Part 11 (1/2)

The indignation grew and grew; the police were silently boycotted, but the people were so persistent and so tactful that no excuse for violence was given, until the strain on the police force began to tell, and the Tory Govern hopelessly alienated; so at last Sir Charles Warren fell, and a wiser hand was put at the helm

CHAPTER XIV

THROUGH STORM TO PEACE

Out of all this turmoil and stress rose a Brotherhood that had in it the promise of a fairer day Mr Stead and I had beco with one coainst oppression And so in _Our Corner_ for February, 1888, I wrote:--”Lately there has been dawning on the y, the idea of founding a new Brotherhood, in which service of Man should take the place erstwhile given to service of God--a brotherhood in which work should be worshi+p and love should be baptis to work for hu towards Millbank Gaol with the Rev SD Headlam, on the way to liberate a prisoner, I said to hiht to have a new Church, which should include all who have the coround of faith in and love for man' And a little later I found that my friend Mr WT Stead, editor of the _Pall Mall Gazette,_ had long been brooding over a siht not be persuaded to be as earnest abouttheir souls' The teaching of social duty, the upholding of social righteousness, the building up of a true co the aims of the Church of the future Is the hope too fair for realisation? Is the winning of such beatific vision yet once more the dream of the enthusiast? But surely the one fact that persons so deeply differing in theological creeds as those who have been toiling for the last three months to aid and relieve the oppressed, can work in absolute harmony side by side for the one end--surely this proves that there is a bond which is stronger than our antagonisms, a unity which is deeper than the speculative theories which divide”

How unconsciously I was lory ofblindly in the darkness for that very brotherhood, definitely formulated on these very lines by those Elder Brothers of our race, at whose feet I was so soon to throwloftier than I had yet found had wrought itself intothat there was soht to which the service of e froht that in these days of factories and of tramways, of shoddy, and of adulteration, that all life must tread with even rhythlory of the ideal could no longer glow over the greyness of athat the breath of the older herois to stir men's breasts, and that the passion for justice and for liberty, which thrilled through the veins of the world's greatest in the past, and woke our pulses to responsive throb, has not yet died wholly out of the hearts of men Still the quest of the Holy Grail exercises its deathless fascination, but the seekers no longer raise eyes to heaven, nor search over land and sea, for they know that it waits the at their doors, that the consecration of the holiest is on the agonising , the cup is crirown speechless Christ'

If there be a faith that can renorance and evil, it is surely that faith in the ultiht in the final enthrone, and which gems the blackest cloud of depression with the rainbow-coloured arch of an i about some such union of those ready to work for man, Mr Stead and I projected the _Link_, a halfpenny weekly, the spirit of which was described in its o: ”The people are silence I will be the advocate of this silence I will speak for the dureat and of the feeble to the strong I will speak for all the despairing silent ones I will interpret this stas, the murmurs, the tumults of crowds, the complaints ill-pronounced, and all these cries of beasts that, through ignorance and through suffering, man is forced to utterI will be the Word of the People I will be the bleedingis snatched out I will say everything” It announced its object to be the ”building up” of a ”New Church, dedicated to the service of man,”

and ”ant to do is to establish in every village and in every street some man or woman ill sacrifice time and labour as systematically and as cheerfully in the temporal service of man as others do in what they believe to be the service of God” Week after e issued our little paper, and it becaht in the darkness There the petty injustices inflicted on the poor found voice; there the starvation wages paid to woht to public notice A finisher of boots paid 2s

6d per dozen pairs and ”find your own polish and thread”; wo shi+rts--”fancy best”--at fro their own cotton and needles, paying for gas, towel, and tea (co from 4s to 10s per week for the most part; a mantle finisher 2s 2d a week, out of which 6d forwoman” tried for attempted suicide, ”driven to rid herself of life fro people fro the Eh's Truck Act, forilance Circles” whose members kept watch in their own district over cases of cruelty to children, extortion, insanitary workshops, sweating, &c, reporting each case to me Into this work came Herbert Burroho had joined hands with ar Square defence, and rote so the people with passionate devotion, hating oppression and injustice with equal passion, working his he could not remedy His whole character once caht hi: ”Tell the people how I have loved them always”

In our crusade for the poor orked for the dockers” To-, in London alone 20,000 to 25,000 adult es for permission to labour in the docks for 4d an hour, and one-third of theht in vain, and be turned workless away” We worked for children's dinners ”If we insist on these children being educated, is it not necessary that they shall be fed? If not, aste on thee they cannot assimilate, and torture many of them to death Poor waifs of humanity, we drive them into the school and bid them learn; and the pitiful, wistful eyes question us e inflict this strange new suffering, and bring into their di 'Why not leave us alone? 'ask the pathetically patient little faces Why not, indeed, since for these child martyrs of the sluainst ”cheap goods,” that oods” ”The ethics of buying should surely be si, and we do not desire to obtain it either by begging or by robbery; but if in becoive for it sohbour's labour has been put into the thing we desire; if ill not yield him fair equivalent for that labour, yet take his article, we defraud hiive that fair equivalent we have no right to become the owners of his product”

This branch of our work led to a big fight--a fightof the Fabian Society, Miss Cleed the fored only to buy froe HH Champion, in the discussion that followed, drew attention to the wages paid by Bryant & May (Li an enormous dividend to their shareholders, so that the value of the original 5 shares was quoted at 18 7s 6d Herbert Burrows and I interviewed soes, of fines, &c

”A typical case is that of a girl of sixteen, a piece-worker; she earns 4s a week, and lives with a sister, eood s 2s a week is paid for the rent of one room The child lives only on bread and butter and tea, alike for breakfast and dinner, but related with dancing eyes that once a et coffee and bread and butter, and jam and marmalade, and lots of it'” We published the facts under the title of ”White Slavery in London,” and called for a boycott of Bryant & May's matches ”It is tiirls to me; and I asked: ”Who will help? Plenty of people ell to any good cause; but very few care to exert the in its support 'Soht to do it, but why should I?' is the ever re-echoed phrase of weak-kneed aht to do it, so why _not_ I?' is the cry of so to face some perilous duty

Between those two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution”

I was pro cairls, and a few days later Fleet Street was enlivened by the irruption of a crowd ofAnnie Besant I couldn't speechify to irls in Fleet Street, so asked that a deputation should come and explain what they wanted Up came three won a paper certifying that they ell treated and contented, and that my statements were untrue; they refused ”You had spoke up for us,” explained one, ”and eren't going back on you” A girl, pitched on as their leader, was threatened with dised for some trifle, and they all thren their work, some 1,400 of them, and then a crowd of them started off to me to ask what to do next If we ever worked in our lives, Herbert Burrows and I worked for the next fortnight And a pretty hubbub we created; we asked for irls to receive strike pay, wrote articles, roused the clubs, held public h to ask questions in Parliament, stirred up constituencies in which shareholders were le Mr Frederick Charrington lent us a hall for registration, Mr Sidney Webb and others moved the National Liberal Club to action; we led a procession of the girls to the House of Commons, and intervieith a deputation of them, Meirls behaved splendidly, stuck together, kept brave and bright all through Mr Hobart of the Social Democratic Federation, Messrs

Shaw, Bland, and Oliver, and Headlam of the Fabian Society, Miss Clementina Black, and many another helped in the heavy work The London Trades Council finally consented to act as arbitrators and a satisfactory settleirls went in to work, fines and deductions were abolished, better wages paid; the Match-est woland, and for years I acted as secretary, till, under press of other duties, I resigned, and irls to Mrs Thornton Smith; Herbert Burrows became, and still is, the treasurer For a time there was friction between the Coradually disappeared under the influence of coer ready to consider any just grievance and to endeavour to remove it, while the Co Women's Club at Bow, founded by HP Blavatsky

[Illustration: STRIKE COMMITTEE OF THE MATCHMAKERS' UNION]

The worst suffering of all was a the box-makers, thrown out of work by the strike, and they were hard to reach Twopence-farthing per gross of boxes, and buy your own string and paste, is not wealth, but when the ent h the lanes and alleys round Bethnal Green Junction late at night, when our day's as over; children lying about on shavings, rags, anything; fa out of baby faces, out of worew sick and eyes dim, and ever louder sounded the question, ”Where is the cure for sorrohat the way of rescue for the world?”

In August I asked for a ”-rooaht, hoirls, who now have no real horound save the streets It is not proposed to build an 'institution' with stern and rigid discipline and enforceenial at freedorown up in the blessed shelter of a happy hoirls” In the saust, two years later, HP Blavatsky opened such a home

Then came a cry for help froally fined, and inof ally fined; legal defences by the score still continued; a vigorous agitation for a free es to be paid by all public bodies; work for the dockers and exposure of their wrongs; a visit to the Cradley Heath chain- for them; a contest for the School Board for the Tower Hamlets division, and triumphant return at the head of the poll Such were some of the ways in which the autu of scores of lectures--Secularist, Labour, Socialist--and scores of articles written for the winning of daily bread When the School Board as added I felt that I had as th could do

Thus was ushered in 1889, the to otten year in which I found , and of beco the pupil of, HP Blavatsky Everthat so more than I had was needed for the cure of social ills The Socialist position sufficed on the econoain the inspiration, the motive, which should lead to the realisation of the Brotherhood of Man? Our efforts to really organise bands of unselfish workers had failed Much indeed had been done, but there was not a realdevotion, in which ive, not to take Where was the material for the nobler Social Order, where the hewn stones for the building of the Teht for such a movement and found it not

[Illustration: MEMBERS OF THE MATCHMAKERS' UNION]

Not only so; but since 1886 there had been slowly growing up a conviction that my philosophy was not sufficient; that life and y was advancing with rapid strides; hypnotic experi unlooked-for coe riddles ofof all, vivid intensities of enerator of thought, was reduced to a co in upon ive I studied the obscurer sides of consciousness, dreams, hallucinations, illusions, insanity Into the darkness shot a ray of light--AP Sinnett's ”Occult World,” with its wonderfully suggestive letters, expounding not the supernatural but a nature under laider than I had dared to conceive I added Spiritualis the phenomena indubitable, but the spiritualistic explanation of them incredible The pheno, were found to be real Under all the rush of the outer life, already sketched, these questions orking in ht I read a variety of books, but could find little in theested in theot some (to me) curious results

I finally convinced , some hidden power, and resolved to seek until I found, and by the early spring of 1889 I had grown desperately deter alone in deep thought as I had become accustomed to do after the sun had set, filled with an intense but nearly hopeless longing to solve the riddle of life and mind, I heard a Voice that was later to becoe for the light was near A fortnight passed, and then Mr Stead gave intoh on these subjects toof them” I took the books; they were the two volumes of ”The Secret Doctrine,” written by HP Blavatsky

Home I carried e after page the interest beca; but how fae the conclusions, how natural it was, how coherent, how subtle, and yet how intelligible I was dazzled, blinded by the light in which disjointed facts were seen as parts of a hty whole, and all my puzzles, riddles, problems, seemed to disappear The effect was partially illusory in one sense, in that they all had to be slowly unravelled later, the brain gradually assirasped as truth But the light had been seen, and in that flash of illumination I knew that the weary search was over and the very Truth was found

I wrote the review, and asked Mr Stead for an introduction to the writer, and then sent a note asking to be allowed to call I received theevening Herbert Burrows and I--for his aspirations were asHill Station, wondering e should meet, to the door of 17, Lansdowne Road A pause, a swift passing through hall and outer rooe chair before a table, a voice, vibrant, co wished to see you,”

and I was standing withfor the first tiht into the eyes of ”HPB” I was conscious of a sudden leaping forth of nition?--and then, I am ashamed to say, a fierce rebellion, a fierce withdrawal, as of so hand I sat down, after some introductions that conveyed no ideas to me, and listened She talked of travels, of various countries, easy brilliant talk, her eyes veiled, her exquisitelyspecial to record, no word of Occultis with her evening visitors We rose to go, and for aeyesthrob in the voice: ”Oh,us!”