JOE. And I haven't got a shirt.
GUY. A shirt! The world doesn't care for you. It's cloth by the hundred thousand yards they want. It's not your petty wants the system cares about. It's——
MARTIN. Then to hell with the system. We're petty, and, as you say, we can't do much. We can't stop factories being built elsewhere. But we can stop them here. We're broken men, but our spirit isn't broken yet. You've set up your last machine. Your system may be all you think, but men come first.
GUY. Your men or mine?
MARTIN. The men you've driven desperate. The starving, ragged men with wives and children hunger-mad, with everything to win and nowt to lose. It's men like that that win. Men with the choice of fighting hard or dying slow. Men with a bitter hatred in their hearts and knowledge in their heads that machinery's the cause of all. Men fighting for themselves against the men that fight for money and for you. Your hired bullies won't last long. We know they're there, and know we'll see them run.
GUY (soberly). You'll waste your blood. You may waste life. I've got men there. I don't deny it. And I ask you not to break yourselves against them. You're thinking me a coward, but it isn't that.
MARTIN (sneering). Oh? What is it then?
GUY. It's that I know. I won't be you and it won't be I who will win this fight.
JOE. It must be one of us.
GUY. No. We may have ups and downs, but the system will conquer us both.