His appeal to the public won an inspiring response. Bumbledom was against him, but the people were with him. While a section of the Press was attacking him, it was so far ignorant of what the people of England were thinking as to know nothing at all of the tremendous meetings he was addressing all over the country.
His meetings in Poplar and Woolwich, where he was supported with rousing enthusiasm, were the largest he had ever had in those boroughs. At Chesterfield he addressed an open-air meeting of nearly twenty thousand Midland miners, when his reference to his Poor Law policy was cheered to the echo. The Cleveland miners were equally enthusiastic when he went up to their annual gathering. It was the same at public meetings in Newcastle, Burton, Huddersfield, Rossendale, Stockport, Batley, Sunderland, Penarth—the man who had stood out against one of Bumbledom's fiercest onslaughts had the good-will and confidence of the working people of England. At his indoor meetings there were rarely fewer than two thousand people present. Often he had audiences of four and five thousand.
It looked as though a recurrence of his old illness would prevent him from keeping an appointment to speak on his Poor Law policy at Bradford. Such was the strength of the appeal sent to him, however, that he determined to risk it. He had to be helped by his wife on the journey, and when at the meeting it was found he was unable to stand there was a unanimous call that he be allowed to keep his chair while speaking. Seated in the middle of the platform, he held an audience of two or three thousand people for upwards of an hour. The response he wrung from the crowded hall moved him deeply. Bumbledom never had a worse hour.
Of course his first public meeting after the publication of the Local Government Board's report took place at the Dock Gates in Poplar.
"We never had a better meeting," he wrote to me the next day. "The audience backed me to a man and woman—and, by the way, we never had so many women present before. It did me good."
At some of his provincial meetings there were people who well-nigh worshipped him. Old men in particular who had known the Hungry 'Forties would come up to him after the meeting and say:—
"Let me shake you by the hand, Mr. Crooks. We read about it in the papers, but the papers don't understand. We've been through it, and know. Don't be down-hearted, Mr. Crooks. God bless you!"
At a small country town a bed had been reserved for him at the little hotel outside the railway station. He arrived about midnight, and found the place in darkness. He knocked loudly for some time. At last a man's voice was heard from the railway line.
"Is that Mr. Crooks? Lord love yer, we knew you'd be late, and gone again early in the morning, and so that I shouldn't miss seeing you I told the hotel-keeper to go to bed and let me have the keys, so that you couldn't get in without me shaking you by the hand."
His first public meeting in Woolwich after the Local Government Board Inquiry drew an audience of over five thousand people to the Drill Hall. His colleague Lansbury shared in the inspiring reception and addressed the meeting.