conomic
masters, and controlled the means whereby he lived, and he spoke his mind
freely, and fought the good fight. In the "Great Dock Strike" he was
guilty of taking a leading part. And that was the end of Dan Cullen.
From that day he was a marked man, and every day, for ten years and more,
he was "paid off" for what he had done.

A docker is a casual labourer. Work ebbs and flows, and he works or does
not work according to the amount of goods on hand to be moved. Dan
Cullen was discriminated against. While he was not absolutely turned
away (which would have caused trouble, and which would certainly have
been more merciful), he was called in by the foreman to do not more than
two or three days' work per week. This is what is called being
"disciplined," or "drilled." It means being starved. There is no
politer word. Ten years of it broke his heart, and broken-hearted men
cannot live.

He took to his bed in his terrible den, which grew more terrible with his
helplessness. He was without kith or kin, a lonely old man, embittered
and pessimistic, fighting vermin the while and looking at Garibaldi,
Engels, and Dan Burns gazing down at him from the blood-bespattered
walls. No one came to see him in that crowded municipal barracks (he had
made friends with none of them), and he was left to rot.

But from the far reaches of the East End came a cobbler and his son, his
sole friends. They cleansed his room, brought fresh linen from home, and
took from off his limbs the sheets, greyish-black with dirt. And they
brought to him one of the Queen's Bounty nurses from Aldgate.

She washed his face, shook up his conch, and talked with him. It was
interesting to talk with him--until he learned her name. Oh, yes, Blank
was her name, she replied innocently, and Sir George Blank was her
brother. Sir George Blank, eh? thundered old Dan Cullen on his death-
bed; Sir George Blank, solicitor to the docks at Cardiff, who, more than
any other man, had broken up the Dockers' Union of Cardiff, and was
knighted? And she was his sister? Thereupon Dan Cullen sat up on his
crazy couch and pronounced anathema upon her and all her breed; and she
fled, to return no more, strongly impressed with the ungratefulness of
the poor.

Dan Cullen's feet became swollen with dropsy. He sat up all day on the
side of the bed (to keep the water out of his body), no mat on the floor,
a thin blanket on his legs, and an old coat around his should