And so he plunged into Socialism. He gave up his poetry and much of his congenial work. He attended meetings and committees; he wrote leaflets and pamphlets; he lavished money; he took to giving lectures and addresses; he exposed himself to misunderstandings and insults. He spoke in rain at street corners to indifferent loungers; he pushed a little cart about the squares selling Socialist literature; he had collisions with the police; he was summoned before magistrates: the "poetic upholsterer," as he was called, became an object of bewildered contempt to friends and foes alike. The work was not congenial to him, but he did it well, developing infinite tolerance and good-humour, and even tactfulness, in his relations with other men. The exposure to the weather, the strain, the neglect of his own physical needs, brought on, undoubtedly, the illness of which he eventually died; and worst of all was the growing shadow of discouragement, which made him gradually aware that the times were not ripe, and that even if the people could seize the power they desired, they could not use it. He became aware that the worker's idea of rising in the social scale was not the idea of gaining security, leisure, independence, and love of honest work, but the hope of migrating to the middle class, and becoming a capitalist on a small scale. That was the last thing that Morris desired. Most of all he felt the charge of inconsistency that was dinned into his ears. It was held ridiculous that a wealthy capitalist and a large employer of labour, living, if not in luxury, at least in considerable stateliness, should profess Socialist ideas without attempting to disencumber himself of his wealth. He wrote in answer to a loving remonstrance: "You see, my dear, I can't help it. The ideas which have taken hold of me will not let me rest; nor can I see anything else worth thinking of. How can it be otherwise, when to me society, which to many seems an orderly arrangement for allowing decent people to get through their lives creditably and with some pleasure, seems mere cannibalism; nay, worse (for there ought to be hope in that), is grown so corrupt, so steeped in hypocrisy and lies, that one turns from one stratum of it to another with hopeless loathing.... Meantime, what a little ruffles me is this, that if I do a little fail in my duty some of my friends will praise me for failing instead of blaming me."