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It is clear, of course, that there was a musical connection between revivalism and the labor movement, but it also is probably true that there was a more fundamental connection. In one view, at least, John Wesley—with whom revivalism began in England in 1743—gave to "the English urban proletariat a democratic religion and an effective emotional outlet." In turn, this "religious experience of mass emotion and collective action by working men contributed indirectly to the labor movement, although in its inception it had no economic program or application." Ellen McCulloch, of the British Transport and General Workers Union, seems to affirm this in saying that religious nonconformism influenced many local and national trade union leaders in Great Britain in the early days.

Certainly American revivalism as practiced by Moody was a departure from the forms of the established church, although one student of the subject claims that in Great Britain and Ireland Moody's revivalism had "little if any effect on the labor movement" because it had its "chief stronghold in the middle classes." The record is clear, however, that between 1873 and 1875 Moody took his message to "the poorer classes" in such great industrial cities as Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, Manchester, and London (where one of the revival centers was in Bow Road Hall in the poor and grimy East End).

With Moody, of course, was Sankey, and many a workingman in the great cities they visited must have heard "Hold the Fort." No doubt, the song's continued popularity induced the Salvation Army, organized by General William Booth in 1878, to use it and thereby to popularize it still further. Arthur Deakin, who became general secretary of the British Transport Workers, recalled that "in the early days of the dockers' struggles Ben Tillett and James Sexton 'borrowed' the song from our