He found them all bearing up well under the prospect, but much too busy to give him more than a few minutes of their time. Every one of them had been appointed an oil agent to the League firms, and League members were ordering their oil through them, just as heretofore they had ordered coal. It was very easy, profitable work for them; they had nothing to do but to transmit the orders to the League firms and the fast business-like motor-tanks distributed the oil. But half of the coal carters were now under notice to leave, and there were indications that work was very scarce. Each motor-tank displaced twenty men and twenty horses. Already, it was said, thousands of horses had been sent out to grass from London alone. Externally, as far as the Capital was concerned at all events, things were going on very much the same as before, when the struggle was a fortnight old. Elsewhere signs were not lacking. The Government had received disquieting reports from its agents here and there, but so far it was meeting the situation by refusing to acknowledge that it existed. A march of the Staffordshire miners had been averted by the men's leaders being privately assured that it would embarrass the Government's plans. The march had been deferred under protest; so far the organisation answered to the wheel. But the Midlands were clamorously demanding exceptional relief for the exceptional conditions. Monmouth had seen a little rioting, and in Glamorgan the bands of incendiaries called "Beaconmen," who set fire to the accumulations of coal stacked at the collieries, had already begun their work. Cardiff was feeling the effect of having a third of its export trade in coal suddenly lopped off, and Newport, Swansea, Kirkcaldy, Blyth, Hull, Sunderland, Glasgow, and the Tyne ports were all in the same position. Most of the railways had found it necessary to dispense with their entire supernumerary staff, and most of the railway workshops had been put on short time. In London alone, between four and five thousand out-of-work gas employes were drawing Government pay. About the third week in August the Premier, Mr Tubes, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer had a long private conference. As a result Mr Strummery called an Emergency Council. It was a thin, acrimonious gathering. Some one brought the tidings that seven more companies in South London were substituting Diesel oil engines for steam. He had all the dreary developments statistically worked out on paper. Nobody wanted to hear them, but he poured them out into the unwilling ears, down to the climax that it represented two hundred and forty-seven fewer men required at the pits.