"Have you?" was the response. "But what are you going to do?"
"Oh, I'm going to the south of France. I cannot bear England in the winter."
"Then I advise you to take the five hundred pounds with you."
"Do you refuse it?"
"Absolutely. It is cowardly for a man like you to offer five hundred pounds and then run away. You ought to do more than give it; you ought to spend it. Come down and see that the proper people get it. It is not so hard to raise five hundred pounds for the poor as it is to distribute it properly among the poor."
The Labour League did more than send Crooks to the London County Council. It secured representation on the local Poor Law and municipal bodies. It promoted social life as well as public life among the working classes of Poplar. By entertainments, lectures, and excursions it carried brightness and pleasure into the lives of the workmen, their wives, and children. At Christmas time it acted as a kind of Santa Claus to the poorest children of the district. It established a Loan and Thrift Society, which soon had an annual turnover of £2,000. Throughout it all the League never for a moment deserted its Labour Member.
Crooks in his turn remained faithful to the League in face of several alluring offers. The one that tempted him most came from his own trade. Before he quitted the workshop for public life a future managership had been hinted at. He had not been on the County Council more than a few months when a vacancy in his former workshop occurred. At once he was approached and urged to give up the L.C.C.
The post offered him carried with it a salary of £500. He had six children to bring up. There was the uncertainty as to the Labour League being able to keep up the Wages Fund. He pondered over the matter carefully. His decision changed the current of his life. A manager, no matter how sympathetic, could not have remained long in the Labour Movement. Besides, in this case there were hints of a future partnership. Then it was that he decided calmly and deliberately to give his life not to money-making, but to the service of the people. He deliberately chose to remain a poor man in the service of poor men. Having been made to bear so much of the care of this world, he determined that he would know nothing of the deceitfulness of riches.
Nothing has ever shaken him from that decision. From various quarters since then other good offers have come his way. One of them, a Government post, must be regarded as a singular tribute to his worth, since the offer came from a Conservative Cabinet Minister.