This is all so plain in the retrospect that a child can understand it, but not being prophets, we of that day had no clear idea what was happening to us.
What we did see was that industrially the country was in a very queer way.

The relation between the workingman and the employer, between labor and capital, appeared in some unaccountable manner to have become dislocated.

The working classes had quite suddenly and very generally become infected with a profound discontent with their condition, and an idea that it could be greatly bettered if they only knew how to go about it.

On every side, with one accord, they preferred demands for higher pay, shorter hours, better dwellings, better educational advantages, and a share in the refinements and luxuries of life, demands which it was impossible to see the way to granting unless the world were to become a great deal richer than it then was.

Though they knew something of what they wanted, they knew nothing of how to accomplish it, and the eager enthusiasm with which they thronged about any one who seemed likely to give them any light on the subject lent sudden reputation to many would-be leaders, some of whom had little enough light to give.