Maraton from the first had felt a seal laid upon his lips. Now, when the time had come for him to speak, he did so with hesitation, almost with reluctance.
"As yet," he began, "there is very little for me to talk about. You are, I understand, you five, a committee appointed by the Labour Party to confer with me as to the best means of promulgating our beliefs. You have each told me your views. You would each, apparently, like me to devote myself to your particular district for the purpose of propagating a strike which shall result in a trifling increase of wages."
"And a coal strike, I say," Peter Dale interrupted, "is the logical first course. We've been threatening it for two years and it's time we brought it off. I can answer for the miners of the north country. We have two hundred and seventy thousand pounds laid by and the Unions are spoiling for a fight. Another eighteen-pence would make life a different thing for some of our pitmen. And the masters can afford it, too. Sixteen and a half per cent is the average dividend on the largest collieries around us."
A small man, with gimlet-like black eyes and a heavy moustache, at which he had been tugging nervously during Peter Dale's remarks, plunged into the discussion. His name was Abraham Weavel and he came from Sheffield.
"Coal's all very well," he declared, "but I speak for the ironfounders. There's orders enough in Leeds and Sheffield to keep the furnaces ablaze for two years, and the masters minting money at it. Our wages ain't to be compared with the miners. We've twenty thousand in Sheffield that aren't drawing twenty-five shillings a week and they're about fed up with it. We've our Unions, too, and money to spare, and I tell you they're beginning to ask what's the use of sending a Labour Member to Parliament and having nothing come of it."
A grey-whiskered man, who had the look of a preacher, struck the table before him with a sudden vigour.
"You remember who I am, Mr. Maraton? My name's Borden—Samuel Borden—and I am from the Potteries. It's all very well for Weavel and Dale there to talk, but there's no labour on God's earth so underpaid as the china and glass worker. We may not have the money saved—that's simply because it takes my people all they can do to keep from starvation. I've figures here that'll prove what I say. I'll go so far as this—there isn't a worse paid industry than mine in the United Kingdom."
There was a moment's silence. Abraham Weavel leaned back in his chair and yawned. Peter Dale made a grimace of dissent. Maraton turned to one of the little company who as yet had scarcely opened his lips—a thin, ascetic-looking, middle-aged man, who wore gold spectacles, and who had an air of refinement which was certainly not shared by any of the others.
"And you, Mr. Culvain," he enquired, "you represent no particular industry, I believe? You were a journalist, were you not, before you entered Parliament?"
"I was and am a journalist," Culvain assented. "Since you have asked my opinion, I must confess that I am all for more peaceful methods. These Labour troubles which inconvenience and bring loss upon the community, do harm to our cause. I am in favour of a vigorous course of platform education through all the country districts of England. I think that the principles of Socialism are not properly understood by the working classes."