He hesitated for a moment as though uncertain, even now, whether to go on.  Glancing around the hall, his eyes for a moment met Julia’s.  Something in her still face, the almost passionate enquiry of her wonderful eyes, seemed to decide him.  He lifted up his hands, his voice grew in volume.

“Let me tell you what I want, then.  Let me tell you the dream which others have had before me, which is laughed to scorn by the enemies of the people, but which grows in substance and shape, year by year.  I want to teach you how to smash the individual capitalist.  I want to teach you how to frame laws which will bring the wealth of this country into a new and saner distribution.  I want to teach you the folly of the old ideas that because of the wretched conditions in which you live, the better educated man, the man better equipped mentally and physically for his job, must gather to himself the wealth and you must become his slaves.  What do you suppose, in the course of three or four generations, produces men of different mental and physical calibre?  I will tell you.  The circumstances of their bringing-up, the life they have to lead, their education, their environment.  What chance have you under present conditions?  None!  For very shame, as the years pass on, you operatives will be better paid.  What will it amount to?  A few shillings a week more, the same life, the same anxieties, the same daily grinding toil, brainless, machine-like, leading you nowhere because there isn’t a way out.  There will still remain your masters; there will still remain you, the men.  Can’t you see what it is that I am aiming at?  I want to make a great machine of all the industries of this country.  The man with the gift for figures will find himself in the office, and the man with lesser brain power will find himself before a machine.  But the two will be working for one aim and one end.  They will both be parts of the machine, and for their livelihood they will take what that machine produces, distributed in a scientific and exact ratio.  It’s co-operation over again, you say?  Very well, call it that.  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.