utter ... I will be
the Word of the People. I will be the bleeding mouth whence the gag is
snatched out. I will say everything." It announced its object to be
the "building up" of a "New Church, dedicated to the service of man,"
and "what we want to do is to establish in every village and in every
street some man or woman who will sacrifice time and labour as
systematically and as cheerfully in the temporal service of man as
others do in what they believe to be the service of God." Week after
week we issued our little paper, and it became a real light in the
darkness. There the petty injustices inflicted on the poor found
voice; there the starvation wages paid to women found exposure; there
sweating was brought to public notice. A finisher of boots paid 2s.
6d. per dozen pairs and "find your own polish and thread"; women
working for 10-1/2 hours per day, making shirts--"fancy best"--at from
10d. to 3s. per dozen, finding their own cotton and needles, paying
for gas, towel, and tea (compulsory), earning from 4s. to 10s. per
week for the most part; a mantle finisher 2s. 2d. a week, out of which
6d. for materials; "respectable hard-working woman" tried for
attempted suicide, "driven to rid herself of life from want." Another
part of our work was defending people from unjust landlords, exposing
workhouse scandals, enforcing the Employers' Liability Act, Charles
Bradlaugh's Truck Act, forming "Vigilance Circles" whose members kept
watch in their own district over cases of cruelty to children,
extortion, insanitary workshops, sweating, &c., reporting each case to
me. Into this work came Herbert Burrows, who had joined hands with me
over the Trafalgar Square defence, and who wrote some noble articles
in the _Link_. A man loving the people with passionate devotion,
hating oppression and injustice with equal passion, working himself
with remorseless energy, breaking his heart over wrongs he could not
remedy. His whole character once came out in a sentence when he was
lying delirious and thought himself dying: "Tell the people how I have
loved them always."

In our crusade for the poor we worked for the dockers." To-morrow
morning, in London alone 20,000 to 25,000 adult men," wrote Sidney
Webb, "will fight like savages for permission to labour in the docks
for 4d. an hour, and one-third of them will fight in vain, and be
turned workless away." We worked for children's dinners. "If we insist
on these children being educated, is