In the past the world had seen very many strikes on the part of workers, not selfishly conceived in their essence, but bringing a great deal of poverty and misery in their train, and declared solely for the purpose of benefiting the strikers through the necessity of others. In the more recent past the world had seen employers combine and declare a few strikes (the word will serve a triple purpose) for just the same end and accompanied by precisely similar results. It was now the turn of the consumers to learn the strike lesson, the most powerful class of all, but the most heterogeneous to weld together. The object was the same but pursued under greater stress; the weapons would be similar but more destructive; the track of desolation would be there but wider, and the end----On that morning of the 15th of July the end lay beyond a very dim and distant shock of dust and turmoil that the eye of none could pierce. CHAPTER XIII THE EFFECT OF THE BOMB Mr Strummery having finished his breakfast with the exception of a second glass of hot water, which constituted the amiable man's only beverage, took up his copy of _The Scythe_. He had already glanced through _The Tocsin_, in which he had a small proprietary interest, but he also subscribed to _The Scythe_, partly because it brought to his door a library which he found useful when he had to assume an intimate knowledge of a subject at a day's notice, partly because the crudely blatant note of _The Tocsin_ occasionally failed to strike a sympathetic cord. He had found that morning in his telescribe receiver the Trafalgar Chambers manifesto which had been flashed to friend and foe alike. He had read it with a frown; it savoured of impertinence that it should be sent to him. He finished it with a laugh, half-contemptuous, half-annoyed. He saw that it was a stupid move unless the League had abandoned all hope of forming the League-Labour alliance; in any case, it was a blow that stung but could not wound. All the chances were that nothing would come of it; _but_, if a million people did give up burning coal for say a month, if a million people _did_ that--well, it would be very inconvenient to themselves, but there would certainly be a good many tens of thousand pounds less wages paid out in districts that seemed to be far from satisfactory even as it was.