XII: MAKING A STIRABOUT
Where other orators damned everything from sewing cotton to battleships, and so could not avoid giving offence, Mr. Bly damned only Jah and hurt nobody’s feelings. But he produced an effect. He laid every grievance at Jah’s door, and roused so much enthusiasm that at last he began to believe in his power.
It is not often that the people find a leader, and when they do they expect him to lead. They were impatient for Mr. Bly to reveal to them a line of action, and here he was puzzled. It was one thing (he found) to talk about Jah, another to bring Jah to book. He had no other machinery than that of the Labour Agitators, who had been making elaborate preparations for a strike. Their preparations were excellent, but their followers were reluctant. They could provide them with no adequate motive. In vain did they talk of the dawn of Labour, the Rights of the Worker, and a Place in the Sun; to all these the people preferred the prospect of pay on Saturday. Nothing could stir them, until, at last, at one of Mr. Bly’s meetings when he was being hailed as a leader and implored to lead, and at his wit’s end what to do, upon a whisper from behind, he said:
“Strike! Strike against Jah! You are workers! Why do you work? To feed your children. Your children die. Strike, I say, strike while the iron is hot, the iron that has entered into your souls from the cruel tyranny of Jah! There is no other enemy. You have no other foe....”
He did not need to say more. The fat was in the fire.