A pretty quarrel, in very sooth, a quarrel that should have shown the veriest idiot of a workingman of how little worth are political professions, nay, indeed, of how little worth are religious protestations when that sorest of sore points, the pocket, is touched. The weavers of Huddersfield and of the valleys hard by had, for years that stretched back almost beyond count, flocked in their thousands to shout at the hustings in the Square, or, in later days, to shout in their noble Town Hall for banker or manufacturer or merchant who came to them with glib, smooth speech, asseverating with tear-laden eyes that all they asked, to make them happy, was to spend and be spent in the workers’ cause. And now the lists are ranged for a grim conflict between Labour and Capital, and where are ye now oh, friends of the people? Where now is the Liberal merchant, where now the Radical manufacturer, where now your reforming councillors and aldermen who have risen to their paltry place and gimcrack power on the popular vote, where now the editors of facile pen who have been so fluent in their vows of fidelity to the people’s cause? All, all alike—Whig and Tory, Conservative, Liberal, and Radical stand in solid phalanx, confronting an abandoned, impassioned mob, conscious only of its wrongs and its betrayal. The men know the masters’ scale means robbery, but how shall they, unlettered, unskilled, with hands that can ply a shuttle but unused to pen, with brains to think and know and feel, with tongues little used to ordered speech, how shall they plead their cause? Two men are seated this stormy March night in a retired room of the Albion public-house on the Buxton Road. The room is small, ill-ventilated, stuffy, its air laden with tobacco reek and the fumes of stale ale. They are Albert Clough, the Weavers’ Secretary, and Allen Rae, two men as different in character and temperament as the poles are wide asunder, but united in a common belief in the worker’s right to a fairer and a sweeter heritage.