The village had its Socialists, the postman and the fish buyer, and, in the beginning of it, they talked excitedly of a general strike; the dockers would come out and the carters; every port would be closed, transport at a standstill; the miners would lay down their tools, and such frightful losses would be inflicted on the capitalists that they would be unable to pursue their undertakings. They would be taken out of their hands and worked by the laborers for the laborers, and then there would be the beginnings of justice upon the earth and the laborers would begin to enjoy the good things of the world. Old Mole asked them what they meant by the good things of the world, and the answer was strangely Hebraic--a land flowing with milk and honey, where men labored for six days (eight hours a day) and rested the seventh day, and had time to talk and think. They set an enormous value on talking and thinking, and all their enthusiasm was for "settling questions." The land would be "settled," and education, and housing, and insurance, and consumption, and lead poisoning. Each "question" was separated from every other; each existed apart from everything else, and each had its nostrum, the prescription for which was deferred until the destruction of the capitalists, and the liberation of the middle classes from their own middle classishness-- (for these Socialists detested the middle classes even more than the capitalists)--had placed the ingredients in their hands. The "questions" had to be settled; the capitalists had created them, the middle classes, like sheep, accepted them; the "questions" had to be settled once for all, and therefore the capitalists had to be ruined and the middle classes squeezed in their pockets and stomachs until they surrendered and accepted the new ordering of the world in justice, brotherhood, and equality. Already the strike was doing damage at the rate of hundreds and thousands a week, and they had caught the bulk of the middle classes in their holidays, and thousands of them would be unable to get back to their work.