The Red Cow Anarchist Group no longer exists. Its leading spirit appears no more among his devoted comrades, and without him they are ineffectual.

He was but a young man, this leading spirit (his name, by the bye, was Sotcher) but of his commanding influence among the older but unlettered men about him, read and judge. For themselves, they had long been plunged in a beery apathy, neither regarding nor caring for the fearful iniquities of the social system that oppressed them. A Red Cow group they had always been, before the coming of Sotcher to make anarchists of them, foregathering in a remote compartment of the Red Cow bar reached by a side door in an alley; a compartment uninvaded and almost undiscovered by any but themselves, where night after night they drank their beer and smoked their pipes, sunk in a stagnant ignorance of their manifold wrongs. During the day Old Baker remained to garrison the stronghold. He was a long-bankrupt tradesman, with invisible resources and no occupation but this, and no known lodging but the Red Cow snuggery. There he remained all day and every day, “holding the fort,” as he put it, with his nose, a fiery signal of possession, never two feet from the rim of his pot; while Jerry Shand was carrying heavy loads in Columbia Market; while Gunno Polson was running for a bookmaker in Fleet Street; while Snorkey was wherever his instinct took him, doing whatever paid best, and keeping out of trouble as long as he could; and while the rest of the group — two or three — picked a living out of the London heap in ways and places unspecified. But at evening, they joined Old Baker, and they filled their snuggery.

Their talk was rarely of politics, and never of “social problems”; present and immediate facts filled their whole field of contemplation. Their accounts were kept, and their references to pecuniary matters were always stated, in terms of liquid measure. Thus, fourpence was never spoken of in the common way; it was a quart, and a quart was the monetary standard of the community. Even as twopence was a pint, and eightpence was half a gallon.

It was Snorkey who discovered Sotcher, and it was with Snorkey that that revolutionary appeared before the Red Cow group with his message of enlightenment. Snorkey (who was christened something else that nobody knew or cared about) had a trick of getting into extraordinary and unheard of places in his daily quest of quarts, and he had met Sotcher in a loft at the top of a house in Berners Street, Shadwell. It was a loft where the elect of anarchism congregated nightly, and where everybody lectured all the others. Sotcher was a very young anarchist, restless by reason of not being sufficiently listened to, and glad to find outsiders to instruct and to impress with a full sense of his somber, mystic dare-devilry. Therefore he came to the Red Cow with Snorkey, to spread (as he said) the light.

He was not received with enthusiasm, perhaps because of a certain unlaundered aspect of person remarkable even to them of the Red Cow group. Grease was his chief exterior characteristic, and his thick hair, turning up over his collar, seemed to have lain for long unharried of brush or comb. His face was a sebaceous trickle of long features, and on his hands there was a murky deposit that looked like scales. He wore, in all weathers, a long black coat with a rectangular rent in the skirt, and his throat he clipped in a brown neckerchief that on a time had been of the right anarchist red. But no want of welcome could abash him. Here, indeed, he had an audience, an audience that did not lecture on its own account, a crude audience that might taken him at his own valuation. So he gave it to that crude audience hot and strong. They (and he) were the salt of the earth, bullied, plundered and abused. Down with everything that wasn’t down already. And so forth and so on.

His lectures were continued. Every night it was the same as every other, and each several chapter of his discourse was a repetition of the one before. Slowly the Red Cow group came round. Plainly other people were better off than they; and certainly each man found it hard to believe that anybody else was more deserving than himself.

“Wy are we pore?” asked Sotcher, leaning forward and jerking his extended palm from one to another, as though attempting a hasty collection. “I ask you straight, wy are we pore? Why is it, my frien’s, that awften and awften you find you ain’t got a penny in yer pocket, not for to git a crust o’ bread or ‘alf a pint o’ reasonable refreshment? ‘Ow is it that ‘appens? Agin I ask, ‘ow?”

Snorkey, with a feeling that an answer was expected from somebody, presently murmured, “No mugs,” which encouraged Gunno Polson to suggest. “Backers all stonybroke.” Jerry Shand said nothing, but reflected on the occasional result of a day on the loose. Old Baker neither spoke nor thought.

“I’ll tell you, me frien’s. It’s ‘cos o’ the rotten state o’ s’ciety. Wy d’you allow the lazy, idle, dirty, do-nothing upper classes, as they call ‘emselves, to reap all the benefits o’ your toil wile you slave an’ slave to keep ’em in lukshry an’ starve yerselves? Wy don’t you go an’ take your shares o’ the wealth lyin’ round you?”

There was another pause. Gunno Polson looked at his friends one after another, spat emphatically, and said “Coppers.”

“Becos o’ the bruite force as the privileged classes is ‘edged theirselves in with, that’s all. Becos o’ the paid myrmidons armed an’ kep’ to make slaves o’ the people. Becos o’ the magistrates an’ p’lice. Then wy not git rid o’ the magistrates an’ p’lice? They’re no good, are they? ‘Oo wants ’em, I ask? ‘Oo?”

“They are a noosance,” admitted Snorkey, who had done a little time himself. He was a mere groundling, and persisted in regarding the proceedings as simple conversation, instead of as an oration with pauses at the proper places.

“Nobody wants ’em — nobody as is any good. Then don’t ‘ave ’em, me frien’s — don’t ‘ave ’em! It all rests with you. Don’t ‘ave no magistrates, nor p’lice, nor gover’ment, nor parliament, nor monarchy, nor county council, nor nothink. Make a clean sweep of ’em. Blow ’em up. Then you’ll ‘ave yer rights. The time’s comin’, I tell you. It’s comin’, take my word for it. Now you toil an’ slave; then everybody’ll ‘ave to work, wether ‘e likes it or not, and two hours work a day’ll be all you’ll ‘ave to do.”

Old Baker looked a little alarmed, and for a moment paused in his smoking.

“Two hours a day at most, that’s all; an’ all yer wants provided for, free an’ liberal.” Some of the group gave a lickerish look across the bar. “No a’thority, no gover’ment, no privilege, an’ nothink to interfere. Free contrack between man an’ man, subjict to free revision an’ change.”

“Wot’s that?” demanded Jerry Shand, who was the slowest convert.

“Wy, that,” Sotcher explained, “means that everybody can make wot arrangements with ‘is feller-men ‘e likes for to carry on the business of life, but nothink can’t bind you. You chuck over the arrangement if it suits best.”

“Ah,” said Gunno Polson musingly, rotating his pot horizontally before him to stir the beer; “that ‘ud be ‘andy sometimes. They call it welshin’ now.”

The light spread fast and free, and in a few nights the Red Cow group was a very promising little bed of anarchy. Sotcher was at pains to have it reported at two places west of Tottenham Court Road and at another in Dean Street, Soho, that at last a comrade had secured an excellent footing with a party of the proletariat of East London, hitherto looked on as hopeless material. More: that an early manifestation of activity might be expected in that quarter. Such activity had been held advisable of late, in view of certain extraditions.

And Sotcher’s discourse at the Red Cow turned, lightly and easily, toward the question of explosives. Anybody could make them, he explained; nothing simpler, with care. And here he posed at large in the character of mysterious desperado, the wonder and admiration of all the Red Cow group. They should buy nitric acid, he said, of the strongest sort, and twice as much sulphuric acid. The shops where they sold photographic materials were best and cheapest for these things, and no questions were asked. They should mix the acids, and then add gently, drop by drop, the best glycerine, taking care to keep everything cool. After which the whole lot must be poured into water, to stand for an hour. Then a thick, yellowish, oily stuff would be found to have sunk to the bottom, which must be passed through several pails of water to be cleaned; and there it was, a terrible explosive. You handled it with care, and poured it on brick-dust or dry sand, or anything of that sort that would soak it up, and then it could be used with safety to the operator.

The group listened with rapt attention, more than one pot stopping half-way on its passage mouthward. Then Jerry Shand wanted to know if Sotcher had ever blown up anything or anybody himself.

The missionary admitted that that glory had not been his. “I’m one o’ the teachers, me frien’s — one o’ the pioneers that goes to show the way for the active workers like you. I on’y come to explain the principles an’ set you in the right road to the social revolution, so as you may get yer rights at last. It’s for you to act.”

Then he explained that action might be taken in two ways; either individually or by mutual aid in the group. Individual work was much to be preferred, being safer; but a particular undertaking often necessitated cooperation. But that was for the workers to settle as the occasion arose. However, one thing must be remembered. If the group operated, each man must be watchful of the rest; there must be no half measures, no timorousness; any comrade wavering, temporizing, or behaving in any way suspiciously, must be straightway suppressed. There must be no mistake about that. It was desperate and glorious work, and there must be desperate and rapid methods both of striking and guarding. These things he made clear in his best conspirator’s manner, with nods and scowls and a shaken forefinger, as of one accustomed to oversetting empires.

The men of the Red Cow group looked at each other, and spat thoughtfully. Then a comrade asked what had better be blown up first. Sotcher’s opinion was that there was most glory in blowing up people, in a crowd or at a theater. But a building was safer, as there was more chance of getting away. Of buildings, a public office was probably to be preferred — something in Whitehall, say. Or a bank — nobody seemed to have tried a bank; he offered the suggestion now. Of course there were not many public buildings in the East End, but possibly the group would like to act in their own neighborhood: it would be a novelty, and would attract notice; the question was one for their own decision, independent freedom of judgment being the right thing in these matters. There were churches, of course, and the factories of the bloated capitalist. Particularly, he might suggest the gas-works close by. There was a large gas meter abutting on the street, and probably an explosion there would prove tremendously effective, putting the lights out everywhere, and attracting great attention in the papers. That was glo............