"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 pronouncement 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 sturdily.
"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 principal 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?"