Scarcely to be compared numerically with the former postal trades-union, embracing the letter-carriers and letter-sorters, which was led by Booth, the Fawcett Association was yet to succeed as a movement where the other had failed. The enormous movement of 1872-74, covering so wide a field as it did, and numbering its branches in almost every town throughout the kingdom, with great resources financially and morally, and counting among its sponsors and supporters dozens of the most notable men of the day, after living through a brief and stormy period, had achieved little. The withdrawal of the personal influence of Booth, the organising and the dominating spirit, caused it to shrink and crumble away in decay and disaster. It had spent thousands of pounds one way and another, in expensive mass meetings at Exeter Hall and elsewhere, with their bands of music and colours flying, and public men parading their platforms in pomp; but the agitation had produced little beyond a sensation. The postal servants for whom the movement was begun were left practically just where they were in the beginning. It was an agitation which, while it ran its brief course, filled both the public eye and ear; it bedecked itself with trappings and tinsel; it was magnificent in a way, but directly Booth left it, it was no longer war. He undoubtedly it was mainly who inspired and inflated it; and his withdrawal in a moment of pique following indisposition, left it without a responsible leader, and the fight became a rout. With victory almost within sight, the principal leader withdrew and others followed, and the rank and file of the movement, left to their own resources, abandoned the siege and unaccountably beat a hasty retreat, as if a panic had seized them. The very looseness and wavering in their ranks was an invitation and an encouragement to the official patricians who garrisoned the till now beleaguered citadel of privilege, and directly this was seen the cavalry issued forth and smote them. The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold; and the undisciplined and leaderless organisation had to return captive along the paths of submissiveness and obedience. Hope for the redress of their grievances was abandoned for years to come.