were but
a feeble lot; their union was poor, their combination loose. They were
cooped up within the walls of a great Employers' Federation, which
laughed at their efforts to scramble out. Yet they escaped; the walls
were found to be not so very high and strong; in one place or another
they crumbled away, and the prisoners escaped. They gained what they
wanted; their grievances were no longer intolerable. What working man or
woman on hearing of it did not burn to follow, and did not feel the
grievances of life harder to be tolerated than before? If that feeble
lot could win their pennyworth of freedom, who might not expect
deliverance? People talk of "strike fever" as though it were an
infection; and so it is. It is the infection of a sudden hope.

After the sneer, the _Times_ proceeded to attribute the strikes to a
natural desire for idleness during the hot weather. Seldom has so base
an accusation been brought against our country, even by her worst
enemies. The country consists almost entirely of working people, the
other classes being a nearly negligible fraction in point of numbers.
The restlessness and discontent were felt far and wide among nearly all
the working people, and to suggest that hundreds of thousands
contemplated all the risks and miseries of stopping work because they
wanted to be idle in the shade displayed the ignorance our educated
classes often display in speaking of the poor. For I suppose the thing
was too cruel for a joke.

Hardly less pitiable than such ignorance was the nonchalant excuse of
those who pleaded: "We have our grievances too. We all want something
that we haven't got. We should all like our incomes raised. But we don't
go about striking and rioting." It reminds one of Lord Rosebery's
contention, some fifteen years ago, that in point of pleasure all men
are fairly equal, and the rich no happier than the poor. It sounds very
pretty and philosophic, but those who know what poverty is know it to be
absolutely untrue. If Lord Rosebery had ever tried poverty, he would
have known it was untrue. All the working people know it, and they know
that the grievances in which one can talk about income are never to be
compared with the grievances which hang on the turn of a penny, or the
chance of a shilling more or a shilling less per week.

To a man receiving L20 a week the difference of L2 one way or other is
important, but it is not vital. If his income drops to L18 a week he and
his fami