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The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists would begin to shout and bluster about some utterly unimportant side issue; and in the angry wrangle that ensued the original subject would be overlooked.

Usually after one of these arguments Owen would wander off by himself, with his head throbbing and a feeling of unutterable depression and misery at his heart, weighed down by a growing conviction of the hopelessness of everything, of the folly of expecting that his fellow workmen would ever be willing to try to understand for themselves the causes that produced their sufferings. They did not want to know, they did not want to understand; it seemed as if they feared rather than welcomed the prospect of deliverance, and scorned and hated their would-be deliverers.

One night about nine o'clock Owen was in a large Liberal crowd, listening to the same hired orator who had spoken a few evenings before on the hill, the man with the scar on his forehead. The crowd was applauding him loudly and Owen again fell to wondering where he had seen this man before, and presently he remembered that this was one of the Socialists who had come with the band of cyclists into the town that Sunday morning, at the beginning of the summer—the man who had come afterwards with the van, and who had been struck down by a stone while attempting to speak from the platform. Though the Socialist had been clean shaven, and this man wore beard and moustache, Owen was certain that it was he.

At the conclusion of his speech the hired orator got down and stood in the shade behind the platform, while someone else addressed the meeting, and Owen went round to where he was standing, intending to speak to him.

All around them, pandemonium reigned supreme. They were in the vicinity of the Fountain on the Grand Parade, where several roads met. There was a meeting going on at every corner, and a number of others in different parts of the roadway and on the pavement of the parade.

Every now and then some of these poor wretches—they were all paid speakers—were surrounded and savagely mauled and beaten by a hostile crowd. If they were Tariff Reformers the Liberals mobbed them; and vice versa. Lines of rowdies swaggered to and fro, arm in arm, singing 'Vote, Vote, Vote, for good ole Closeland,' or 'good ole Sweater,' according to their colours. Gangs of hooligans paraded up and down, armed 372