It is the classes or little crowds—­the little pulling and pushing, helpless, lonely, mean, separated crowds—­blind, hateful, and afraid, who are running about trying to lay their little wills upon the earth.

The Crowd waits and is not afraid.

The little, separated crowds are afraid.

The world, for the moment, is being interpreted, expressed, and managed by People Who Are Afraid.

It is the same in all the nations.  In the coal strike in England one finds the miners in the trades unions afraid to vote except in secret because they are afraid of one another.  One finds the miners’ leaders afraid of the men under them and of what they might do, so that they have no policy except to fight.  One finds the miners’ leaders afraid of the mine-managers and of what they might do, so that they have no policy except to fight.  One finds the mine-managers afraid of one another, afraid of their stockholders, afraid of the miners’ leaders, and afraid of the newspapers and afraid of the Government.

One finds the Government afraid of everybody.

Everybody is afraid of the Government.

Everybody fights because everybody is afraid.

And everybody is afraid because everybody sees that it is mere crowds that are running the world.

There is another reason why everybody is afraid.  Everybody is afraid because everybody is shut in with some little separated crowd.

People who are never Outside, who only see a little way out over the edge of the little crowd in which they are penned up, are naturally afraid.

A world that is run by little shut-in crowds is necessarily a world that is run by People Who Are Afraid.

And so now we have come to the fulness of the time.  The cities and the nations, the prairies, and the seas and the mines, the very skies about us can be seen by all to-day to be full of a dull groping and of a great asking, “Who Are The Men Who Are not Afraid?”

The moment these men appear who are not afraid, and it is seen by all that they are not afraid, the world (and all the little blind, helpless crowds in it) will be placed in their hands.

CHAPTER VII

AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT TOM MANN

I am aware that Tom Mann is not a world figure.  But he is a world type.  And as the editor of the Syndicalist, the leader of the most imposing and revealing labour rally the world has seen, he is of universal interest.  Those of us who believe in crowds are deeply interested in finding, recognizing, creating, and in seeing set free out of the ranks of men the labour leaders who shall express the nobility and dignity of modern labour, who shall express the bigness of spirit, the brawny-heartedness, the composure, the common-sense, the patriotism, the faithfulness and courage of the People.

I indict Tom Mann before the bar of the world as not expressing the will and the spirit of the People.