fit his message to his audience

“[E.D.] Morel has never had an equal as organizer and leader of a Dissenting movement,” writes the historian A.J.P. Taylor. “He knew exactly where to look for rich sympathizers; and he took money from them without altering the democratic character of [his movement]. Millionaires and factory workers alike accepted his leadership.” Among the millionaires were Quakers like the wealthy but plain-living chocolate manufacturer William Cadbury. Subsidies from these supporters kept the West African Mail alive, and it was the newspaper, not the Congo Reform Association, that paid Morel’s salary. Paradoxically, Sir Alfred Jones of the Elder Dempster line also invested a little money in the paper, doubtless hoping to soften the attitude of his former employee. But his hopes were in vain; Morel repeatedly attacked Jones without mercy, exposing his doings as Leopold’s major British ally. When Jones saw he would have no influence, he pulled his advertising from the paper.

Morel knew exactly how to fit his message to his audience. He reminded British businessmen that Leopold’s monopolistic system,  copied by France, had shut them out of much Congo trade. To members of the clergy he talked of Christian responsibility and quoted the grim reports from the missionaries. And for all Britons, and their representatives in Parliament, he evoked the widespread though unspoken belief that England had a particular responsibility to make decency prevail in the universe.

Adam Hochschild

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Sep 3, 1999.