Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/77

Rh wages." That finished it. In ten minutes yells for the strike arose. My London friends gathered round me, shouting and gesticulating their remonstrances. I merely shrugged my shoulders, folded up my papers, and went out. It was folly to stop.'

'And on that you fought?' asked Hastings.

'Well, not quite on that. There were many interviews, and I was ready night or day to listen and talk with any of them; but I knew quite well it was useless. The temper of the men was for war, and war they would have. To put it shortly, the Daniel workmen desired three things: the first was to have a grab at the Daniel millions; the second was, if possible, to turn themselves into permanent aristocrats of labour; the third was to pay the rank and file of labour 50 per cent. higher wages, in proportion to the value of the work done, than the captains and colonels. In other words, they intended to sacrifice skill to strength, brain to body, the higher type to the lower. To concede the first two things meant commercial collapse; to concede the last meant the denial of my conviction of what will prove the ruin, social as well as commercial, not only of England, but of all our civilisation—to pander to the fatal vice which seems to me to be inherent in all forms of practical Socialism. Wherefore, on this issue I was ready to fight them, if needs be, to the bitter end.'