to tell them: "Go you
back to London. The men have nothing for you!" [A murmuring.] Give
me that, an' I swear to you, within a week you shall have from London
all you want.

EVANS, JAGO, and OTHERS. A free hand! Give him a free hand! Bravo
--bravo!

ROBERTS. 'T is not for this little moment of time we're fighting
[the murmuring di