The Five Towns were frequently mentioned in the London dailies, and London journalists would write such sentences as:  “The Five Towns, which are of course, as everybody knows, Hanbridge, Bursley, Knype, Longshaw, and Turnhill ... .”  This was renown at last, for the most maligned district in the country!  And then a Cabinet Minister had visited the Five Towns, and assisted at an official inquiry, and stated in his hammering style that he meant personally to do everything possible to accomplish the Federation of the Five Towns:  an incautious remark, which infuriated, while it flattered, the opponents of Federation in Bursley.  Constance, with many other sensitive persons, asked angrily what right a Cabinet Minister had to take sides in a purely local affair.  But the partiality of the official world grew flagrant.  The Mayor of Bursley openly proclaimed himself a Federationist, though there was a majority on the Council against him.  Even ministers of religion permitted themselves to think and to express opinions.  Well might the indignant Old Guard imagine that the end of public decency had come!  The Federationists were very ingenious individuals.  They contrived to enrol in their ranks a vast number of leading men.  Then they hired the Covered Market, and put a platform in it, and put all these leading men on the platform, and made them all speak eloquently on the advantages of moving with the times.  The meeting was crowded and enthusiastic, and readers of the Signal next day could not but see that the battle was won in advance, and that anti-Federation was dead.  In the following week, however, the anti-Federationists held in the Covered Market an exactly similar meeting (except that the display of leading men was less brilliant), and demanded of a floor of serried heads whether the old Mother of the Five Towns was prepared to put herself into the hands of a crew of highly-paid bureaucrats at Hanbridge, and was answered by a wild defiant “No,” that could be heard on Duck Bank.  Readers of the Signal next day were fain to see that the battle had not been won in advance.  Bursley was lukewarm on the topics of education, slums, water, gas, electricity.  But it meant to fight for that mysterious thing, its identity.  Was the name of Bursley to be lost to the world?  To ask the question was to give the answer.

Then dawned the day of battle, the day of the Poll, when the burgesses were to indicate plainly by means of a cross on a voting paper whether or not they wanted Federation.  And on this day Constance was almost incapacitated by sciatica.  It was a heroic day.  The walls of the town were covered with literature, and the streets dotted with motor-cars and other vehicles at the service of the voters.  The greater number of these vehicles bore large cards with the words, “Federation this time.”  And hundreds of men walked briskly about with circular cards tied to their lapels, as though Bursley had been a race-course, and these cards too had the words, “Federation