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 33 .^ 
 
 S./57 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTBODUCTION TO THIS AMERICAN EDITION. 
 
 Br EDWARD BELLAMY. Page ix. 
 
 Yf THE FABIAN SOCIETY AND ITS WORK. 
 
 By william CLARKE. Page xxi. 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 ECONOMIC By G. BERNARD SHAW. 
 
 o' Rent. The Cultivation and Population of the Earth. — Economic 
 Origin of the County Family. — Economic Rent of Land and Ability. 
 J — Tenant Right. — The Advent of the Proletarian. Page 1. 
 
 , Value. Mechanism of Exchange. — Price and Utility. — Effects 
 
 j of Supply. — Law of Indifference. — Total and Final Utility. — Relation 
 . of Value to Cost of Production. Page 9. 
 
 C Wages. The Proletariat. — Sale of Labor. — Subsistence Wage. — 
 ■^7^ Capitalism. — Increase of Riches and Decrease of Wealth. — Divorce 
 of Exchange Value from Social Utility. Page 15. 
 
 V . Conclusion. Apparent Discrepancies between History and The- 
 ^ry. __ Socialism. — Pessimism and Private Property. — Economic 
 ^ Soundness of Meliorism. Page 20. 
 
 HISTORIC 
 
 
 By SIDNEY WEBB, LL.B., Barrister at Law, 
 Lecturer on Political Economy 
 
 AT THE City of London College. 
 
 ^ The Development of the Democratic Ideal. Ancestry of 
 T English Socialism. — The Utopians. — Introduction of the Conception 
 • of Evolution. — The Lesson of Democracy. Page 26. 
 
iv 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 The Disintegration of the Old Synthesis. The Decay of 
 Medievalism. — The Industrial Revolution. — The French Revolution. 
 — The Progress of Democracy. Page 31. 
 
 The Period op Anarchy. Individualism. — Philosophic Radi- 
 calism and Laisser-faire. — The Utilitarian Analysis. Page 35. 
 
 The Intellectual and Moral Revolt; and its Political 
 Outcome. The Poets, Communists, Philosophers, Christian Socialists, 
 and Evolutionists. — The Extension of State Activity. — Existing State 
 Registration, Inspection, and Direct Organization of Labor. — The 
 Radical Programme. Page 40. 
 
 The New Synthesis. Evolution and the Social Organism. — Lib- 
 erty and Equality. — Social Health. Page 60. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL . By WILLIAM CLARKE, M.A., Cambridge. 
 
 The Supersession of Individualist Production. The Cot- 
 tage Industry. — The Mechanical Inventions. — The Factory System. 
 
 Page 56. 
 
 The Growth op the Great Industry. The Expansion of Lan- 
 cashire. — The White Slavery. — State Interference. Page 65. 
 
 The Development of the World-Commerce. The Triumph 
 of Free Trade. — The Fight for New Markets. — The Carriers of the 
 World. Page 71. 
 
 The Differentiation op Manager and Capitalist. The Rise 
 of Co-operation and the J oint Stock Company. — The Ring ” and the 
 Trust.” — The Despotism of Capitalist Communism. Page 76. 
 
 MORAL ... By SYDNEY OLIVIER, B.A., Oxford. 
 
 The Evolution of Morality. The Common End. — The Con- 
 ditions of Freedom. — The Individual and the Race. — The Growth of 
 Social Consciousness.— Convention and Law. Page 93. 
 
 Property and Morals. The Reaction of Property-Forms on 
 Moral Ideas. — Class Morality. — Negation of the Conditions of Free- 
 dom. — Social Dissolution. Page 104. 
 
 The Re-integration of Society. The Ordering of the Primary 
 Conditions. — The Idea of the Poor Law. — Secondary Conditions. — 
 Morality and Reason. — The Idea of the School. Page 112. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 V 
 
 THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 PROPERTY UNDER SOCIALISM. By GRAHAM WALLAS, M.A. 
 
 Oxford. 
 
 Visible Wealth. Consumers’ Capital. — Producers’ Capital. 
 
 Page 120, 
 
 Debts and Services. Deferred and Anticipated Consumption. 
 — Interest. Page 125. 
 
 Ideas. Copyright and Patent Right. — Education. Page 132. 
 
 INDUSTRY UNDER SOCIALISM . . By ANNIE BESANT. 
 
 The Organization of Labor. Rural. — Urban. — International. 
 
 Page 136. 
 
 The Distribution of the Product. The Individual. — The 
 Municipality. — The State. Page 147. 
 
 Social Safeguards. The Stimulus to Labor. — The Provision 
 for Initiative. — The Reward of Excellence. Page 150. 
 
 THE TRANSITION TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 
 
 TRANSITION By G. BERNARD SHAW. 
 
 Medievalism to Capitalism. The Old Order. — Merchant Ad- 
 venturer, Pirate, Slave-Trader, Capitalist. — The Old Order burst by the 
 New Growth. — Chaos. Page 157. 
 
 Anarchy to State Interierence. Political Economy. — He- 
 gelian Conception of the Perfect State. — Socialism : Its Practical Dif- 
 ficulties. — Impracticability of Catastrophic Change. — Democracy the 
 Antidote to Bureaucracy. — The State Interferes. Page 160, 
 
 State Interference to State Organization. Hard Times. — 
 Revival of Revolutionary Socialism. — Remaining Steps to the Con- 
 summation of Democracy. — Machinery of Socialism. — Social Pres- 
 sure. — Urban Rents. — The New Taxation. — State Organization of 
 Labor its Indispensable Complement. — The Unemployed. — Solution 
 of the Compensation Ditficulty. — Economic Reactions of the Progress 
 of Municipal Socialism.— Militant Socialism Abandoned but not Dis- 
 honored. Page 169. 
 
VI 
 
 COKTEKTS. 
 
 THE OUTLOOK By HUBERT BLAND. 
 
 The Condition op English Parties. The Lines of Progress. 
 
 The Rate of Progress in Thought and Industry Compared with that in 
 Politics. — Alleged Disappea^rance of the Whig. Page 184. 
 
 The Socializing op Politics. Political Myopia.— Sham Social- 
 ism. — Red Herrings. — Dreams of Permeating the Liberal Party.— 
 Disillusionment. — The New Departure. Page 189. 
 
 The Duties op the Hour. The True Line of Cleavage. 
 
 Hopes and Fears.— The Solidarity of the Workers. Page 198. 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Page 203. 
 
INTEODUCTION TO THIS AMERICAN 
 EDITION. 
 

 ■ 
 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 TO THIS AMERICAN EDITION. 
 
 By EDWARD BELLAMY. 
 
 The introduction to the American public of the present 
 edition of the deservedly famous English work known as The 
 Fabian Essays,’’ is an occasion that suggests some general ob- 
 servations upon the subject of socialism, considered especially 
 from the American point of view. 
 
 Until very recently socialism has been a word rarely heard 
 in the United States, and still more rarely understood, even 
 among intelligent persons. Till quite lately the average Amer- 
 ican has conceived of a socialist, when he has considered him 
 at all, as a mysterious type of desperado, reputed to infest the 
 dark places of continental Europe and engaged with his fel- 
 lows in a conspiracy as monstrous as it was futile, against civil- 
 ization and all that it implied. That such an atrocious and 
 hopeless undertaking should find any following of sane men, 
 has seemed accountable only by the oppressions of European 
 despots and their maddening effect on the popular mind. 
 That socialism could never take root in a republic like ours 
 was assumed as an axiom. Though it might be well enough 
 for Americans to study the phenomena of socialism, in a phil- 
 osophic and purely speculative way, as a disease of monarchical 
 systems, any one would have been laughed at who should have 
 suggested ten years ago that the subject would ever have a 
 practical interest to our people. 
 
X 
 
 INTRODUCTIOK. 
 
 That was but yesterday, and to-day the most significant and 
 important movement of thought among the American people, 
 is agreed by all observers to be the growth of the socialistic 
 sentiment. To-day, in this country, the various aspects of 
 radical social and economic reform on socialistic lines are the 
 most prominent themes of literary treatment, of public discus- 
 sion, and of private debate whenever two or three serious- 
 minded persons take counsel together as to the state of the 
 nation. 
 
 At first, when the social question so suddenly seized upon 
 the attention of the American people, there were those who 
 reasoned that the interest in the subject would prove transient; 
 that it was, in fact, but a fad.’’ There are few, if any, who 
 so delude themselves at this writing. So rapidly has the popu- 
 lar interest in socialistic ideas broadened and deepened, and 
 shown its working in the fields of literature, of legislation, of 
 political organization, that there are to-day few so purblind as 
 not to see and admit that the social problem, the great prob- 
 lem of social justice here, as in Europe, can be got rid of only 
 by being solved, and, until then, will have no mercy on our 
 peace. Already it is apparent from the shaping of events that 
 the public questions of the coming time are to be social, indus- 
 trial, humane, and not political and partisan. They are to be 
 concerned, not with the external relations of the nation with 
 other nations, but with the radical analysis and reconstruction of 
 the relations in which classes and individuals within the nation 
 stand toward one another and the whole. More and more all 
 other issues are to be subordinated to and absorbed in the one 
 great issue between the present economic system on the one 
 hand, and a radically new and nobler system on the other. In 
 this great controversy we all who yet have any considerable 
 stretch of life before us must take one side or the other, and 
 the air already is electric with the tension of decision. The 
 elderly men who are about retiring from the stage of public 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XI 
 
 affairs, may be able without too much discredit, provided they 
 are not dilatory, to carry to the grave intact the ignorance of 
 their generation as to socialism, but no branch of education is 
 going to be more essential to the outfit of the rising generation, 
 than a full and discriminating acquaintance with the subject. 
 These are conditions surely which leave no argument necessary 
 as to the public utility of all efforts at the present time to pro- 
 mote the study, by Americans especially, of socialism, or, if 
 we may so translate the term, of humane economics, as con- 
 trasted with the political economy of the schools. 
 
 At the outset of any such study several general questions 
 are suggested. What is socialism? Why is it so late a 
 comer among the forces of civilization? For while so very 
 newly arisen in America, it has really not been known very 
 much longer (only some fifty years or so) in Europe. Why. 
 again, has it come to the front at this particular time in 
 America, and why did it raise its head earlier in Europe? 
 And why have its ideas never in previous ages produced 
 any deep or extended movement among the nations of the 
 world ? 
 
 For the purpose of these questions socialism may be said to 
 be the application of the democratic method to the economic 
 administration of a people. It aims by substituting public 
 management of industry and commerce in the common interest, 
 for private management in diverse personal interests, to more 
 nearly equalize the distribution of wealth, while at the same 
 time increasing the volume of wealth produced for distribution. 
 This definition while, of course, not going at all into details, 
 will suffice to suggest the answer to the second question raised, 
 namely. Why has socialism been so late a comer among the 
 forces of civilization ? It is simply because the democratic 
 idea — the idea of self-government by the people for their own 
 benefit — has only within a very recent period achieved a firm 
 establishment in men’s minds. The democratic idea must first 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xii 
 
 be established as a general theory of government, that is, in the 
 political field, before the idea can occur of applying it to the 
 economic field. The democratic movement in Europe, al- 
 though the French Revolution broke the ground for it, did not 
 effectively begin till the first third and middle of the present 
 century, after the reaction against the Revolution had lost 
 its force. Consequently, we find, as might be expected, the 
 rise of socialism dating from that period. European democ- 
 racy, almost from the first, took on a socialistic quality for the 
 reason that the pressing economic misery of the people sug- 
 gested as most urgent the application of the new popular power 
 to the economic problem. We also find suggested in this state- 
 ment the explanation of the fact that although democracy in 
 politics was established in America a century before it began to 
 make serious progress in Europe, yet in the Old World the 
 socialistic idea originated fifty years before it began to stir here. 
 Socialism results spontaneously when a people having a press- 
 ing economic problem to deal with become masters of the 
 democratic method. In Europe the problem was already there 
 and had been for ages, when the method first came to hand. 
 In America we had the method of solution but lacked, until 
 recently, any pressing economic problem to solve. Now the 
 problem has come, and the Kansas farmer and the New 
 England wage-earner, as they bring to its solution the demo- 
 cratic methods they have so long used for other purposes, be- 
 come in a day socialists, without having ever before heard of 
 socialism. 
 
 Up to within a recent period, owing to our scanty population 
 and vast resources, the question of a comfortable subsistence 
 has been in America one which every tolerably energetic person 
 has been fairly well able to solve for himself. So great has 
 been the plenty, that the individualistic, every-man-for-himself- 
 and-the-devil-for-the-hindmost way of getting a living — crude, 
 wasteful, brutal as it was — nevertheless sufficed to secure a 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XIU 
 
 good degree of general comfort and an approximate equality of 
 fortunes. This period has now come to an end. Within the 
 past few decades, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a 
 few has been proceeding at a rate, ever growing swifter, which 
 now threatens a practical expropriation of the people in the 
 interest of a small class. Indeed, it may almost be said that 
 this expropriation has already been practically accomplished, 
 for it has been shown by direct deductions from the mortgage 
 statistics of the 1890 census, that seventy-one per cent, of the 
 aggregate wealth of the nation is already held by nine per cent, 
 of the population, the remaining ninety-one per cent, of the 
 population being limited to twenty-nine per cent, of the total 
 wealth. It is further shown that 4,074 American families out 
 of a total of 13,000,000 families, own twenty per cent, of this 
 national wealth total, or two-thirds as much as belong to the 
 ninety-one per cent, of the population mentioned above. 
 
 With such facts and figures to justify his growing sense of 
 economic distress and oppression, the American must indeed 
 be of sluggish mind, who does not recognize already preparing 
 for him, and in course of being fitted to his shoulders, the yoke 
 of economic servitude his European brothers so long have 
 borne. When we reflect that the population thus suddenly 
 and unmistakably confronted with the prospect of degradation 
 to servile and proletarian conditions is the proudest-spirited, 
 the most generally intelligent ever known, with the sentiment 
 of equality bred in the very bones, shall we wonder at the sud- 
 denness of the socialistic outburst in the United States, or the 
 swift movement of its propaganda ? Must we not rather 
 recognize in the American situation conditions which justify 
 the belief that the suddenness and swiftness of the rise of 
 socialism in this country presage a lusty vigor of growth which 
 shall put America in her proper place as the world’s pioneer 
 in the pursuit of economic, as formerly of political, equality ? 
 May we not reasonably expect that the American people. 
 
XIV 
 
 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 having been confronted with the failure of the present economic 
 system to secure human welfare even under the most favorable 
 conditions, will display in the reconstruction of the economic 
 fabric all that energy, that ingenuity and originality of device, 
 and that rapidity of execution which are the distinguishing 
 national characteristics ? 
 
 Meanwhile, owing to the fact that, for the reasons stated, 
 the social economic problem came earlier to the front in Europe 
 than here, Americans have the advantage of a considerable 
 body of foreign literature, German, French and English, 
 devoted to the subject. Perhaps there is no single work in 
 this socialistic library which is calculated to be more useful to 
 the American reader who desires to obtain without laborious 
 research a general knowledge of the argument for socialism 
 than the Fabian Essays.” This is partly because of their 
 popular style ; partly from the excellent arrangement of the 
 matter, with a view to giving an all-around idea of the subject, 
 respectively from the historic, economic and moral view-points ; 
 and also in part from the degree of resemblance which obtains 
 between English and American institutions and habits of 
 thought. The fact that the essays are by different authors, 
 each writing in a different style, has an effect to impart a 
 pleasing variety, while the system with which the essays have 
 been grouped secures an effect of coherency and method as 
 satisfactory as could well have been gained by a single author- 
 ship. The arrangement of the contents has the further ad- 
 vantage, greatly assisted by the admirable index, of enabling 
 the reader who does not care to read a book in course to 
 select particular topics for study as his interest may incline. 
 It is a pleasure especially to commend the good-tempered and 
 reasonable tone which marks the argument of these writers. 
 This method it is needless to say, far from implying any com- 
 promising of the truth, lends itself to a more clear and incisive 
 criticism of existing institutions than is consistent with violent 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XV 
 
 and denunciatory rhetoric. The use of this argumentative 
 method which may be described as suaviter in modo fortiter in 
 re^ is indeed as characteristic of the Fabian Society in England 
 as of the nationalists in the United States. 
 
 But it may be that some reader may not know what this 
 Fabian Society exactly is, which gives its name to this volume, 
 and of which the essayists all are members. For the informa- 
 tion of any such it may be said that the name was assumed a 
 number of years ago by an organization of cultured English- 
 men who, while devoted to a radical socialistic propaganda, 
 believed that they could most effectually promote it by educa- 
 tional methods addressed to the reason rather than the 
 prejudices of the community. In this view they have since 
 been carrying on in England a very extensive and effective 
 work, through tracts, books and, above all, popular lectures, 
 the essays in this volume being indeed but specimens of these 
 popular lectures revised for publication. While the more rev- 
 olutionary English socialists make a show of deriding as too 
 merely academic the propaganda of the Fabians, it may be 
 doubted if work more valuable has ever been done by any 
 socialist organization. 
 
 In addition to the essays contained in the English edition, the 
 present volume includes a valuable and important additional 
 feature in the form of a lecture on “ The Fabian Society and its 
 Work,” delivered in Boston by Mr. William Clarke, M.A., him- 
 self a Fabian and one of these essayists, in the winter of 1893- 
 94, and afterwards published in the New England Magazine, 
 
 Nationalism is the form under which socialism has thus far 
 been chiefly brought to the notice of the American people ; and 
 it is proper in a preface of this character to say a few words by 
 way of explaining the relative significance of the terms. Ai 
 socialist is one who believes that industry and commerce, on 
 which the welfare of all depend, should not be left as now, to 
 be controlled irresponsibly by individuals for their private gain. 
 
xvi 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 : but should be organized by the community, to be co-operatively 
 i conducted, with an equitable (not necessarily equal) distribu- 
 
 tion of the product among the members of the community. 
 That is what socialism strictly means, and is all the creed that 
 
 ^ a socialist can be held to. Now it is a great deal to be able to 
 subscribe to this creed, but it is not quite enough of a creed 
 according to nationalists. The criticism of the present system 
 involved in it is adequate ; but in defining the system of co- 
 operation that is to take its place, it leaves unsettled the most 
 vital point of that or any other industrial system, namely, 
 the principle on which the industrial product is to be shared, 
 for to say that the principle of the division is to be equitable” 
 is no more than to say it should be reasonable, and leaves the 
 whole question open to discussion. There is no standard to 
 determine what an equitable division of anything is, if once we 
 admit it may be an unequal division. The political economists, 
 indeed, argue that the present division of wages and profits is 
 really equitable, although so unequal. Now nationalists are 
 
 who, holding all that socialir^^s agree on, go further. 
 
 and hold also that the distribution of the co-operative product 
 among the members of the community must be not merely 
 
 equitable, whatever that term may mean, but must 
 
 ^and absolutely equal. 
 
 Of course it is not meant that many socialists are not be- 
 lievers in economic equality, but only that the creed of socialism 
 does not of necessity imply it. Among the essayists in the 
 present volume, Mrs. Besant, and probably others, seem 
 strongly inclined toward the principle of equality, but that can- 
 not be said, hitherto, of the general body of European socialists. 
 
 ' The more general opinion among them appears to be that the 
 ownership of the means of production should indeed be com- 
 i munal, but that the product should be apportioned among the 
 ■ workers in the same and in different occupations according to 
 the relative value of their services, as if that could ever be 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xvii 
 
 satisfactorily or even practically adjusted under a non-competi- 
 tive system. 
 
 This would leave the individual, as now, to be well-to-do or 
 to want, according to his strength or weakness, and keep alive, 
 although in much less glaring contrast, the economic distinctions 
 of this day. Nationalists, on the other hand, would absolutely 
 abolish these distinctions and the possibility of their again 
 arising, by making an equal provision for the maintenance of 
 all an incident and an indefeasible condition of citizenship, 
 without any regard whatever to the relative specific services of 
 different citizens. The rendering of such services, on the other 
 hand, instead of being left to the option of the citizen with the 
 alternative of starvation, would be required under a uniform 
 law as a civic duty, precisely like other forms of taxation or 
 military service, levied on the citizen for the furtherance of a 
 common-weal in which each is to share equall^ This is called 
 nationalism, not in any narrow tribal sense opp^ed to universal 
 fraternity, but because it consists in applying to the economic 
 organization the idea exemplified in all national or public 
 functions when undertaken in democratic or even in the pro- 
 gressive class of monarchical States. 
 
 All such public functions are supported either by tax or 
 personal service, of the citizens, or both. The obligation of that 
 service of tax or person is enforced by a uniform levy, but the 
 amount of tax or service rendered under that levy is very un- 
 equal, depending on ability. This inequality of service is not, 
 however, allowed to prejudice the right of all citizens to claim 
 an equal benefit from all national or public expenditure or 
 action. The rule of the State in co-ordinating the efforts of its 
 members for any public purpose is the equal distribution of 
 benefits resulting from necessarily unequal but uniformly levied 
 contributions. So it must be when the nation assumes the 
 organization of industry. The law of service must be uniform, 
 but the services rendered will vary greatly — with many entire 
 
xvill 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 exemptions — according to the abilities of the people. The in- 
 equality of contributions will in no way prejudice the invariable 
 law of equal distribution of the resultant sum. 
 
 It is confidently believed that all socialists will ultimately be 
 led by the logic of events to recognize, as many now do, that 
 the attitude of the nationalists on this point is the only truly 
 socialistic one. 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY AND ITS WORK. 
 
I 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 BY WILLIAM CLARKE, M.A. 
 
 No visitor to the British capital will mingle very long in the 
 political life of London before he will hear of the Fabian So- 
 ciety. Few readers have not heard of the Roman general, 
 Quine tus Fabius Maximus, qui cunctando restitiiit rem^ and 
 who consequently received the title of Cunctator. That illus- 
 trious man is the patron saint of the society, through which, 
 being dead, he yet speaketh. 
 
 The Fabian Society proposes then to conquer by delay ; to 
 carry its programmes, not by a hasty rush, but through the 
 slower but, as it thinks, surer methods of patient discussion, ex- 
 position, and political action of those who are absolutely con- 
 vinced in their own minds. For a convenient motto the society 
 has taken the following sentence : For the r ight moment ^u 
 must wait, as Fabi us did, most patiently, when warring against 
 Hannibal, though many censured his delays ; Kut wheii the dim e 
 comes you must strike T^aFTu^ did, or^y our waiting will 
 
 be in vain a nd frui tless.^’ TThT^ double policy then, of ^adm^; 
 ancI^iS:ing^is the general idea of the society. 
 
 WiiaT bow are the aims of the society ? I quote from the 
 official programme: ^‘The Fabian Society consists of Social- 
 ists. It therefore aims at the reorganization of society by the 
 emancipation of land and industrial capital from individual 
 and class ownership, and the vesting of them in the community 
 for the general benefit. In this way only can the natural and 
 acquired advantages of the country be equitably shared |)y the 
 whole people. The society accordingly works for thd^extinc- 
 tion of private property in land, and of the consequent individ- 
 ual appropriation, in the form of rent, of the price paid for 
 permission to use the earth, as well as for the advantages of 
 superior soils and sites. The society, further, works for the 
 transfer to the community of the administration of such indus- 
 trial capital as can be managed socially. For, owing to the 
 
XXll 
 
 THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 monopoly of the means of production in the past, industrial 
 inventions and the transformation of surplus income into capital 
 have mainly enriched the proprietary class, the workers being 
 now dependent on that class for leave to earn a living.” To 
 bring this condition of things about, the programme continues, 
 the society looks to the spread of Socialist opinions, and it 
 seeks to promote these by the general dissemination of knowl- 
 edge as to the relation between the individual and society in its 
 economic, ethical, and political aspects. 
 
 These, then, are the fundamental ideas of the Fabian Society. 
 Before describing its growth, work and personnel, let me give 
 an account and explanation of its origin. The effective modern 
 Socialist movement in England began in 1881. In that year a 
 conference was held at the Westminster Palace Hotel in Lon- 
 don, at which were present the venerable Francis W. Newman, 
 brother of the late cardinal ; Helen Taylor, the step-daughter 
 of John Stuart Mill ; Mr. Hyndman, the Socialist author and 
 leader ; some men now in Parliament, others who have been 
 there, and a small number of energetic people well known in 
 London, but not equally well known in America. These per- 
 sons and others formed, after much discussion, the Democratic 
 Federation, a body which at first appeared to be nothing more 
 than a vigorous Radical protest against the Irish coercive policy 
 of the Gladstone Cabinet then in power. Immense demonstra- 
 tions, some of the biggest ever held in London, were got up by 
 the Federation, who secured the adherence in this cause of 
 some of the Irish members of Parliament. But gradually the 
 mere Radicalism dropped out of the Federation’s programme; 
 and under the stimulating influence of Mr. Henry George, who 
 was then in England, whose book was being read everywhere, 
 and who enjoyed much influence then in England, the Federa- 
 tion preached the doctrine of the ^‘land for the people.” But a 
 still further stage in its evolution was to be reached ; and by 
 the autumn of 1883 it came out as a full-blown Socialist organ- 
 ization, and published a little pamphlet entitled ‘‘ Socialism 
 Made Plain,” which had a great run and which, singular as it 
 may seem now, created a perfect consternation among persons 
 who supposed that Socialism was merely a French or German 
 eccentricity, due to militarism and protectionism, and that it 
 could never rear its head in “ free ” England. Mr. Herbert 
 S])encer, among others, took alarm and j^redicted a coming 
 
THE FABIAi^ SOCIETY. xxiii 
 
 slavery/’ and the venerable Quarterly Review shook its vener- 
 able head and marvelled, like Mrs. Sarah Gamp, at the “ brajiaii 
 imperence ” of these wicked agitators. It was perfectly evident 
 that a new political force was come into being. 
 
 But there were those in London who, sympathizing deeply 
 with the new movement, nevertheless could not throw them- 
 selves heartily into it, for two reasons : first, it assumed that a 
 revolutionary change affecting the very bases of society could 
 be brought about all at once; second, it appeared to ignore 
 what may be called the spiritual side of life, and to disregard 
 the ethical changes necessary to render a different social system 
 possible. Such was the state of things in the autumn of 1883, 
 when a very able man, Mr. Thomas Davidson, of New York, 
 whom all who have rneet him know to be a man of exceptional 
 force and enthusiasm, spent some weeks in London. Mr. David- 
 son, noting the condition of things, gathered round him little 
 conferences of men, at several of which I was present; and 
 while he was in London, and for several months after, these 
 purely informal conferences went on at different people’s houses. 
 It would be too long a tale to tell of the endless discussions 
 which took place, of the dull men and the brilliant men, the 
 cranks and the thinkers, the men with long hair and the women 
 with short hair, who debated and argued, and went for one 
 another, and then debated and argued again. The main upshot 
 was that these persons found themselves ultimately divided into 
 two camps, not necessarily hostile, but laying emphasis on dif- 
 ferent aspects of the social movement. One of these was com- 
 posed of persons who laid supreme stress on the need for ethical 
 and spiritual change as a constant factor in the social movement, 
 and as a coefficient with the material changes. These persons 
 formed themselves into a little body called the New Fellowship, 
 which still exists, small in numbers, but very earnest in purpose, 
 and which publishes a small quarterly journal called Seedtime, 
 The other class, which agreed with the Social Democratic Fed- 
 eration as to the urgent need for social and political change,, 
 but thought this must be very gradual, and its leaders persons! 
 of some culture and grasp of economics, formed the Fabian So-1 
 ciety. This is the genesis of this active body. 
 
 There is a prevalent view, expressed sometimes in American 
 newspapers, that the Socialist movement is largely made up of 
 cranks and scoundrels — a view shared in a less degree by a 
 
XXIV 
 
 THE EABIAK SOCIETY. 
 
 portion of the English press. I believe there is in every coun- 
 try and age an abundant crop of both these classes ; and assuredly 
 the Socialist, like every other movement, has had its share of 
 both. But to suppose that a great movement which is sweep- 
 ing Europe from end to end, which has given birth to the 
 largest single political party in Germany, which has gained 
 victories innumerable in France, which is modifying the whole 
 of English political life — to suppose that this movement is the 
 outcome of the delusions of a few wicked or foolish men, is it- 
 self the delusion of people who are probably themselves not 
 over-good or over-wise. In Marx, Lassalle, Rodbertus, Malon 
 and others, the Socialist movement has been served by some of 
 the best brains of our century ; and it was no idle boast of 
 Lassalle that he was equipped with all the best culture of his 
 time. I know the inside of the Socialist movement well, and 
 it certainly numbers among its adherents the ablest men I know. 
 The Fabian Society contains not a few of these men. Walter 
 Crane, the artist ; Stopford Brooke, the preacher and man of 
 letters ; Grant Allen, one of the most versatile and accomplished 
 men living ; George Bernard Shaw, one of the most brilliant 
 albeit whimsical of musical and dramatic critics ; Miss Willard, 
 one of America’s women reformers ; Professor Shuttleworth, 
 now London’s most popular and able Broad Church clergyman ; 
 Mr. D. G. Ritchie, of Oxford, foremost among English philoso- 
 phic thinkers ; Mrs. Theodore Wright, one of our most power- 
 ful actresses; Sergius Stepniak, next to Tolstoi the first of 
 living Russians ; Alfred Hayes, one of the first of our younger 
 poets ; Dr. Furnival, most learned and active of old English 
 scholars, — these are among its members. 
 
 But it is not, of course, the mere inclusion of eminent people 
 that gives a society force and authority. It is the being 
 grounded in knowledge and ideas ; and here the society is 
 strong. It was recognized from the first by its members that 
 the social problem cannot be solved by mere sentiment, though 
 sentiment must be a factor in its solution. There must be a 
 deal of hard thinking and severe study, not altogether in books 
 (many of which on the economic problems before us are worth- 
 less), but in social facts. Its critics think the society has erred 
 on the other side, and become too hard, and even cynical ; but 
 I confess I think that better than talking mere gushing moral 
 platitudes which peiople applaud and then forget all about. 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 XXV 
 
 The society has always steadily kept before it the idea that we 
 are not looking for any millennium, any perfectly blissful 
 earthly pai adise, but that we are considering the much more 
 prosaic question, how the economic interests of society are to 
 be served, how tlie economic arrangements of society are to be 
 carried on. Hence its members determined to e(][uip themselves 
 for their work by hard reading and thinking and by very stiff 
 discussion of the crucial problems in history, economics and 
 political philosophy. To this end they were greatly aided by a 
 useful little Historical Society, which was formed in one of the 
 suburbs of London, where every week an essay was read and / 
 completely discussed. I do not believe there are any better / 
 read or more acute minds in England than these of the young / 
 men who formed this group and who have largely remained the/ 
 nucleus of the Fabian Society, — and this though they havq 
 their faults, like other people. 
 
 At first the idea was to have a very small number of mem- 
 bers, scarcely more than could be gathered in a good-sized room 
 in a private house. These were to be well trained and to be 
 apostles. Gradually, however, the society grew and grew, the 
 barriers of exclusion were broken down, and persons of less 
 knowledge and experience were brought in. At the present 
 time I think almost all callings are represented in the society. 
 
 I find in the last list of members, lawyers, artists, journalists, 
 doctors, workingmen, clergymen, teachers, trade-union leaders, 
 literary people, shop-keepers and persons of no occupation. 
 There are no millionnaires in the society, as there are no 
 paupers, but there are a few quite well-to-do people. A large 
 proportion are bright young men, and there are not a few bright 
 and active women. Individual instances of the sort of people 
 who belong and what they do are better than mere vague gen- 
 eralizations. Here are cases : — 
 
 A young man employed in the Central Post-Office at a salary 
 of $650 a year. He has married a very charming and able girl, 
 also a member. They occupy two or three rooms in a suburban 
 house. The young lady has been elected as a guardian of the 
 poor, the only woman among a number of men. Her husband 
 devotes nearly all his spare time after office-hours to the society’s 
 propaganda. He has had a little portable desk and stand made 
 for himself, and at this he speaks in open spaces on street 
 corners or wherever he can get an audience. His wife accom- 
 
XXVI 
 
 THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 paiiies him and sells literature. Do not suppose that these are 
 a blatant young demagogue and a conventional, strong-minded 
 woman. Both are educated, intelligent, of sweet disposition ; 
 but the Socialist movement has taken hold of them and given 
 them something they needed, lifted them above the region of 
 what John Morley calls greasy domesticity,” and taught them 
 that there is a great suffering world beyond the four walls of 
 home to be helped and worked for. Depend upon it, a move- 
 ment which can do this has in it some promise of the future. 
 
 Or take the amusing, cynical, remarkable George Bernard 
 Shaw, whose Irish humor and brilliant gifts have partly helped, 
 partly hindered, the society’s popularity. This man will rise 
 from an elaborate criticism of last night’s opera or Richter con- 
 cert (he is the musical critic of the World), and after a light, 
 purely vegetarian meal, will go down to some far-off club in 
 South London, or to some street-corner in East London, or to 
 some recognized place of meeting in one of the parks, and will 
 there speak to poor men about their economic position and their 
 political duties. People of this sort, who enjoy books and 
 music and the theatre and good society, do not go down to 
 dreary slums or even more dreary lecture-rooms to speak on 
 such themes to the poorer class of workingmen without some 
 strong impelling power ; and it is that power, that motive force, 
 upon which I dwell, as showing what is doing in the London of 
 to-day. I am satisfied, from inquiries I have made, that there 
 is really nothing like this going on in any other country of the 
 world ; but it is a commonplace in London. 
 
 The original parent Fabian Society, after it began to expand 
 and employ a paid secretary and become a recognized institu- 
 tion, suggested to people elsewhere that they might have local 
 Fabian Societies ; and the first of these were formed in Birming- 
 ham, where several of the members addressed crowded, very in- 
 telligent and very enthusiastic audiences in a hall in the centre 
 of that city. Tliere are also local Fabian Societies now in 
 Manchester, Edinburgh, Bristol, Leeds, Newcastle, Plymouth, 
 Wolverliampton, Bradford, York and other English towns, alto- 
 gether forty-eight in number ; and there is also one in Adelaide, 
 South Australia, and another in Bombay. Some of these are 
 quite small, but others are important, and are beginning to 
 exercise a considerajile influence in municipal politics, and in 
 one or two places in Parliamentary politics also. The society 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 xxvii 
 
 has been represented at International Labor Congresses in 
 Paris, Brussels, Ziiricli and Chicago. 
 
 And now what has in the main been the sort of work the 
 society has done ? At first the idea of its members was rather 
 to discuss among themselves and teach themselves than to teach 
 others. This was the initial or self-forming stage. Then came 
 the educational stage, and, third, the political or active stage, 
 though even in this, its third stage, education is still the main 
 object of the society. Fortnightly discussions have been kept 
 up continuously, save for a two months’ summer recess, for 
 years. At these members of the society read papers, or out- 
 siders, and notably opponents, were invited. The late Charles 
 Bradlaugh came to oppose, and was very promptly demolished ; 
 while, on the other hand, Oscar Wilde has spoken with eloquence 
 and power on the relation of art and Socialism. The society 
 tried to get Mr. A. J. Balfour, the Conservative leader, and 
 Mr. W. H. Mallock, as the ablest literary opponent of Socialism, 
 to come and argue seriously, but neither of them would do so. 
 Mr. Haldene, the translator of Schopenhauer and cultured phil- 
 osophic member of Parliament, came to oppose, was handled 
 rather vigorously, and has now been largely converted to collec- 
 tivism. Mr. David F. Schloss, whom the British Government 
 recently sent over to the United States to inquire into labor 
 matters, has spoken sympathetically ; and Mr. Donisthorpe, the 
 clever, cynical, superficial English individualist, has spoken and 
 has been mercilessly handled. The result of all this debating 
 is that the Fabian Society has now some of the best debaters in 
 England. It has also some of the best lecturers, for it is in 
 lectures that its work has largely consisted. The society now 
 gives something over one thousand lectures a year, all free, the 
 lecturers being all unpaid. Indeed, excepting the secretary’s 
 office, the whole of the society’s work is voluntary, unpaid 
 work. The majority of these lectures are given in workmen’s 
 clubs, of which there are some hundreds in London alone. I 
 take at random from the 1891 list of lectures sample subjects : — 
 
 The Socialism of John Ruskin ; The Eight Hours’ Bill ; 
 Railway Reform; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity; Methods of 
 Social Evolution ; Adam, the first and last Individualist ; Why 
 we want a Labor Party ; The Gospel of getting on ; What the 
 Farm Laborers want; The Social Hell and its Sources; Ex- 
 periments in Housing the People ; vSocialism and Individual 
 
XXVlll 
 
 THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 Liberty ; the Church’s Message to Men of Wealth ; Free Com- 
 ments on the Population Question ; The Worker’s Share of 
 Wealth ; The Programme of Social Democracy ; John Lilburne 
 and the' Levellers ; The Chartist Movement ; The Religion of 
 Socialism ; the Industrial History of England ; Gospel of Bread 
 and Butter; Workingmen and their Difficulties; Co-operative 
 Production and Socialism; Wealth and the Commonwealth; 
 The French Revolution; The Right to Live; What Socialists 
 Propose to Do ; Twenty Years of the Labor Movement. 
 
 From these it will be seen what extensive ground is covered. 
 These lectures are for the most part delivered to workingmen, 
 but sometimes there are middle-class audiences, and I have 
 heard of Fabian lecturers talking to people in aristocratic draw- 
 ing-rooms. From the first, the society has done some publish- 
 ing, and the last list gives no fewer than forty-five pamphlets or 
 tracts issued by the society. The first of these, Why are the 
 Many Poor ? ” was a crude one, but good for rousing attention, 
 which is always the first thing to be done, and quite justifying 
 some curious Socialistic vagaries. The most valuable of these 
 pamphlets are Facts for Socialists,” a really crushing answer 
 to those whom Matthew Arnold calls the ^‘self-complacent 
 moles,” all based on the best available statistics ; “ Facts for 
 Londoners,” an appalling generalization of the economic condi- 
 tion of London ; “ What to Read,” a most admirable and im- 
 partially selected list of books for social reformers, which might 
 with advantage be reprinted in America ; “ The Reform of the 
 Poor Law ” ; and “ The Impossibilities of Anarchism,” a search- 
 ing criticism of the Anarchist position by George Bernard 
 Shaw. Remember that the preparation of these has all been 
 voluntary, unpaid labor, and has involved an immense amount 
 of toil. 
 
 In 1888 the society determined to give a course of lectures 
 by those of its members who were supposed to be best fitted for 
 the purpose, setting forth the general principles of Socialism as 
 they understood them. The lectures were eight in number, and 
 were delivered to densely packed audiences, making such an 
 impression that it was decided to publish them in a volume ; 
 and in the next year they appeared, under the title of “Fabian 
 Essays in Socialism.” As it is a case of quorum pars magna 
 fui^ I am precluded from giving my estimate of a volume in 
 which I had a share ; but I may say that this work has had a 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 very great sale — thirty thousand copies, the largest sale of any 
 purely economic work I know of excepting ‘‘ Progress and 
 Poverty,” — and that its respectful and even cordial welcome 
 by the English press was a surprise. The fact shows that the 
 public mind is being prepared for great social changes. The 
 ruling idea of the book is that of inevitable political and indus- 
 trial evolution, — nothing in the least degree merely utopian, 
 but an attempted generalization on the lines of modern scientific 
 ideas. The publication of this book first gave to the Fabian 
 Society a national instead of a merely local reputation ; and I 
 believe the book has now been widely read in America and 
 Germany, while it was introduced to France by the Revue So- 
 ciaUste, Several courses of lectures have since been given by 
 the society, but none of them have been afterwards published. 
 
 The third phase of the society’s activity is, as I have said, in 
 practical politics. This was not undertaken without some mis- 
 givings. On the principle that you cannot touch pitch without 
 being defiled, I confess I doubted whether, until the people had 
 been far more educated in these ideas, it was wise to enter the 
 somewhat dirty political arena. But the intense desire to be 
 doing something, to translate ideas into facts, to organize the 
 people, to help in shaping the actual progressive movement in 
 England, and above all, perhaps, to weaken and destroy the 
 individualist wing of the Liberal party, — these and other 
 motives acted with cumulative force, especially as members of 
 the society began to find that they had acquired influence over 
 little groups of workmen here and there. There were great 
 dangers and difficulties. There was the danger of falling into 
 mere wire-pulling and making of political deals,” — a subject 
 about which people in America know so much that it is not 
 necessary to enlarge upon it ; and then there was the practical 
 difficulty of differences of opinion in the society, which might 
 cause wreck if political action were indulged in. I may say at 
 once that these difficulties remain and will continue to do so, 
 though they have not led to disruption yet. There are invet- 
 erate wire-pullers in the society, and there are those who favor 
 an independent labor party, those who want to permeate the 
 Radicals and gradually gain them over ; and there are even a 
 few who, as between the two parties, prefer Tories to Radicals. 
 The first political chance for the Fabian Society came at the 
 London county council election in 1889, when the advanced 
 
XXX 
 
 THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 party in London paid the society the compliment of appropriat- 
 ing its entire pamphlet, “ The London Programme,” and 
 making of it the Progressive platform of the campaign. The 
 Progressives carried that election, and they carried it on The 
 London Programme.” Still more striking was the Progressive 
 victory in 1892, when the Moderate or Conservative party was 
 almost annihilated at the polls. The Fabian Society has sup- 
 ])lied London with its programme of reforms ; and the reforms 
 were in the direction of what it is now the fashion to call 
 municipal Socialism. At the second county council election, 
 several Fabians were candidates, and four of them were actually 
 elected ; while a fifth, Ben Tillett, the labor leader, was after- 
 wards made an alderman. Three members of the society 
 proved formidable though unsuccessful candidates at the Par- 
 liamentary election two years ago. A considerable number of 
 members are on local municipal councils and school boards, and 
 another fought a very remarkable Parliamentary fight during 
 the last year. So it is clear that the society is largely en evi- 
 dence* 
 
 As to the general programme of work in which the members 
 are supposed more or less to take part, I may quote from the 
 printed advice given to members as to what they can do. 
 First of all, the need of study ” is insisted on. It is assumed 
 that the member will read all the society’s publications ; and his 
 next duty, it is urged, should be to read the criticisms on the 
 other side, after the manner of Cicero, who was always careful 
 to get up his opponent’s case. If a member cannot read or 
 study alone, he is recommended to set on foot a local reading 
 circle, and apply to the secretary for literature for the circle. 
 No public work should be done until this self-education has 
 been accomplished, and the member is really able to speak 
 with authority and to deal effectively with an opponent. The 
 opponents of Socialism in England are usually persons sent out 
 by a body called the Liberty and Property Defence League, of 
 which the American millionnaire, Mr. Astor, now a London 
 Tory newspaper proprietor, is a member. These persons have, 
 as a rule, a remarkable capacity for making fools of themselves ; 
 nevertheless, it is always a tactical blunder to underestimate 
 the ability of your opponent, and Fabian lecturers are advised 
 to assume that these Liberty and Property defenders are 
 acquainted with economics, even though there is good reason to 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 XXXI 
 
 suspect they are not. There is nothing that kills like ridicule ; 
 to gibbet an ignorant and presumptous debater, and make him 
 look like a fool before a large audience, is a source of pleasure 
 to every rightly constituted mind. Members of the society are 
 also urged to correspond with their Parliamentary or municipal 
 representative on all vital points, to worry his life out of him if 
 he is obstinate or wrong-headed or dishonest, and to make liim 
 yearn like the poet for a lodge in some vast wilderness where 
 he might never receive another letter or vote of censure as long 
 as he lived. This is a good way to combat what Walt Whit- 
 man calls the never-ending audacity of elected persons.’’ The 
 member should always attend the local caucus meeting, and do 
 what he can there ; and if he has the time to spare, he should 
 be a candidate for any public post, such as member of Parlia- 
 ment, of county or municipal council, of school board, guardian 
 of the poor, or member of the parish council ^yet to be con- 
 stituted. The great difficulty in the way of this is that these 
 public persons are not paid in England, and few of the busy 
 and impecunious members of the Fabian Society can afford the 
 time for these things. 
 
 Having thus described the constitution, work, and general 
 character of the Fabian Society, let me speak on the general 
 intellectual forces which have been operating in England to 
 bring about this new political growth among active young men ; 
 for it is quite new. My first acquaintance with anything that 
 could properly be called Socialism in England was in London 
 in 1879, when I went one evening to hear a young Jewish 
 gentleman, since deceased, Mr. Montefiore, read a paper on 
 German Socialism, before the London Dialectical Society. 
 Mr. Montefiore had but a slender knowledge of his subject, and 
 we had to wait for speeches by a German friend of Marx, resi- 
 dent in London, and from a young, dreamy-looking man with 
 long, thick, tousled hair, whom I learned was Mr. Ernest Bel- 
 fort Bax, since better known as a prolific writer on Socialism 
 from the revolutionary, Marxite point of view. At that time 
 there was not a single young man in London interested in or in 
 favor of anything like Socialism, excepting Mr. Bax. Now 
 there are hundreds. What are the reasons for the change ? 
 
 (1) The exhaustion of the older Liberalism and the obviously 
 unsatisfactory character of mere republicanism. And here 
 American readers must permit me to be plain by saying that 
 
XXXll 
 
 THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 the United States seemed to furnish an object lesson to the 
 world as to the failure of mere republicanism to solve a single 
 one of our social questions. A quarter of a century ago the 
 American Republic was the guiding star of advanced English 
 political thought. It is not so now : candor compels me to say 
 that. It is not merely a question of machine politics, of politi- 
 cal corruption, of the omnipotent party boss ; though supine 
 Americans who do nothing to overthrow those purely political 
 evils should be reminded that Europe as well as America is in- 
 volved in and has to pay for their cowardice and indifference. 
 But over and beyond this is the great fact of the division be- 
 tween rich and poor, millionnaires at one end, tramps at the 
 other, a growth of monopolies unparalleled, crises producing 
 abject poverty just as in Europe. These facts proved to men 
 clearly that new institutions were of no use along with the old 
 forms of property ; that a mere theoretic democracy, unaccom- 
 panied by any social changes, was a delusion and a snare. The 
 result of this is that the old enthusiasm for mere republicanism 
 has died away, and that, though twenty-five years ago there was 
 a good sprinkling of republican clubs in England, there is not a 
 single one of them left now. 
 
 (2) The second cause I take to be a new spirit in literature. 
 The genteel, the conventional, the thinner kind of romantic 
 literature began to die out ; and the powerful realistic school 
 beo^an to attract men’s minds. There was a desire to know 
 things as they are, to sound the plummet in the sea of social 
 misery, to have done with make-believe and get at realities. 
 The Russian writers, with their intense Socialistic feeling, at- 
 tracted great numbers of readers, who seemed to find in them 
 something entirely new and immensely powerful. I should 
 name among individual writers who have powerfully aided the 
 growth, I do not say of Socialism itself, but of the feeling in 
 the soil of which Socialism is easily developed, Dickens, Victor 
 Hugo, Carlyle, Wliitman, Ruskin, Tolstoi, Zola and Arnold. 
 A curious and medley list, you may say, and so it is ; but I am 
 certain that each of these great writers has contributed a dis- 
 tinct element to the expansion and liberation of the minds that 
 have been formed, say, during the last twenty years. For 
 among all these writers, varied as they are, it is the social feel- 
 ing which is the most powerful impulse. 
 
 (3) Along with the new literature has grown a new art feel- 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY. xxxiii 
 
 ing, an intense hatred of the smug and respectable, and a love 
 to be surrounded by attractive objects. Ruskiii, Morris, and 
 Walter Crane have shown why it is that the true artist is at 
 war with commercialism, with the notion that things are to be 
 produced for a profit, no matter what abominations you may 
 turn out. The conception that no person has any right to in- 
 flict an ugly object of any sort on the world, especially for the 
 sake of making gain out of it, has taken hold on the imagina- 
 tive mind of the younger people of our cultivated classes. 
 
 (4) In the fourth place, the old political economy is ab- 
 solutely dead in England, although you might not perhaps 
 guess it from some of the English economic writers. The in- 
 fluence of German thought in this, as in other departments, 
 has affected men’s minds. Take a series of books like the 
 Social Science Series, published by Sonnenschein ; half those 
 books are Socialistic, — and that would have been an impossi- 
 bility twenty years ago. Of the Fabian Essays in Socialism,” 
 it may be said that the publisher, as well as the Society, reaped 
 large profits from it. I mention such works as these, rather 
 than romances like Morris’s “ News from Nowhere,” or 
 Bellamy’s Looking Backward.’- The charm of Morris’s 
 style and the ingenuity of Bellamy’s narrative would be suffi- 
 cient to account for their success ; but the popularity of these 
 other works represents a body of serious interest in advanced 
 economics, which may well be considered startling when the 
 old hidebound prejudices of orthodox English economics are 
 taken into consideration. 
 
 (5) Laissez-faire individualist political philosophy is dead. 
 In vain does poor Mr. Herbert Spencer endeavor to stem the 
 torrent. His political ideas are already as antiquated as Noah’s 
 ark. I do not know a single one of the younger men in Eng- 
 land who is influenced by them in the slightest degree, though 
 one hears of one occasionally, just as one hears of a freak in a 
 dime museum. For all practical purposes, philosophic Radicab 
 ism, as it was called, is as extinct as the dodo. 
 
 (6) There is another cause which cannot be ignored, though 
 I speak upon it with some hesitation, as I purposely avoid, as 
 far as possible, the difficult questions of religion and the deeper 
 ethics. I mean that the old dualism, with its creed of other- 
 worldliness, has gone by the board. Whatever men’s theoreti- 
 cal views are upon many transcendental matters, there is a gen- 
 
XXXIV 
 
 THE FABIAN^ SOCIETY, 
 
 eral feeling now that the world is one, and that actual life here 
 is just as sacred, normal, good, as it ever was or ever will be in 
 any hypothetical past or future ; that if there is any heaven 
 for us we have to make it, and that such heaven is a state of 
 the mind, of human relationships, and not a place to be reached 
 at a definite period of time. Perhaps I may quote the eloquent 
 words of William Morris in his “Dream of John Ball”: 
 “ Fellowship is heaven, and the lack of fellowship is hell.” 
 This idea is, I say, a powerful factor in leading the minds of 
 the younger men to the views of which I am speaking. But 
 men are not altogether influenced by their theoretical or even 
 spiritual ideas ; they are also moved, and so long as they have 
 material bodies to be fed and clothed they will continue to be 
 moved, by purely self-regarding and economic considerations. 
 Let us never be deluded into supposing that altruistic feelings 
 alone will induce men to make great social changes ; egotistic 
 considerations will prompt them as well, the desire of self- 
 preservation working along with the desire for a better and 
 more harmonious social order than exists. It is not only upon 
 the working classes that capitalist monopoly tells ; it tells also 
 upon the educated middle classes who are not in the monopoly. 
 They find the avenues of livelihood and preferment one after 
 another closed to them ; and just as education spreads, this will 
 become more and more the case. When a small number of 
 persons in a large community are highly educated, they have 
 what economists call a monopoly value ; they can get a good 
 price for their services, because they possess something which 
 few people have. Spread this higher education and the monop- 
 oly is broken down. Now, this is roughly what is going on in 
 society ; democracy is levelling all up to a common level, how- 
 ever gradual may be the process ; and consequently highly 
 educated men with their special gifts find their rates of re- 
 muneration becoming lower and lower, unless they possess 
 some rare gift of genius, as a Sara Bernhardt in acting, a 
 Paderewski in playing, a Stevenson in story-telling, a Mascagni 
 as a composer. These rare people still command their monop- 
 oly value ; but for the rest it has disappeared. Thus even 
 more than the workingmen, perhaps, it has been the educated 
 young men of the middle class (and the young women, too) 
 who have been hardest hit by the modern development. Fifty 
 years ago you could have gathered all the press writers of Lon- 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 XXXV 
 
 don into a single moderate-sized room. To-day all told they 
 number nearly ten thousand. Everybody with a pen, ink and 
 paper and any capacity for turning out copy is a journalist ; 
 and you see at once that it is impossible for all these men to 
 earn a living. They don’t, and can’t. There are scores of 
 highly educated people who work every day in the British 
 Museum for eight or nine hours a day and earn less than a 
 mechanic in constant occupation. It is the same in all the pro- 
 fessions. Only fifteen per cent of London advocates ever get 
 briefs at all ; the other eighty-five per cent get nothing. In 
 the medical profession it is the same. The prizes go to about 
 five per cent of the profession ; as for the average medical 
 man in the London suburbs, the rates are so cut that I am 
 credibly informed by one of them who studied at Cambridge 
 and Heidelberg, and on whose education hundreds of pounds 
 were spent, the fee for attendance and prescription in his 
 suburban district has been brought down to twenty-five cents. 
 It will be seen that it is not a question of making money or of 
 the disgusting progress towards smug respectability, which is 
 known as “ getting on,” — it is positively a question of a bare 
 living. Now, while a workingman who has never known com- 
 fort, whose father has never known it before him, can often 
 stand a frightful amount of poverty without getting desperate, 
 the well-bred young man cannot ; and the result is that the 
 keenest and most dangerous discontent comes from the educated 
 classes, who are leading the Socialist masses all over Europe. 
 Some superficial people think the remedy is to be found in in- 
 ducing young men of the better classes to abandon the so-called 
 respectable ” occupations and go in for manual labor. Let 
 them cease, by all means, to be “ respectable,” but let not any 
 one lay the flattering unction to his soul that this, under exist- 
 ing economic conditions, is any solution. For what is the 
 difficulty about manual labor now? Why, that thousands of 
 those already engaged in it are not wanted ; it is the difficulty 
 of the unemployed, the difficulty of over-production. In 1886, 
 according to the Report of the Washington Bureau of Statis- 
 tics, there were at least one and one-half million of unem- 
 ployed men in the United States ; and this state of things has 
 been almost if not quite paralleled in 1893. In London lack of 
 employment is chronic, and is growing to such huge proportions 
 that our cowardly, blind, public men dare not grapple with it. 
 
XXXVl 
 
 THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 In Australia the unemployed have been walking the streets of 
 Melbourne by the thousand. How absurd then it is to propose 
 to add to the numbers of workingmen when those already in the 
 ranks cannot find means of living ! There is one method, alas, 
 open to men, as there is always one method open to tempted, 
 poverty-stricken women, — the method of what I may call in- 
 tellectual prostitution ; and many there be that go in at that gate. 
 Sick and weary of the penury and struggle that go with honesty, 
 young men of ability will deliberately sell themselves to the 
 capitalist who has cornered our intellectual as he has cornered 
 our material production, and will serve him for a good living. 
 What numbers I have known choose this path ! — and I cannot 
 blame them, for they are forced into it by the conditions of 
 modern life. It is useless preaching fine morals to them ; the 
 conditions of life must be adapted to human nature as it is, for 
 human nature will not, you may be quite sure, suddenly trans- 
 form itself to suit the conditions. These, then, are the eco- 
 nomic motives which, combined with the moral and intellectual 
 motives to which I have previously given expression, are forc- 
 ing young men of education and good breeding into the ranks of 
 the Socialists, and which especially operate in the case of a 
 body like the Fabian Society. 
 
 Readers will be asking by this time whether I am not going?' 
 to set forth the actual political programme or platform,” as it 
 is called in America, of the Fabian Society. Yes, that is just 
 what I am going to do. As the Fabian Society holds that 
 social transformation must be gradual, unless there is to be a 
 general smash-up, it proposes a series of reforms for effecting 
 the gradual change of society into a really social democratic 
 state. But these reforms, it will be understood, are adopted 
 with a distinct end in view, which fact makes all the difference 
 between people of principle and mere opportunists who have no 
 end in view other than the personal end of lining their own 
 pockets. The following, then, are the planks of the Fabian 
 political platform : Adult suffrage. Parliamentary and munici- 
 pal, one vote for each man and each woman of twenty-one and 
 upwards who are not in prison or in a lunatic asylum. The 
 second ballot, as in France, Germany and Switzerland, so that 
 whoever is elected will have an absolute majority of the votes 
 polled. Payment of members by the state and of election ex- 
 penses by the district (it must be remembered that at present 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 xxxvii 
 
 representatives are not paid in England). Taxation of un- 
 earned incomes by such means as a land tax, heavy death duties 
 to go to municipalities, and a progressive income tax. Munici- 
 palization of laud and local industries, so that free and honor- 
 able municipal employment may be substituted for private 
 charity, which, to vary a well-known line of Shakespeare, is 
 twice cursed, it curseth him who gives and him who takes. 
 All education to be at the public cost for all classes, including 
 manual as well as book training. Nationalization of all canals 
 and railways, so that the public highways may belong to the 
 public, as they always did until the new era of steam, when 
 they got into the hands of capitalists. It is as ridiculous to 
 pay Mr. Vanderbilt if you happen to want to go from New 
 York to Chicago as it would be to pay him if you desired to 
 take a walk down Fifth Avenue. The eight hours day for 
 wage-workers in all government and municipal offices, in all 
 monopolies like coal mines and railways, and in all industries 
 where the workers want it. Parish councils for the laborers, 
 with compulsory power to acquire land to build dwellings, to 
 administer schools and charities, and to engage in co-operative 
 farming. ^ 
 
 Such is the programme through the adoption of which the 
 Fabian Society believes that the country once called merry 
 England,” but the greater portion of which is now dreary and 
 sordid and cursed with poverty, might again be really happy 
 and be converted into a land of real and not of sham freedom. 
 And now a word, in conclusion, on an important point, — the 
 relation of the intellectual proletariat, as it has been called, to 
 the masses, of the educated young men to the bulk of the work- 
 ing classes. Most of the members of the Fabian Society are 
 educated, middle-class people, though there are workingmen 
 connected with it also. What is to be the relation of these 
 educated middle-class people to the swarming multitudes of 
 workers ? This is a vital social question, the most vital we 
 have immediately before us. One remembers what Matthew 
 Arnold said in America, — that the salvation of modern society 
 lay in the hands of a remnant. I should be inclined to put it 
 rather differently, and to say that, if the social evolution is to 
 be peaceful and rational, it must be effected by the union of a 
 cultivated remnant with the masses of the toiling people. 
 American optimism may chafe at the little word “If.” Can 
 
xxxviii 
 
 THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 there be any doubt, you may ask, that we shall go on prosper- 
 ously and peacefully ? I reply, yes, there is quite good enough 
 ground for doubting this. As Mr. Pearson, the author of that 
 remarkable book on National Life and Character,” which 
 has impressed us in England very deeply, has said, ancient 
 civilization in the times of the Antonin es seemed as firm and 
 strong as does ours, nay, stronger, for it had, in the main, lasted 
 as many centuries as ours has lasted decades. 
 
 Stout was its arm, each nerve and bone 
 
 Seemed puissant and alive. 
 
 Had you predicted then to a Roman senator that the splendid 
 Greco-Roman cities would be given to the flames, and that the 
 Roman Senate and legions would be trampled down by ignorant 
 hordes of barbarians, he would have smiled, offered you another 
 cup of Falernian wine, and changed the subject. Yet we know 
 this happened ; and I confess I can see nothing in our mush- 
 room civilization which we have any particular right to regard 
 as inherently more enduring than the elaborate and stately 
 organism of Roman jurisprudence. But there are no bar- 
 barians ! Yes, there are; but they are not outside us, — 
 they are in our midst. Do you suppose that the grim victim of 
 crushing poverty in a London attic or a Berlin cellar cares one 
 pin’s head for all the heritage of the world’s thought which ap- 
 peals to the highly educated ? How are these huge masses of 
 poor people to be welded into a great phalanx, to be induced to 
 subordinate their passions to the demands of reason, to look not 
 merely at the needs of the moment, but at those of next year, 
 to realize that the world cannot be remade in a day, but yet 
 that it can be so reconstituted as to give all opportunities to 
 live as human beings should ? Silly people are always talking 
 nonsense about the danger of ‘‘agitators.” I know all about 
 agitators. I know nearly every prominent agitator in Great 
 Britain ; and I can say confidently that it is the agitators who 
 have to hold back, to restrain the people from rash and even 
 mad action. The record of every English strike would show 
 that this was the case. If all the labor leaders and agitators 
 were silenced, it would be the very worst thing that could befall 
 the capitalist class. The masses are at present, at the very 
 best, an army of privates without officers. This is not their 
 fault ; it is their misfortune. They have not had the training. 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 XXXIX 
 
 the culture, which enables them to meet rich men and their 
 agents on equal ground. An English statesman, whose name 
 is known the world over, said privately to me not long ago : 
 
 “ The labor men here in the House of Commons are all good 
 fellows, but they are no use as leaders ; the principal men of 
 either party can twist them round their fingers with the greatest 
 ease. If the labor movement is to be a success, it must be led 
 by educated men.” I believe that verdict of one of the ablest 
 and best-informed public men now living to be true. To what, 
 does it point? To the union of culture with labor, to reform 
 this badly-jointed system. Only, be it observed, it must be 
 union on equal terms. There must be no lofty condescension 
 on the part of culture any more than base truckling on the part: 
 of labor. It must be an equal copartnership, where each 
 partner recognizes that the other has something which he needs./', 
 And let me say, as one who knows workmen, that, in a certain! j 
 and very real way, culture has as much to learn from labor as I 
 labor from culture. Let the cultured man approach the labor- 
 ing man on perfectly equal terms, in a cordial and open way ; 
 and let both unite to deliver a groaning world from the bondage 
 of riches. English experience shows that this can be done ; and 
 this idea is to a very great degree the zdee mere of the Fabian 
 Society, whose members have no higher ambition than to mingle 
 freely with the workmen and share in the common life. By 
 this means the hatred and suspicion felt by the French and 
 German workmen towards any one who wears a black coat is 
 eliminated, and both labor and culture gain in breadth, knowl- 
 edge and sympathy, and the cause of rational progress is ren- 
 dered more secure. Walt Whitman has told us, in Leaves of 
 Grass,” how he went “freely with powerful, uneducated per- 
 sons,” — a gospel which Mr. John Addington Symonds, in his 
 essay on Whitman, tells us, saved him from being a prig. And 
 this gospel of free intercourse with the so-called “common 
 people,” who are neither saints nor great sinners, but real men, 
 more real than the conventional middle-class man can ever 
 afford to be, is the healthiest, best advice which I can give to 
 cultivated men. 
 
THE FABIAN ESSAYS. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The essays in this volume were prepared last year as 
 a course of lectures for delivery before mixed audiences 
 in London and the provinces. They have been revised 
 for publication, but not recast. The matter is put, not 
 as an author would put it to a student, but as a speaker 
 with only an hour at his disposal has to put it to an 
 audience. Country readers may accept the book as a 
 sample of the propaganda carried on by volunteer lect- 
 urers in the workmen’s clubs and political associations 
 of London.! Metropolitan readers will have the advan- 
 tage of making themselves independent of the press 
 critic by getting face to face with the writers, stripping 
 the veil of print from their personality, cross-examining, 
 criticising, calling them to account amid surroundings 
 which inspire no awe, and before the most patient of 
 audiences. For any Sunday paper which contains a lect- 
 ure list will shew where some, if not all, of the seven 
 essayists may be heard for nothing; and on all such 
 occasions questions and discussion form part of the pro- 
 cedure. 
 
 1 In the year ending April, 1889, the number of lectures delivered 
 by members of the Fabian Society alone was upwards of 700. 
 
xliv 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The projection and co-ordination of these lectures is 
 not the work of any individual. The nominal editor is 
 only the member told off to arrange for the publication 
 of the papers, and see them through the press with what- 
 ever editorial ceremony might be necessary. Everything 
 that is usually implied by the authorship and editing of 
 a book has in this case been done by the seven essayists, 
 associated as the Executive Council of the Fabian Soci- 
 ety; and not one of the essays could be what it is had 
 the writer been a stranger to his six colleagues and to 
 the Society. But there has been no sacrifice of individ- 
 uality — no attempt to cut out every phrase and opinion 
 the responsibility for which would not be accepted by 
 every one of the seven. Had the sections been differ- 
 ently allotted, they would have been differently treated, 
 though the net result would probably have been the 
 same. The writers are all Social Democrats, with a 
 common conviction of the necessity of vesting the or- 
 ganization of industry and the material of production in 
 a State identified with the whole people by complete 
 Democracy. But that conviction is peculiar to no indi- 
 vidual bias : it is a Capitol to which all roads lead ; and 
 at least seven of them are represented in these Fabian 
 Essays ; so that the reader need not fear oppression here, 
 any more than in the socialized State of the future, by 
 the ascendancy of one particular cast of mind. 
 
 There are at present no authoritative teachers of So- 
 cialism. The essayists make no claim to be more than 
 communicative learners. 
 
 London, December, 1889. 
 
THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
/■ 
 
ECONOMIC, 
 
 BY G. BERNARD SHAW. 
 
 All economic analyses begin with the cultivation of the earth. 
 To the mind’s eye of the astronomer, the earth is a ball spinning 
 in space without ulterior motives. To the bodily eye of the 
 primitive cultivator it is a vast green plain, from which, by 
 sticking a spade into it, wheat and other edible matters can be 
 made to spring. To the eye of the sophisticated city man, this 
 vast green plain appears rather as a great gaming-table, your 
 chances in the game depending cliiefly on the place where you 
 deposit your stakes. To the economist, again, the green plain 
 is a sort of burial-place of hidden treasure, where all the 
 forethought and industry of man are set at naught by the 
 caprice of the power which hid the treasure. The wise and 
 patient workman strikes his spade in here, and with heavy toil 
 can discover nothing but a poor quality of barley, some potatoes 
 and plentiful nettles, with a few dock leaves to cure his stings. 
 The foolish spendthrift on the other side of the hedge, gazing 
 idly at the sand glittering in the sun, suddenly realizes that the 
 earth is offering him gold — is dancing it before his listless eyes 
 lest it should escape him. Another man, searching for some 
 more of this tempting gold, comes upon a great hoard of coal, 
 or taps a jet of petroleum. Thus is Man mocked by Earth, 
 his step-mother, and never knows as he tugs at her closed hand 
 whether it contains diamonds or flints, good red wheat or a few 
 clayey and blighted cabbages. Thus, too, he becomes a gam- 
 bler, and scoffs at the theorists who prate of industry and 
 honesty and equality. Yet against this fate he eternally rebels. 
 For since in gambling the many must lose in order that the few 
 may win ; since dishonesty is mere shadow-grasping wdiere 
 every one is dishonest ; and since inequality is bitter to all ex- 
 cept the highest, and miserably lonely for him, men come 
 
2 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 greatly to desire that these capricious gifts of Nature might be 
 intercepted by some agency having the power and the good-will 
 to distribute them justly according to the labor done by each in 
 the collective search for them. This desire is Socialism ; and, 
 as a means to its fulfilment, Socialists have devised communes, 
 kingdoms, principalities, churches, manors, and finally, when all 
 these had succumbed to the old gambling spirit, the Social 
 Democratic State, which yet remains to be tried. As against 
 Socialism, the gambling spirit urges man to allow no rival to 
 come between his private individual powers and Step-mother 
 Earth, but rather to secure some acres of her and take his 
 chance of getting diamonds instead of cabbages. This is Pri- 
 vate Property, or Unsocialism. Our own choice is shewn by 
 our continual aspiration to possess property, our common hail- 
 ing of it as sacred, our setting apart of the word Respectable 
 for those who have attained it, our ascription of pre-eminent 
 religiousness to commandments forbidding its violation, and our 
 identification of law and order among men with its protection. 
 Therefore is it vital to a living knowledge of our society that 
 Private Property should be known in every step of its progress 
 from its source in cupidity to its end in confusion. 
 
 Let us, in the manner of the Political Economist, trace the 
 effects of settling a country by private property wdth undisturbed 
 law and order. Figure to yourself the vast green plain of a 
 country virgin to the spade, awaiting the advent of man. 
 Imagine then the arrival of the first colonist, the original 
 Adam, developed by centuries of civilization into an Adam 
 Smith, prospecting for an suitable patch of Private Property. 
 Adam is, as Political Economy fundamentally assumes him to 
 be, ‘‘on the make”; therefore he drives his spade into, and 
 sets up his stockade around, the most fertile and favorably situ- 
 ated patch he can find. When he has tilled it. Political Econ- 
 omy inspired to prophesy by the spectacle, metaphorically exhibits 
 Adam’s little patch of cultivation as a pool that will yet rise 
 and submerge the whole land. Let us not forget this trope : it 
 is the key to the ever-recurring phrase, “ margin of cultivation,” 
 in wliich, as may now be perceived, there lurks a little unsus- 
 pected poetry. And truly the pool soon spreads. Other Adams 
 come, all on the make, and therefore all sure to pre-empt patches 
 as near as may be to that of the first Adam’s, jiartly because he 
 has chosen the best situation, partly for the pleasure of his so- 
 
ECONOMIC. 
 
 3 
 
 ciety and conversation, and partly because where two men are 
 assembled together there is a two-man power that is far more 
 than double one-man power, being indeed in some instances a 
 quite new force, totally destructive of the idiotic general hypo- 
 thesis that society is no more than the sum of the units which 
 compose it. These Adams, too, bring their Cains and Abels, 
 who do not murder one another, but merely pre-empt adjacent 
 patches. And so the pool rises, and the margin spreads more 
 and more remote from the centre, until the pool becomes a lake, 
 and the lake an inland sea. 
 
 Rent. 
 
 But in the course of this inundation the caprices of Nature 
 begin to operate. That specially fertile region upon which 
 Adam pitched is sooner or later all pre-empted ; and there is 
 nothing for the new-comer to pre-empt save soil of the second 
 quality. Again, division of labor sets in among Adam’s neigh- 
 bors ; and with it, of course, comes the establishment of a 
 market for the exchange of the products of their divided labor. 
 Now it is not well to be far afield from that market, because 
 distance from it involves extra cost for roads, beasts of burden, 
 time consumed in travelling thither and back again. All this 
 will be saved to Adam at the centre of cultivation, and incurred 
 by the new-comer at the margin of cultivation. Let us estimate 
 the annual value of Adam’s produce at £1,000, and the annual 
 produce of the new-comer’s land on the margin of cultivation at 
 £500, assuming that Adam and the new-comer are equally in- 
 dustrious. Here is a clear advantage of £500 a year to the 
 first comer. This £500 is economic rent. It matters not at 
 all that it is merely a difference of income, and not an overt 
 payment from a tenant to a landlord. The two men labor 
 equally ; and yet one gets £500 a year more than the other 
 through the superior fertility of his land and convenience of 
 its situation. The excess due to that fertility is rent; and 
 before long we shall find it recognized as such and paid in the 
 fashion with which we are familiar. For why should not Adam 
 let his patch to the new-comer at a rent of £500 a year ? Since 
 the produce will be £1,000, the new-comer will have £500 left 
 for himself, or as much as he could obtain by cultivating a 
 patch of his own at the margin ; and it is pleasanter, besides, to 
 be in the centre of society than on the outskirts of it. The 
 
4 
 
 THE BASIS OP SOCIALISM. 
 
 new-comer will himself propose the arrangement ; and Adam 
 may retire as an idle landlord with a perpetual pension of £500 
 rent. The excess of fertility in Adam’s land is thenceforth 
 recognized as rent and paid, as it is to-day, regularly by a 
 worker to a drone. A few samples of the way in which this 
 simple and intelligible transaction is stated by our economists 
 may now, I hope, be quoted without any danger of their prov- 
 ing so difficult as they appear in the text-books from which I 
 have copied them. 
 
 Stuart Mill ^ says that the rent of land consists of the excess 
 of its return above the return to the worst land in cultivation.” 
 Fawcett^ says that “the rent of land represents the pecuniary 
 value of the advantages which such land possesses over the 
 worst land in cultivation.” Professor Marshall® says that 
 “ the rent of a piece of land is the excess of its produce over 
 the produce of an adjacent piece of land which would not be 
 cultivated at all if rent were paid for it.” Professor Sidgwick ^ 
 cautiously puts it that “ the normal rent per acre of any piece ” 
 [of land] “ is the surplus of the value of its produce over the value 
 of the net produce per acre of the least advantageous land that it is 
 profitable to cultivate.” General Walker ® declares that “ speci- 
 fically, the rent of any piece of land is determined by the differ- 
 ence between its annual yield and that of the least productive 
 land actually cultivated for the supply of the same market, it 
 being assumed that the quality of the land as a productive agent 
 is, in neither case, impaired or improved by such cultivation.” 
 All these definitions are offered by the authors as elaborations of 
 that given by their master Ricardo,® who says, “ Rent is that 
 portion of the produce of the earth which is paid to the landlord 
 for the use of the original and indestructible powers of the soil.” 
 
 The County Family. 
 
 Let us return to our ideal country. Adam is retiring from 
 productive industry on £500 a year ; and his neighbors are has- 
 
 1 Principles of Political Economy,’’ Yol. I, Index to chap, xvi 
 (18fi5). 
 
 “ Manual of Political Economy,” Book II, chap, hi, p. 116 (1876). 
 
 3 ‘‘ Economics of Industry,” Book 11, chap, iii, sec. 3, p. 84 (1879). 
 
 ^ “ Principles of Political Economy,” Book II, chap, vii, p. 301 (1883). 
 
 ^ “Brief Text-book of Political Economy,” chap, ii, sec. 216, p. 173 
 (1885). 
 
 G “ Principles of Political Economy and Taxation,” chap. ii. p. 34 
 (1817). 
 
ECONOMIC. 
 
 5 
 
 tening to imitate him as fresh tenants present themselves. Tlie 
 first result is the beginning of a tradition that the oldest fami- 
 lies in the country enjoy a superior position to the rest, and 
 that the main advantage of their superior position is that they 
 enjoy incomes without working. Nevertheless, since they still 
 depend on their tenants’ labor for their subsistence, they continue 
 to pay Labor, with a capital L, a certain meed of mouth honor ; 
 and the resultant association of prosperity with idleness, and 
 praise with industry, practically destroys morality by setting up 
 that incompatibility between conduct and principle which is the 
 secret of the ingrained cynicism of our own time, and which 
 produces the curious Ricardian phenomenon of the man of 
 business who goes on Sunday to the church with the regularity 
 of the village blacksmith, there to renounce and abjure before 
 his God the line of conduct which he intends to pursue with all 
 his might during the following week. 
 
 According to our hypothesis, the inland sea of cultivation 
 has now spread into the wilderness so far that at its margin 
 the return to a man’s labor for a year is only £500. But as 
 there is always a flood-tide in that sea, caused by the incessant 
 increase of population, the margin will not stop there ; it will 
 at last encroach upon every acre of cultivable land, rising to 
 the snow line on the mountains and falling to the coast of the 
 actual salt water sea, but always reaching the barrenest places 
 last of all, because the cultivators are still, as ever, on the 
 make, and will not break bad land when better is to be had. 
 But suppose that now, at last, the uttermost belt of free land is 
 reached, and that upon it the yield to a man’s year’s labor is 
 only £100. Clearly now the rent of Adam’s primeval patch 
 has risen to £900, since that is the excess of its produce over 
 what is by this time all that is to be had rent free. But Adam 
 has yielded up his land for £500 a year to a tenant. It is this 
 tenant accordingly who now lets Adam’s patch for £900 a year 
 to the new comer, who of course loses nothing by the bargain, 
 since it leaves him the £100 a year with which he must be con- 
 tent anyhow. Accordingly he labors on Adam’s land; raises 
 £1,000 a year from it; keeps £100 and pays £900 to Adam’s 
 tenant, who pays £500 to Adam, keeping £400 for himself, 
 and thus also becoming an idle gentleman, though with a some- 
 what smaller income than the man of older family. It has, in 
 fact, come to this, that the private property in Adam’s land is 
 
6 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 divided between three men, the first doing none of the work 
 and getting half the produce ; the second doing none of the 
 work and getting two-fifths of the produce ; and the third doing 
 all the work and getting only one-tenth of the produce. Inch 
 dentally also, the moralist who is sure to have been prating 
 somewhere about private property leading to the encourage- 
 ment of industry, the establishment of a healthy incentive, and 
 the distribution of wealth according to exertion, is exposed as a 
 futile purblind person, starting a ^priori from blank ignorance, 
 and proceeding deductively to mere contradiction and patent folly. 
 
 All this, however, is a mere trifle compared to the sequel. 
 When the inland sea has risen to its confines — when there is 
 nothing but a strip of sand round the coast between the furrow 
 and the wave — when the very waves themselves are cultivated 
 by fisherfolk — when the pastures and timber forests have 
 touched the snow line — when, in short, the land is all private 
 property, yet every man is a proprietor, though it may be only 
 of a tenant right. He enjoys fixity of tenure at what is called 
 a fair rent ; that is, he fares as well as he could on land wholly 
 his own. All the rent is economic rent ; the landlord cannot 
 raise it nor the tenant lower it ; it is fixed naturally by the 
 difference between the fertility of the land for which it is paid 
 and that of the worst land in the country. Compared with the 
 world as we know it, such a state of things is freedom and hap- 
 piness. 
 
 The Proletariat. 
 
 But at this point there appears in the land a man in a 
 strange plight — one who wanders from snow line to sea coast 
 in search of land, and finds none that is not the property of 
 some one else. Private property had forgotten this man. On 
 the roads he is a vagrant ; off them he is a trespasser ; he is 
 the first disinherited son of Adam, the first proletarian, one in 
 whose seed all the generations of the earth shall yet be blest, 
 but who is himself for the present foodless, homeless, shiftless, 
 superfluous, and everything that turns a man into a tramp or a 
 thrall. Yet he is still a man with brain and muscle, able to de- 
 vise and execute, able to deal puissantly with land if he only 
 could get access to it. But how to get that access ! Necessity 
 is the mother of Invention. It may be that this second Adam, 
 the first father of the great proletariat, has one of those scarce 
 
ECOKOMIC. 
 
 7 
 
 brains wliicli arc not the least of Nature’s capricious gifts. If 
 the fertile field yields rent, why not the fertile brain ? Here is 
 the first Adam’s patch still yielding its £1,000 a year to the 
 labor of the tenant who, as we have seen, has to pay £900 
 away in rent. How if tlie proletarian were boldly to bid 
 £1,000 a year to that man for the property? Apparently the 
 result would be the starvation of the proletarian, since he 
 would have to part with all the produce. But what if the 
 proletarian can contrive — invent — anticipate a new want — 
 turn the land to some hitherto undreamt-of use — wrest £1,500 
 a year from the soil and site that only yielded £1,000 before ? 
 If he can do this, he can pay the full £1,000 rent, and have an 
 income of £500 left for himself. This is his profit — the rent 
 of his ability ■ — the excess of its produce over that of ordinary 
 stupidity. Here then is the opportunity of the cunning prole- 
 tarian, the hero of that modern Plutarch, Mr. Samuel Smiles. 
 Truly, as Napoleon said, the career is open to the talented. 
 But alas ! the social question is no more a question of the fate 
 of the talented than of the idiotic. In due replenishment of the 
 earth there comes another proletarian who is no cleverer than 
 other men, and can do as much, but not more than they. For 
 him there is no rent of ability. How then is he to get a tenant 
 right ? Let us see. It is certain that by this time not only 
 will the new devices of the renter of ability have been copied 
 by people incapable of inventing them ; but division of labor, 
 the use of tools and money, and the economies of civilization 
 will have greatly increased man’s power of extracting wealth 
 from Nature. All this increase will be so much gain to the 
 holder of a tenant right, since his rent is a fixed payment out 
 of the produce of his holding, and the balance is his own. 
 Therefore an addition to the produce not foreseen by the land- 
 lord enriches the tenant. So that it may well be that tlie 
 produce of land on the margin of cultivation, which, as we have 
 seen, fixes the produce left to the cultivators throughout the 
 whole area, may rise considerably. Suppose the yield to have 
 doubled; then our old friends who paid £900 rent, and kept 
 £100 for themselves, have now, though they still pay £900 
 rent, £1,100 for themselves, the total produce having risen to 
 £2,000. Now here is an opportunity for our proletarian who 
 is not clever. He can very well offer to cultivate the land 
 subject to a payment of, for instance, £1,600 a year, leaving 
 
8 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 himself £400 a year. This will enable the last holder of the 
 tenant right to retire as an idle gentleman receiving a net in- 
 come of £700 a year, and a gross income of £1,G00, out of 
 which he pays £900 a year rent to a landlord who again pays 
 to the head landlord £500. But it is to be marked that this 
 £700 a year net is not economic rent. It is not the difference 
 between the best and the worst land. It has nothing to do 
 with the margin of cultivation. It is a payment for the privi- 
 lege of using land at all — for access to that which is now a 
 close monopoly ; and its amount is regulated, not by what the 
 purchaser could do for himself on land of his own at the mar- 
 gin, but simply by the landholder’s eagerness to be idle on the 
 one hand, and the proletarian’s need of subsistence on the 
 other. In current economic terms the price is regulated by 
 supply and demand. As the demand for land intensities by the 
 advent of fresh proletarians, the price goes up ; and the bar- 
 gains are made more stringent. Tenant rights, instead of 
 being granted in perpetuity, and so securing for ever to the 
 tenant the increase due to unforeseen improvements in produc- 
 tion, are granted on leases for finite terms, at the expiration of 
 which the landlord can revise the terms or eject the tenant. 
 The payments rise until the original head rents and quit rents 
 appear insignificant in comparison with the incomes reaped by 
 the intermediate tenant right holders or middlemen. Sooner or 
 later the price of tenant right will rise so high that the actual 
 cultivator will get no more of the produce than suffices him for 
 subsistence. At that point there is an end of sub-letting tenant 
 rights. The land’s absorption of the proletarians as tenants 
 paying more than the economic rent stops. 
 
 And now what is the next proletarian to do ? For all his 
 forerunners we have found a way of escape : for him there 
 seems none. The board is at the door, inscribed Only stand- 
 ino- room left” ; and it might well bear the more poetic legend, 
 Lasciate ogni speranza^ voi ch’ entrate. This man, born a 
 proletarian, must die a proletarian, and leave his destitution as 
 an only inheritance to his son. It is not yet clear that there is 
 ten days’ life in him ; for whence is his subsistence to come if he 
 cannot get at the land ? Food he must have, and clothing ; 
 and both promptly. There is food in the market, and clothing 
 also ; but not for nothing : hard money must be paid for it, and 
 paid on the nail too; for he who has no property gets no 
 
ECOKOMIC. A 
 
 9 
 
 credit. Money tlien is a necessity of life ; and money can only 
 be procured by selling commodities. This presents no difficulty 
 to the cultivators of the land, who can raise commodities by 
 their labor ; but the proletarian, being landless, has neither 
 commodities nor means of producing them. Sell something he 
 must. Yet he has nothing to sell — except himself. The idea 
 seems a desperate one ; but it proves quite easy to carry out. 
 The tenant cultivators of the land have not strength enougli or 
 time enough to exhaust the productive capacity of their hold- 
 ings. If they could buy men in the market for less than these 
 men’s labor would add to the produce, then the purchase of 
 such men would be a sheer gain. It would indeed be only a 
 purchase in form : the men would literally cost nothing, since 
 they would produce their own price, with a surplus for the 
 buyer. Never in the history of buying and selling was there 
 so splendid a bargain for buyers as this. Aladdin’s uncle’s 
 offer of new lamps for old ones, was in comparison a catch- 
 penny. Accordingly, the proletarian no sooner offers himself 
 for sale than he finds a rush of bidders for him, each striving to 
 get the better of the others by offering to give him more and 
 more of the produce of his labor, and to content themselves 
 with less and less surplus. But even the highest bidder must 
 have some surplus, or he will not buy. The proletarian, in 
 accepting the highest bid, sells himself openly into bondage. 
 He is not the first man who has done so ; for it is evident that 
 his forerunners, the purchasers of tenant right, had been 
 enslaved by the proprietors who lived on the rents paid by 
 them. But now all the disguise falls off ; the proletarian re- 
 nounces not only the fruit of his labor, but also his right to 
 think for himself and to direct his industry as he pleases. The 
 economic change is merely formal ; the moral change is enor- 
 mous. Soon the new direct traffic in men overspreads the 
 whole market, and takes the place formerly held by the traffic 
 in tenant rights. In order to understand the consequences, it 
 is necessary to undertake an analysis of the exchange of com- 
 modities in general, since labor power is now in the market on 
 the same footing as any other ware exposed there for sale. 
 
 Exchange Value. 
 
 It is evident that the custom of exchange will arise in the 
 first instance as soon as men give up providing each for his 
 
10 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 own needs by his own labor. A man who makes his own tables 
 and chairs, his own poker and kettle, his own bread and butter, 
 and his own house and clothes, is jack-of-all- trades and master 
 of none. He finds that he would get on much faster if he 
 stuck to making tables and chairs, and exchanged them with the 
 smith for a poker and kettle, with bakers and dairymen for 
 bread and butter, and with builders and tailors for a house and 
 clothes. In doing this, he finds that his tables and chairs are 
 worth so much — that they have an exchange value, as it is 
 called. As a matter of general convenience, some suitable 
 commodity is set up to measure this value. We set up gold, 
 which in this particular use of it, is called money. The chair- 
 maker finds how much money his chairs are worth, and ex- 
 changes them for it. The blacksmith finds out how much 
 money his pokers are worth, and exchanges them for it. Thus, 
 by employing money as a go-between, chairmakers can get 
 pokers in exchange for their chairs, and blacksmiths chairs for 
 their pokers. This is the mechanism of exchange ; and once 
 the values of the commodities are ascertained it works simply 
 enough. But it is a mere mechanism, and does not fix the 
 values or explain them. And the attempt to discover what 
 does fix them is beset with apparent contradictions which block 
 up the right path, and with seductive coincidences which make 
 the wrong seem the more promising 
 
 The apparent contradictions soon shew themselves. It is 
 evident that the exchange value of anything depends on its 
 utility, since no mortal exertion can make a useless thing ex- 
 changeable. And yet fresh air and sunlight, which are so use- 
 ful as to be quite indispensable, have no exchange value; 
 whilst a meteoric stone, shot free of charge from the firmament 
 into the back garden, has a considerable exchange value, 
 although it is an eminently dispensable curiosity. We soon 
 find that this somehow depends on the fact that fresh air is 
 plenty and meteoric stones scarce. If by any means the supply 
 of fresh air could be steadily diminished, and the supply of 
 meteoric stones, by celestial cannonade or otherwise, steadily 
 increased, the fresh air would presently acquire an exchange 
 value which would gradually rise, whilst the exchange value of 
 meteoric stones would gradually fall, until at last fresh air 
 would be supplied through a meter and charged for like gas, 
 and meteoric stones would be as unsaleable as ordinary pebbles. 
 
ECONOMIC. 
 
 11 
 
 The exchange value, in fact, decreases with the supply. This 
 is due to the fact that the supply decreases in utility as it goes 
 on, because when people have had some of a commodity, they 
 are partly satisfied, and do not value the rest so much. The 
 usefulness of a pound of bread to a man depends on whether 
 he has already eaten some. Every man wants a certain num- 
 ber of pounds of bread per week, no man wants much more ; 
 and if more is offered he will not give much for it — perhaps 
 not anything. One umbrella is very useful : a second umbrella 
 is a luxury : a third is mere lumber. Similarly, the curators of 
 our museums want a moderate collection of meteoric stones ; 
 but they do not want a cartload apiece of them. Now the ex- 
 change value is fixed by the utility, not of the most useful, but 
 of the least useful part of the stock. Why this is so can 
 readily be made obvious by an illustration. If the stock of 
 umbrellas in the market were sufficiently large to provide two 
 for each umbrella carrier in the community, then, since a second 
 umbrella is not so useful as the first, the doctrinaire course 
 would be to ticket half the umbrellas at, say, fifteen shillings, 
 and the other half at eight and sixpence. Unfortunately, no 
 man will give fifteen shillings for an article which he can get 
 for eight and sixpence ; and when the public came to buy, they 
 would buy up all the eight and sixpenny umbrellas. Each per- 
 son being thus supplied with an umbrella, the remainder of the 
 stock, though marked fifteen shillings, would be in the position 
 of second umbrellas, only worth eight and sixpence. This is 
 how the exchange value of the least useful part of the supply 
 fixes the exchange value of all the rest. Technically, it occurs 
 by ‘Hhe law of indifference.” And since the least useful 
 unit of the supply is generally that which is last produced, its 
 utility is called the final utility of the commodity. The utility 
 of the first or most useful unit is called the total utility of the 
 commodity. If there were but one umbrella in the world, the 
 exchange value of its total utility would be what the most deli- 
 cate person would pay for it on a very wet day sooner than go 
 without it. But practically, thanks to the law of indifference, 
 the most delicate person pays no more than the most robust : 
 that is, both pay alike the exchange value of the utility of the 
 last umbrella produced — or of the final utility of the whole 
 stock of umbrellas. These terms — law of indifference, total 
 utility, and final utility — though admirably expressive and 
 
12 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 intelligible When you know beforehand exactly what they mean, 
 are, taken by themselves, failures in point of lucidity and sug- 
 gestiveness. Some economists, transferring from cultivation to 
 utility our old metaphor of the spreading pool, call final utility 
 “marginal utility.” Either will serve our present purpose, as 
 I do not intend to use the terms again. The main point to be 
 grasped is, that however useful any commodity may be, its ex- 
 change value can be run down to nothing by increasing the 
 supply until there is more of it than is wanted. The excess, 
 being useless and valueless, is to be had for nothing ; and no- 
 body will pay anything for a commodity as long as plenty of it 
 is to be had for nothing. This is why air and other indis- 
 pensable things have no exchange value, whilst scarce gewgaws 
 fetch immense prices. 
 
 These, then, are the conditions which confront man as a pro- 
 ducer and exchanger. If he produces a useless thing, his labor 
 will be wholly in vain : he will get nothing for it. If he pro- 
 duces a useful thing, the price he will get for it will depend on 
 how much of it there is for sale already. If he increases the 
 supply by producing more than is sufficient to replace the cur- 
 rent consumption, he inevitably lowers the value of the whole. 
 It therefore behooves him to be wary in choosing his occupa- 
 tion, as well as industrious in pursuing it. His choice will 
 naturally fall on the production of those commodities whose 
 value stands highest relatively to the labor required to produce 
 them — which fetch the highest price in proportion to their cost, 
 in fact. Suppose, for example, that a maker of musical instru- 
 ments found that it cost him exactly as much to make a harp as 
 to make a pianoforte, but that harps were going out of fashion 
 and pianofortes coming in. Soon there would be more harps 
 than were wanted, and fewer pianofortes : consequently the 
 value of liarps would fall, and that of pianofortes rise. Since 
 the labor cost of both would be the same, he would immediately 
 devote all his labor to pianoforte-making ; and other manufac- 
 turers would do the same, until the increase of supply brought 
 down the value of pianofortes to the value of harps. Possibly 
 fashion then might veer from pianofortes to American organs, 
 in which case he would make less pianofortes and more Ameri- 
 can organs. When these, too, had increased sufficiently, the 
 exertions of the Salvation Army might create such a demand 
 for tambourines as to make them worth four times their cost of 
 
ECONOMIC. 
 
 13 
 
 production, whereupon there would instantly be a furious con- 
 centration of the instrument-making energy on the manufacture 
 of tambourines ; and this concentration would last until the 
 supply had brought down the profit ^ to less than might be 
 gained by gratifying the public craving for trombones. At last, 
 as pianofortes were cheapened until they were no more profit- 
 able than harps ; then American organs until they were no 
 more profitable than pianos ; and then tambourines until they 
 were level with American organs ; so eventually trombones will 
 pay no better than tambourines ; and a general level of profit 
 will be attained, indicating the proportion in which the instru- 
 ments are wanted by the public. But to skim off even this 
 level of profit, more of the instruments may be produced in the 
 ascertained proportion until their prices fall to their costs of 
 production, when there will be no profit. Here the production 
 will be decisively checked, since a further supply would cause 
 only a loss ; and men can lose money, without the trouble of 
 producing commodities, by the simple process of throwing it out 
 of a window. 
 
 What occurred with the musical instruments in this illustra- 
 tion occurs in practice with the whole mass of manufactured 
 commodities. Those which are scarce, and therefore relatively 
 high in value, tempt us to produce them until the increase of 
 the supply reduces their value to a point at which there is 
 no more profit to be made out of them than out of other 
 commodities. The general level of profit thus attained is 
 further exploited until the general increase brings down the 
 price of all commodities to their cost of production, the equiva- 
 lent of which is sometimes called their normal value. And 
 here a glance back to our analysis of the spread of cultivation, 
 and its result in the phenomenon of rent, suggests the question 
 What does the cost of production of a commodity mean? We 
 have seen that, owing to the differences in fertility and advan- 
 tage of situation between one piece of land and another, cost of 
 production varies from district to district, being highest at the 
 margin of cultivation. But we have also seen how the landlord 
 skims off as economic rent all the advantages gained by the cul- 
 tivators of superior soils and sites. Consequently, the addition 
 of the landlord’s rent to the expenses of production brings them 
 
 1 Profit is here used colloquially to denote the excess of the value 
 of an article over its cost. 
 
14 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 up even on the best land to the level of those incurred on the 
 worst. Cost of production, then, means cost of production on 
 the margin of cultivation, and is equalized to all producers, 
 since what they may save in labor per commodity is counter- 
 balanced by the greater mass of commodities they must produce 
 in order to bring in the rent. It is only by a thorough grasp of 
 this levelling-down action that we can detect the trick by which 
 the ordinary economist tries to cheat us into accepting the 
 private property system as practically just. He first shews that 
 economic rent does not enter into cost of production on the 
 margin of cultivation. Then he shews that the cost of produc- 
 tion on the margin of cultivation determines the price of a com- 
 modity. Therefore, he argues, first, that rent does not enter 
 into price ; and second, that the value of commodities is fixed 
 by their cost of production, the implication being that the land- 
 lords cost the community nothing, and that commodities ex- 
 change in exact proportion to the labor they cost. This trivially 
 ingenious way of being disengenuous is officially taught as politi- 
 cal economy in our schools to this day. It will be seen at once 
 that it is mere thimblerig. So far from commodities exchang- 
 ing, or tending to exchange, according to the labor expended in 
 their production, commodities produced well within the margin 
 of cultivation will fetch as high a price as commodities produced 
 at the margin with much greater labor. So far from the land- 
 lord costing nothing, he costs all the difference between the two. 
 
 This, however, is not the goal of our analysis of value. We 
 now see how Man’s control over the value of commodities con- 
 sists solely in his power of regulating their supply. Individuals 
 are constantly trying to decrease supply for their own advan- 
 tage. Gigantic conspiracies have been entered into to forestall 
 the world’s wheat and cotton harvests, so as to force their value 
 to the highest possible point. Cargoes of East Indian spices 
 have been destroyed by the Dutch as cargoes of fish are now 
 destroyed in the Thames, to maintain prices by limiting supply. 
 All rings, trusts, corners, combinations, monopolies and trade 
 secrets have the same object. Production and the development 
 of the social instincts are alike hindered by each man’s con- 
 sciousness that the more he stints the community the more he 
 benefits himself, the justification, of course, being that when 
 every man has benefited himself at the expense of the com- 
 munity, the community will benefit by every man in it being 
 
ECONOMIC. 
 
 15 
 
 benefited. From one thing the community is safe. There will 
 be no permanent conspiracies to reduce values by increasing 
 supply. All men will cease producing when the value of their 
 product falls below its cost of production, whether in labor or 
 in labor rent. No man will keep on producing bread until 
 it will fetch nothing, like the sunlight, or until it becomes a 
 nuisance, like the rain in the summer of 1888. So far, our 
 minds are at ease as to the excessive increase of commodities 
 voluntarily produced by the labor of man. 
 
 Wages. 
 
 I now ask you to pick up the dropped subject of the spread 
 of cultivation. We had got as far as the appearance in the 
 market of a new commodity — of the proletarian man compelled 
 to live by the sale of himself ! In order to realize at once the 
 latent horror of this, you have only to apply our investigation 
 of value, with its inevitable law that only by restricting the 
 supply of a commodity can its value be kept from descending 
 finally to zero. The commodity which the proletarian sells is 
 one over the production of which he has practically no control. 
 He is himself driven to produce it by an irresistible impulse. 
 It was the increase of population that spread cultivation and 
 civilization from the centre to the snowline, and at last forced 
 men to sell themselves to the lords of the soil : it is the same 
 force that continues to multiply men so that their exchange 
 falls slowly and surely until it disappears altogether — until 
 even black chattel slaves are released as not worth keeping in a 
 land where men of all colors are to be had for nothing. This 
 is the condition of our English laborers to-day : they are no 
 longer even dirt cheap : they are valueless, and can be had for 
 nothing. The proof is the existence of the unemployed, who 
 can find no purchasers. By the law of indifference, nobody 
 will buy men at a price when he can obtain equally serviceable 
 men for nothing. What, then, is the explanation of the wages 
 given to those who are in employment, and who certainly do 
 not work for nothing ? The matter is deplorably simple. Sup- 
 pose that horses multiplied in England in such quantities that 
 they were to be had for the asking, like kittens condemned to 
 the bucket. You would still have to feed your horse — feed 
 him and lodge him well if you used him as a smart hunter — 
 
16 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 feed him and lodge him wretchedly if you used him only as a 
 drudge. But the cost of keeping would not mean that the 
 horse had an exchange value. If you got him for nothing in 
 the first instance — if no one would give you anything for liim 
 when you were done with him, he would be worth nothing, in 
 spite of the cost of his keep. That is just the case of every 
 member of the proletariat who could be replaced by one of the 
 unemployed to-day. Their wage is not the price of themselves ; 
 for they are worth nothing: it is only their keep. For bare 
 subsistence wages you can get as much common labor as you 
 want, and do what you please with it within the limits of a 
 criminal code which is sure to be interpreted by a proprietary- 
 class judge in your favor. If you have to give your footman a 
 better allowance than your wretched hewer of match wood, it is 
 for the same reason that you have to give your hunter beans 
 and a clean stall instead of chopped straw and a sty.^ 
 
 Capitalism. 
 
 At this stage the acquisition of labor becomes a mere ques- 
 tion of provender. If a railway is required, all that is necessary 
 is to provide subsistence for a sufficient number of laborers to 
 construct it. If, for example, the railway requires the labor 
 of a thousand men for five years, the cost to the proprietors of 
 the site is the subsistence of a thousand men for five years. 
 This subsistence is technically called capital. It is provided for 
 by the proprietors not consuming the whole excess over wages 
 of the produce of the labor of their other wage workers, but 
 setting aside enough for the subsistence of the railway makers. 
 In this way capital can claim to be the result of saving, or, as 
 one ingenious apologist neatly put it, the reward of abstinence, 
 a gleam of humor which still enlivens treatises on capital. 
 The savers, it need hardly be said, are those who have more 
 money than they want to spend : the abstainers are those who 
 have less. At the end of the five years, the completed railway 
 
 1 When one of the conditions of earning a wage is the keeping up of 
 a certain state, subsistence wages may reach a figure to which the 
 term seems ludicrously inappropriate. For example, a fashionable 
 physician in London cannot save out of £1,000 a year ; and the post of 
 Lord Lieutenant of Ireland can only be filled by a man who brings 
 considerable private means to the aid of his official salary of £20,000. 
 
ECONOMIC. 
 
 IT 
 
 is the property of the capitalists ; and the railway makers fall 
 back into the labor market as helpless as they were before. 
 Sometimes the proprietors call the completed railway their 
 capital ; but, strictly, this is only a figure of speech. Capital is 
 simply spare subsistence. Its market value, indicated by the 
 current rate of interest, falls with the increase of population, 
 whereas the market value of established stock rises with it.^ 
 If Mr. Goschen, encouraged by his success in reducing Con- 
 sols, were to ask the proprietors of the London and North 
 Western Railway to accept as full compensation for their com- 
 plete expropriation capital just sufficient to make the railway 
 anew, their amazement at his audacity would at once make him 
 feel the difference between a railway and capital. Colloquially, 
 one property with a farm on it is said to be land yielding rent ; 
 whilst another, with a railway on it, is called capital yielding 
 interest. But economically there is no distinction between 
 them when they once become sources of revenue. This would 
 be quite clearly seen if costly enterprises like railways could be 
 undertaken by a single landlord on his own land out of his own 
 surplus wealth. It is the necessity of combining a number of 
 possessors of surplus wealth, and devising a financial machinery 
 for apportioning their shares in the produce to their shares in 
 the capital contributed, that modifies the terminology and ex- 
 ternal aspect of the exploitation. But the modification is not 
 an alteration : shareholder and landlord live alike on the pro- 
 duce extracted from their property by the labor of the pro- 
 letariat. 
 
 “ Overpopulation.” 
 
 The introduction of the capitalistic system is a sign that the 
 exploitation of the laborer toiling for a bare subsistence wage 
 has become one of the chief arts of life among the holders of 
 tenant rights. It also produces a delusive promise of endless 
 employment which blinds the proletariat to those disastrous 
 consequences of rapid multiplication which are obvious to the 
 small cultivator and peasant proprietor. But indeed the more 
 
 1 The current rate must, under present conditions, eventually fall to 
 zero, and even become “ negative.’* By that time shares which now 
 bring in a dividend of 100 per cent, may very possibly bring in 200 or 
 more. Yet the fall of the rate has been mistaken for a tendency of in- 
 terest to disappear. It really indicates a tendency of interest to in- 
 crease. 
 
18 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 you degrade the workers, robbing them of all artistic enjoy- 
 ment, and all chance of respect and admiration from their 
 fellows, the more you throw them back, reckless, on the one 
 pleasure and the one human tie left to them — the gratification 
 of their instinct for producing fresh supplies of men. You will 
 applaud this instinct as divine until at last the excessive supply 
 becomes a nuisance : there comes a plague of men ; and you 
 suddenly discover that the instinct is diabolic, and set up a cry 
 of overpopulation.” But your slaves are beyond caring for 
 your cries ; they breed like rabbits ; and their poverty breeds 
 filth, ugliness, dishonesty, disease, obscenity, drunkenness, and 
 murder. In the midst of the riches which their labor piles up 
 for you, their misery rises up too and stifles you. You with- 
 draw in disgust to the other end of the town from them ; you 
 appoint special carriages on your railways and special seats in 
 your churches and theatres for them ; you set your life apart 
 from theirs by every class barrier you can devise ; and yet they 
 swarm about you still: your face gets stamped with your 
 habitual loathing and suspicion of them ; your ears get so filled 
 with the language of the vilest of them that you break into it 
 when you lose your self-control ; they poison your life as re- 
 morselessly as you have sacrificed theirs heartlessly. You 
 begin to believe intensely in the devil. Then comes the terror 
 of their revolting ; the drilling and arming of bodies of them to 
 keep down the rest ; the prison, the hospital, paroxysms of 
 frantic coercion, followed by paroxysms of frantic charity. 
 And in the meantime, the population continues to increase ! 
 
 Illth.” 
 
 It is sometimes said that during this grotesquely hideous 
 march of civilization from bad to worse, wealth is increasing 
 side by side with misery. Such a thing is eternally impossible ; 
 wealth is steadily decreasing with the spread of poverty. But 
 riches are increasing, which is quite another thing. The total 
 of the exchange values produced in the country annually is 
 mounting perhaps by leaps and bounds. But the accumulation 
 of riches, and consequently of an excessive purchasing power, 
 in the hands of a class, soon satiates that class with socially 
 useful wealth, and sets them offering a price for luxuries. The 
 moment a price is to be had for a luxury, it acquires exchange 
 
ECONOMIC. 
 
 19 
 
 value, and labor is employed to produce it. A New York lady, 
 for instance, having a nature of exquisite sensibility, orders an 
 elegant rosewood and silver coffin, upholstered in pink satin, 
 for her dead dog. It is made ; and meanwhile a live child is 
 prowling barefooted and hunger-stunted in the frozen gutter 
 outside. The exchange-value of the coffin is counted as part 
 of the national wealth ; but a nation which cannot afford food 
 and clothing for its children cannot be allowed to pass as 
 wealthy because it has provided a pretty coffin for a dead dog. 
 Exchange value itself, in fact, has become bedevilled like 
 everything else, and represents, no longer utility, but the crav- 
 ings of lust, folly, vanity, gluttony, and madness, technically 
 described by genteel economists as ‘‘ effective demand.” 
 Luxuries are not social wealth ; the machinery for producing 
 them is not social wealth ; labor skilled only to manufacture 
 them is not socially useful labor ; the men, women, and children 
 who make a living by producing them are no more self-support- 
 ing than the idle rich for whose amusement they are kept at 
 work. It is the habit of counting as wealth the exchange values 
 involved in these transactions that makes us fancy that the poor 
 are starving in the midst of plenty. They are starving in the 
 midst of plenty of jewels, velvets, laces, equipages, and race- 
 horses ; but not in the midst of plenty of food. In the things 
 that are wanted for the welfare of the people we are abjectly 
 poor ; and England’s social policy to-day may be likened to 
 the domestic policy of those adventuresses who leave their 
 children half-clothed and half-fed in order to keep a carriage 
 and deal with a fashionable dressmaker. But it is quite true 
 that whilst wealth and welfare are decreasing, productive power 
 is increasing ; and nothing but the perversion of this power to 
 the production of socially useless commodities prevents the 
 apparent wealth from becoming real. The purchasing power 
 that commands luxuries in the hands of the rich, would com- 
 mand true wealth in the hands of all. Yet private property 
 must still heap the purchasing power upon the few rich and 
 withdraw it from the many poor. So that, in the end, the sub- 
 ject of the one boast that private property can make — the 
 great accumulation of so-called “ wealth ” which it points so 
 proudly to as the result of its power to scourge men and women 
 daily to prolonged and intense toil, turns out to be a simulacrum. 
 With all its energy, its Smilesian ‘‘ self-help,” its merchant- 
 
20 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 princely enterprise, its ferocious sweating and slave-driving, its 
 prodigality of blood, sweat and tears, what has it heaped up, 
 over and above the pittance of its slaves ? Only a monstrous 
 pile of frippery, some tainted class literature and class art, and 
 not a little poison and mischief. 
 
 This, then, is the economic analysis which convicts Private 
 Property of being unjust even from the beginning, and utterly 
 impossible as a final solution of even the individualist aspect 
 of the problem of adjusting the share of the worker in the 
 distribiition of wealth to the labor incurred by him in its 
 production. All attempts yet made to construct true societies 
 ujDon it have failed ; the nearest things to societies so achieved 
 have been civilizations, which have rotted into centres of vice 
 and luxury, and eventually been swept away by uncivilized 
 races. That our own civilization is already in an advanced 
 stage of rottenness may be taken as statistically proved. That 
 further decay instead of improvement must ensue if the institu- 
 tion of private property be maintained, is economically certain. 
 Fortunately, private property in its integrity is not now prac- 
 ticable. Although the safety-valve of emigration has been 
 furiously at work during this century, yet the pressure of popu- 
 lation has forced us to begin the restitution to the people of 
 the sums taken from them for the ground landlords, holders of 
 tenant right, and capitalists, by the imposition of an income 
 tax, and by compelling them to establish out of their revenues 
 a national system of education, besides imposing restrictions — 
 as yet only of the forcible-feeble sort — on their terrible power 
 of abusing the wage contract. These, however, are dealt with 
 by Mr. Sidney Webb in the historic essay which follows. I 
 should not touch upon them at all, were it not that experience 
 has lately convinced all economists that no exercise in abstract 
 economics, however closely deduced, is to be trusted unless it 
 can be experimentally verified by tracing its expression in 
 history. It is true that the process which I have presented as 
 a direct development of private property between free ex- 
 changers had to work itself out in the Old World indirectly 
 and tortuously through a struggle with political and religious 
 institutions and survivals <|uite antagonistic to it. It is true 
 that cultivation did not begin in Western Europe with the 
 solitary emigrant pre-empting his private property, but with 
 
ECONOMIC. 
 
 21 
 
 the tribal communes in which arose subsequently the assertion 
 of the right of the individual to private judgment and private 
 action against the tyranny of primitive society. It is true that 
 cultivation has not proceeded by logical steps from good land 
 to less good ; from less good to bad ; and from bad to worse : 
 the exploration of new countries and new regions, and the dis- 
 covery of new uses for old products, has often made the margin 
 of cultivation more fruitful than the centre, and, for the 
 moment (whilst the centre was shifting to the margin), turned 
 the whole movement of rent and wages directly counter to tlie 
 economic theory. Nor is it true that, taking the world as one 
 country, cultivation has yet spread from the snowline to the 
 water’s edge. There is free land still for the poorest East End 
 match-box maker if she could get there, reclaim the wilderness 
 there, speak the language there, stand the climate there, and 
 be fed, clothed, and housed there whilst she cleared her farm ; 
 learned how to cultivate it ; and waited for the harvest. Econ- 
 omists have been ingenious enough to prove that this alterna- 
 tive really secures her independence ; but I shall not waste 
 time in dealing with that. Practically, if there is no free land 
 in England, the economic analysis holds good of England, in 
 spite of Siberia, Central Africa, and the Wild West. Again, 
 it is not immediately true that men are governed in production 
 solely by a determination to realize the maximum of exchange 
 value. The impulse to production often takes specific direction 
 in the first instance; and a man will insist on producing 
 pictures or plays although he might gain more money by pro- 
 ducing boots or bonnets. But, his specific impulse once grati- 
 fied, he will make as much money as he can. He will sell his 
 picture or play for a hundred pounds rather than for fifty. In 
 short, though there is no such person as the celebrated eco- 
 nomic man,” man being wilful rather than rational, yet when 
 the wilful man has had his way he will take what else he can 
 get ; and so he always does appear, finally if not primarily, as 
 the economic man. On the whole, history, even in the Old 
 World, goes the way traced by the economist. In the New 
 World the correspondence is exact. The United States and 
 the Colonies have been peopled by fugitives from the full-blown 
 individualism of Western Europe, pre-empting private property 
 precisely as assumed in this investigation of the conditions of 
 cultivation. The economic relations of these cultivators have 
 
22 
 
 THE BASIS OE SOCIALISM. 
 
 not since put on any of the old political disguises. Yet among 
 them, in confirmation of the validity of our analysis, we see all 
 the evils of our old civilizations growing up ; and though with 
 them the end is not yet, still it is from them to us that the 
 great recent revival of the cry for nationalization of the land 
 has come, articulated by a man who had seen the whole tragedy 
 of private property hurried through its acts with unprecedented 
 speed in the mushroom cities of America. 
 
 On Socialism the analysis of the economic action of Indi- 
 vidualism bears as a discovery, in the j^rivate appropriation of 
 land, of the source of those unjust privileges against which 
 Socialism is aimed. It is practically a demonstration that 
 public property in land is the basic economic condition of So- 
 cialism. But this does not involve at present a literal restora- 
 tion of the land to the people. The land is at present in the 
 hands of the people : its proprietors are for the most part 
 absentees. The modern form of private property is simply a 
 legal claim to take a share of the produce of the national indus- 
 try year by year without working for it. It refers to no special 
 part or form of that produce ; and in process of consumption its 
 revenue cannot be distinguished from earnings, so that the 
 majority of persons, accustomed to call the commodities which 
 form the income of the proprietor his private property, and 
 seeing no difference between them and the commodities which 
 form the income of a worker, extend the term private property 
 to the worker’s subsistence also, and can only conceive an attack 
 on private property as an attempt to empower everybody to 
 rob everybody else all round. But the income of a private 
 proprietor can be distinguished by the fact that he obtains it 
 unconditionally and gratuitously by private right against the 
 public weal, which is incompatible with the existence of con- 
 sumers who do not produce. Socialism involves discontinuance 
 of the payment of these incomes, and addition of the wealth so 
 saved to incomes derived from labor. As we have seen, in- 
 comes derived from private pi perty consist partly of economic 
 rent ; partly of pensions, also called rent, obtained by the sub- 
 letting of tenant rights ; and partly of a form of rent called 
 interest, obtained by special adaptations of land to production 
 by the application of capital : all these being finally paid out of 
 the dilference between the jiroduce of tlie worker’s labor and 
 the price of that labor sold in the oj^en market for wages, salary. 
 
ECONOMIC. 
 
 fees, or profits.^ The wliole, except economic rent, can be 
 added directly to the incomes of the workers by simply discon- 
 tinuing its exaction from them. Economic rent, arising as it 
 does from variations of fertility or advantages of situation, must 
 always be held as common or social wealth, and used, as the 
 revenues raised by taxation are now used, for public purposes, 
 among which Socialism would make national insurance and the 
 provision of capital matters of the first importance. 
 
 The economic problem of Socialism is thus solved ; and the 
 political question of how the economic solution is to be practi- 
 cally applied does not come within the scope of this essay. 
 But if we have got as far as an intellectual conviction that the 
 source of our social misery is no eternal well-spring of confusion 
 and evil, but only an artificial system susceptible of almost 
 infinite modification and readjustment — nay, of practical de- 
 molition and substitution at the will of Man, then a terrible 
 weight will be lifted from the minds of all except those who are, 
 whether avowedly to themselves or not, clinging to the present 
 state of things from base motives. We have had in this century 
 a stern series of lessons on the folly of believing anything for 
 no better reason than that it is pleasant to believe it. It was 
 pleasant to look round with a consciousness of possessing a 
 thousand a year, and say, with Browning’s David, All’s love ; 
 and all’s law.” It was pleasant to believe that the chance we 
 were too lazy to take in this world would come back to us in 
 another. It was pleasant to believe that a benevolent hand was 
 guiding the steps of society ; overruling all evil appearances for 
 good ; and making poverty here the earnest of a great blessed- 
 ness and reward hereafter. It was pleasant to lose the sense 
 of worldly inequality in the contemplation of our equality be- 
 fore God. But utilitarian questioning and scientific answering 
 turned all this tranquil optimism into the blackest pessimism. 
 Nature was shewn to us as red in tooth and claw ” : if the 
 guiding hand were indeed benevolent, then it could not be om- 
 nipotent ; so that our trust in it was broken : if it were omnipo- 
 tent, it could not be benevolent ; so that our love of it turned to 
 fear and hatred. We had never admitted that the other world, 
 which was to compensate for the sorrows of this, was open to 
 
 1 This excess of the product of labor over its price is treated as a 
 single category with impressive effect by Karl Marx, who called it 
 ‘‘ surplus value ” (mehrwerth). 
 
24 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 liorses and apes (though we had not on that account been any 
 the more merciful to our horses) ; and now came Science to 
 shew us the corner of the pointed ear of the horse on our own 
 heads, and present the ape to us as our blood relation. No 
 proof came of the existence of that other world and that benev- 
 olent power to wliich we had left the remedy of the atrocious 
 wrongs of the poor ; proof after proof came that what we called 
 Nature knew and cared no more about our pains and pleasures 
 than we know or care about the tiny creatures we crush under- 
 foot as we walk through the fields. Instead of at once perceiv- 
 ing that this meant no more than that Nature was unmoral and 
 indifferent, we relapsed into a gross form of devil worship, and 
 conceived Nature as a remorselessly malignant power. This 
 was no better than the old optimism, and infinitely gloomier. 
 It kept our eyes still shut to the truth that there is no cruelty 
 and selfishness outside Man himself ; and that his own active 
 benevolence can combat and vanquish both. When the 
 Socialist came forward as a meliorist on these lines, the old 
 school of political economists, who could see no alternative to 
 private property, put forward in proof of the powerlessness of 
 benevolent action to arrest the deadly automatic production of 
 poverty by the increase of population, the very analysis I have 
 just presented. Their conclusions exactly fitted in with the 
 new ideas. It was Nature at it again — the struggle for exist- 
 ence — the remorseless extirpation of the weak — the survival 
 of the fittest — in short, natural selection at work. Socialism 
 seemed too good to be true : it was passed by as merely the old 
 optimism foolishly running its head against the stone wall of 
 modern science. But Socialism now challenges individualism, 
 scepticism, pessimism, worship of Nature personified as a devil, 
 on their own ground of science. The science of the production 
 and distribution of wealth is Political Economy. Socialism 
 appeals to that science, and, turning on Individualism its own 
 guns, routs it in incurable disaster. Henceforth the bitter 
 cynic wlio still finds the world an eternal and unimprovable 
 doghole, with tlie placid person of means who repeats the 
 familiar misquotation, The poor ye shall have always with 
 you,’’ lose their usurped place among the cultured, and pass 
 over to the ranks of the ignorant, the shallow, and the super- 
 stitious. As for the rest of us, since we were taught to revere 
 proprietary resi^ectability in our unfortunate childhood, and 
 
ECONOMIC. 
 
 25 
 
 since we found our childish hearts so hard and unregenerate 
 that they secretly hated and rebelled against respectability in 
 spite of that teaching, it is impossible to express the relief with 
 which we discover that our hearts were all along right, and that 
 the current respectability of to-day is nothing but a huge inver- 
 sion of righteous and scientific social order weltering in dis- 
 honesty, uselessness, selfishness, wanton misery, and idiotic 
 waste of magnificent opportunities for noble and happy living. 
 It was terrible to feel this, and yet to fear that it could not be 
 helped — that the poor must starve and make you ashamed of 
 your dinner — that they must shiver and make you ashamed of 
 your warm overcoat. It is to economic science — once the 
 Dismal, now the Hopeful — that we are indebted for the dis- 
 covery that though the evil is enormously worse than we knew, 
 yet it is not eternal — not even very long lived, if we only 
 bestir ourselves to make an end of it. 
 
HISTORIC. 
 
 BY SIDNEY WEBB. 
 
 The Development of the Democratic Ideal. 
 
 In discussing the historic groundwork of Socialism, it is 
 worth remembering that no special claim is made for Socialism 
 in the assertion that it possesses a basis in history. Just as 
 every human being has an ancestry, unknown to him though it 
 may be ; so every idea, every incident, every movement has in 
 the past its own long chain of causes, without which it could 
 not have been. Formerly we were glad to let the dead bury 
 their dead : nowadays we turn lovingly to the records, whether 
 of persons or things ; and we busy ourselves willingly among 
 origins, even without conscious utilitarian end. We are no 
 longer proud of having ancestors, since every one has them ; 
 but we are more than ever interested in our ancestors, now that 
 we find in them the fragments which compose our very selves. 
 The liistoric ancestry of the English social organization during 
 tlie present century stands witness to the irresistible momentum 
 of the ideas which Socialism denotes. The record of the cen- 
 tury in English social history begins with the trial and hopeless 
 failure of an almost complete industrial individualism, in which, 
 however, unrestrained private ownership of land and capital 
 was accompanied by subjection to a political oligarchy. So 
 little element of permanence was there in this individualistic 
 order that, with the progress of political emancipation, private 
 ownership of the means of production has been, in one direction 
 or another, successively regulated, limited and superseded, until 
 it may now fairly be claimed that the Socialist philosophy of 
 to-day is but the conscious and explicit assertion of principles 
 of social organization which have been already in great part un- 
 
HISTORIC. 
 
 27 
 
 consciously adopted. The economic history of the century is 
 an almost continuous record of the progress of Socialism.^ 
 
 Socialism, too, has in the record of its internal development 
 a history of its own. Down to the present generation, the 
 aspirant after social regeneration naturally vindicated the prac- 
 ticability of his ideas by offering an elaborate plan with specifi- 
 cations of a new social order from which all contemporary evils 
 were eliminated. Just as Plato had his Republic and Sir 
 Thomas More his Utopia, so Baboeuf had his Charter of Equality, 
 Cabet his Icaria, St. Simon his Industrial System, and Fourier 
 his ideal Phalanstery. Robert Owen spent a fortune in press- 
 ing upon an unbelieving generation his New Moral World ; and 
 even Auguste Comte, superior as he was to many of the weak- 
 nesses of his time, must needs add a detailed Polity to his Phil- 
 osophy of Positivism. 
 
 The leading feature of all these proposals was what may be 
 called their statical character. The ideal society was repre- 
 sented as in perfectly balanced equilibrium, without need or 
 possibility of future organic alteration. Since their day we 
 have learned that social reconstruction must not be gone at in 
 this fashion. Owing mainly to the efforts of Comte, Darwin 
 and Herbert Spencer, we can no longer think of the ideal 
 society as an unchanging state. The social ideal, from being 
 static, has become dynamic. The necessity of the constant 
 growth and development of the social organism has become 
 axiomatic. No philosopher now looks for anything but the 
 gradual evolution of the new order from the old, without breach 
 of continuity or abrupt change of the entire social tissue at any 
 point during the process. The new becomes itself old, often before 
 it is consciously recognized as new ; and history shews us no 
 example of the sudden substitutions of Utopian and revolution- 
 ary romance. 
 
 Though Socialists have learnt this lesson ^ better than most 
 
 1 See “Socialism in EnglancP^ (American Economic Association, 
 vol. iv, part 2, May, 1889), in which a portion of this essay has been 
 embodied. 
 
 2 “ I am aware that there are some who suppose that our present 
 bourgeois arrangements must be totally destroyed and others substi- 
 tuted almost at a blow. But however successful a revolution might be, 
 it is certain that mankind cannot change its whole nature all at once. 
 Break the old shell, certainly ; but never forget the fact that the new 
 forms must grow out of tlie old (H. M. Hyndman, “ Historical Basis 
 of Socialism,'^ 1883, p. 305).. 
 
28 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 of their opponents, the common criticism of Socialism has not 
 yet noted the change, and still deals mainly with the obsolete 
 Utopias of the pre-evolutionary age. Parodies of the domestic 
 details of an imaginary Phalanstery, and homilies on the failure 
 of Brook Farm or Icaria, may be passed over as belated and ir- 
 relevant now that Socialists are only advocating the conscious 
 adoption of a principle of social organization which the world 
 has already found to be the inevitable outcome of Democracy 
 and the Industrial Revolution. For Socialism is by this time a 
 wave surging throughout all Europe ; and for want of a grasp 
 of the series of apparently unconnected events by which and 
 with which it has been for two generations rapidly coming upon 
 us — for want, in short, of knowledge of its intellectual history, 
 we in England to-day see our political leaders in a general atti- 
 tude of astonishment at the changing face of current politics ; 
 both great parties drifting vaguely before a nameless undercur- 
 rent which they fail utterly to recognize or understand.^ With 
 some dim impression that Socialism is one of the Utopian 
 dreams they remember to have heard comfortably disposed of in 
 their academic youth as the impossible ideal of Humanity-intoxi- 
 cated Frenchmen, they go their ways through the nineteenth 
 century as a countryman blunders through Cheapside. One or 
 two are history fanciers, learned in curious details of the past: 
 the present eludes these no less than the others. They are so 
 near to the individual events that they are blind to the onward 
 sweep of the column. They cannot see the forest for the trees. 
 
 History not only gives the clue to the significance of con- 
 temporary events ; it also enables us to understand those who 
 liave not yet found that clue. We learn to class men and ideas 
 in a kind of geological order in time. The Comte de Paris 
 gives us excellent proofs that in absolute monarchy lies the 
 only safety of social order. He is a survival : the type flourished 
 in the sixteenth century ; and the splendid fossils of that age 
 can be studied in any liistoric museum. Lord Bramwell will 
 give cogent reasons for tlie belief that absolute freedom of con- 
 tract, subject to the trifling exception of a drastic criminal law, 
 will ensure a perfect State. His lordship is a survival from a 
 nearer epoch: about 1840 this was as far as social science had 
 got; and there are still persons who have learnt nothing of 
 
 1 See the article on “ Socialism in Enjj^lish Politics/' by William 
 Clarke, in the Political Science Quarterly , j3ecember, 1888. 
 
HISTORIC. 
 
 29 
 
 later date. When I see tlie Ilipparion at South Kensington I 
 do not take Ids unfamiliar points to be those of a horse of a 
 superior kind : 1 know that he is an obsolete and superseded 
 pattern, from which the horse has developed. Historic fossils 
 are more dangerous ; for they are left at large, and are not even 
 excluded from Downing Street or Westminster. But against 
 the stream of tendencies they are ultimately powerless. Though 
 they sometimes appear victorious, each successive struggle takes 
 place further down the current which they believe themselves 
 to be resisting. 
 
 The main stream which has borne European society towards 
 Socialism during the past one hundred years is the irresistible 
 progress of Democracy. De Tocqueville drove and hammered 
 this truth into the reluctant ears of the Old World two genera- 
 tions ago ; and we have all pretended to carry it about as part 
 of our mental furniture ever 'since. But like most epigrammatic 
 commonplaces, it is not generally realized ; and De Tocque- 
 ville’s book has, in due course, become a classic which every one 
 quotes and nobody reads. The progress of Democracy is, in 
 fact, often imagined, as by Sir Henry Maine, to be merely the 
 substitution of one kind of political machinery for another ; and 
 there are many political Democrats to-day who cannot under- 
 stand why social or economic matters should be mixed up with 
 politics at all. It was not for this that they broke the power of 
 the aristocracy : they were touched not so much with love of the 
 many as with hatred of the few and, as has been acutely said 
 — though usually by foolish persons — they are Badicals merely 
 because they are not themselves lords. But it will not long be 
 possible for any man to persist in believing that the political 
 organization of society can be completely altered without corre- 
 sponding changes in economic and social relations. De Tocque- 
 ville expressly pointed out that the progress of Democracy 
 meant nothing less than a complete dissolution of the nexus by 
 which society was held together under the old regime* This 
 dissolution is followed by a period of anarchic spiritual isolation 
 of the individual from his fellows, and to that extent by a 
 general denial of the very idea of society. But man is a social 
 animal ; and after more or less interval there necessarily comes 
 into existence a new nexus, differing so entirely from the old- 
 
 1 Even Bentham said this of James Mill (Bain’s Life of J. M., p. 461), 
 of whom it was hardly true. 
 
30 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 fashioned organization that the historic fossil goes about deny- 
 ing that it is a nexus at all, or that any new nexus is possible or 
 desirable. To him, mostly through lack of economics, the prog- 
 ress of Democracy is nothing more than the destruction of old 
 political privileges ; and, naturally enough, few can see any 
 beauty in mere dissolution and destruction. Those few are the 
 purely political Radicals abhorred of Comte and Carlyle : they 
 are in social matters the empiricist survivals from a pre-scien- 
 tific age. 
 
 The mere Utopians, on the other hand, who wove the base- 
 less fabric of their visions of reconstructed society on their own 
 private looms, equally failed, as a rule, to comprehend the 
 problem of the age. They were, in imagination, resuscitated 
 Joseph the Seconds, benevolent despots who would have poured 
 the old world, had it only been fluid, into their new moulds. 
 Against their crude plans the Statesman, the Radical, and the 
 Political Economist were united ; for they took no account of 
 the blind social forces which they could not control, and which 
 went on inexorably working out social salvation in ways un- 
 suspected by the Utopian. 
 
 In the present Socialist movement these two streams are 
 united: advocates of social reconstruction have learnt the lesson 
 of Democracy, and know that it is through the slow and grad- 
 ual turning of the popular mind to new principles that social 
 reorganization bit by bit comes. All students of society who 
 are abreast of their time. Socialists as well as Individualists, 
 realize that important organic changes can only be (1) demo- 
 cratic, and thus acceptable to a majority of the people, and 
 prepared for in the minds of all ; (2) gradual, and thus causing 
 no dislocation, however rapid may be the rate of progress ; (3) 
 not regarded as immoral by the mass of the people, and thus 
 not subjectively demoralizing to them ; and (4) in this country 
 at any rate, constitutional and peaceful. Socialists may there- 
 fore be quite at one with Radicals in their political methods. 
 Radicals, on the other hand, are perforce realizing that mere 
 political levelling is insufficient to save a State from anarchy 
 and despair. Both sections have been driven to recognize that 
 the root of the difficulty is economic ; and there is every day a 
 wider concensus that the inevitable outcome of Democracy is 
 the control by the peo])le themselves, not only of their own 
 political organization, but, through that also, of the main in- 
 
HISTORIC. 
 
 31 
 
 struments of wealth production ; the gradual substitution of or- 
 ganized co-operation for the anarchy of the competitive struggle ; 
 and the conse(|uent recovery, in the only possible way, of what 
 John Stuart Mill calls the enormous share which the possessors 
 of tlie instruments of industry are able to take from the pro- 
 duce.” ^ The economic side of the democratic ideal is, in fact, 
 Socialism itself. 
 
 The Disintegration of the Old Synthesis. 
 
 At the middle of the last century Western Europe was 
 still organized on a system of which the basis was virtually a 
 surviving feudalism. The nexus between man and man was 
 essentially a relation of superiority and inferiority. Social 
 power still rested either with the monarch, or with the owners 
 of large landed estates. Some inroads had already been made 
 in the perfect symmetry of the organization, notably by the 
 growth of towns, and the rise of the still comparatively small 
 trading class ; but the bulk of the population was arranged in 
 an hierarchical series of classes, linked to one another by the 
 bond of Power. 
 
 We are apt to think of England as differing in this respect 
 from Continental Europe, and to imagine that our popular 
 freedom was won in 1 688, if not in 1 648, or even as far back 
 as Magna Charta itself. But as regards the people at large, 
 this was, in the main, merely a difference in political form. 
 In England the aristocratic oligarchy had prevailed over the 
 monarch ; in France the King had defeated the Fronde. For 
 the mass of the people in either country there was nothing but 
 obedience. 
 
 Even in England the whole political administration was 
 divided between the king and the great families ; and not one 
 person in 500 possessed so much as a vote. As lately as 1881 
 one hundred and fifty persons returned a majority of the House 
 of Commons (Molesworth, History of the Keform Bill,” j). 
 847). The Church, once a universal democratic organization 
 of international fraternity, had become a mere appanage of 
 the landed gentry. The administration of justice and of the 
 executive government was entirely in their hands, while Par- 
 
 1 « Principles of Political Economy,” last edition, 1865, p. 477 (quot- 
 ing from Eeugueray. 
 
32 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 liameiit was filled with their leaders or nominees. No avenue 
 of advancement existed for even exceptionally gifted sons of 
 the people ; and the masses found themselves born into a posi- 
 tion of lifelong dependence upon a class of superior birth. 
 
 The economic organization was of a similar character. Two- 
 thirds of the population tilled the soil, and dwelt in lonely 
 hamlets scattered about the still sparsely inhabited country. 
 Though possessing the remnants of ancient communal rights, 
 they were practically dependent on the farmers of the parish, 
 who fixed their wages by a constant tacit conspiracy.^ The 
 farmers themselves were the obedient serfs of the large pro- 
 prietors, to whom they paid a customary rent. Though nomi- 
 nally free to move, both farmers and laborers were practically 
 fettered to the manor by their ignorance and their poverty ; ^ 
 and though the lord had lost the criminal jurisdiction of his 
 manorial courts, his powers as Justice of the Peace formed a 
 full equivalent. His unrestrained ownership of the land enabled 
 him to take for himself as rent the whole advantage of all but 
 the very worst of the soils in use ; and the lingering manorial 
 rights gave him toll even from that worst. Throughout the 
 countryside his word was law and his power irresistible. It 
 was a world whose nexus was might, economic and political, 
 tempered only by custom and lack of stimulus to change. The 
 poor were not necessarily worse ofP in material matters than 
 they are now ; the agricultural laborer, indeed, v/as apparently 
 better off in 1750 than at any other time between 1450 and 
 1850.® But it was a world still mainly mediaeval in political, 
 in economic, and in social relations ; a world of status and of 
 permanent social inequalities not differing essentially from the 
 feudalism of the past. 
 
 The system had, however, already begun to decay. The 
 rise of the towns by the growth of trade gradually created new 
 centres of independence and new classes who broke the bonds 
 of innate status. The intrusion of the moneyed city classes and 
 
 1 Bcf erred to in a celebrated passage by Adam Smith, Wealth of 
 Nations,’' book 1, chap. viii. 
 
 2 Not to mention the restrictions imposed by the law of Settle- 
 ment ” (13 and 14 Charles II., chap. 12), whicli enabled two justices 
 summarily to send back to his village any migrating laborer. 
 
 3 This was noticed by Malthus, Principles of Political Economy,” 
 P. 225; see also Prof. Tliorold Pogers, “ flistor^^ of Agriculture 4ind 
 Prices,” and “ Six Centuries of Work and Wages.” 
 
HISTORIC. 
 
 33 
 
 the Indian ‘‘ Nabobs ’’ into the rural districts tended to destroy 
 the feudal idea. The growth of new sects in religion made fresh 
 points of individual resistance, degenerating often into spiritual 
 anarchy or unsocial quietism. The spread of learning built up 
 a small but active disintegrating force of those who had detected 
 the shams around them. But the real Perseus who was to free 
 the people from their political bondage was Newcomen or Watt, 
 Hargreaves or Crompton, Kay or Arkwright, whichever may 
 be considered to have contributed the main stroke towards the 
 Industrial Revolution of the last century.^ From the inven- 
 tions of these man came the machine industry with its innumer- 
 able secondary results — the Factory System and the upspring- 
 ing of the Northern and Midland industrial towns, and the 
 evangelization of tlie waste places of the earth by the sale of 
 grey shirtings. Throughout one-third of England the manor 
 gave way to the mill or the mine ; and the feudal lord had to 
 slacken his hold of political and social power in order to give 
 full play to the change which enriched him with boundless rents 
 and mining royalties. And so it happened in England that the 
 final collapse of mediasvalism came, not by the Great Rebellion 
 nor by the Whig Treason of 1688, nor yet by the rule of the 
 Great Commoner, but by the Industrial Revolution of the 
 eighteenth century, which created the England of to-day. 
 Within a couple of generations the squire faded away before 
 the mill-owner ; and feudalism lingered thenceforth only in the 
 rapidly diminishing rural districts, and in the empty remnants 
 of ceremonial organization. The mediaeval arrangement, in 
 fact, could not survive the fall of the cottage industry ; and it is, 
 fundamentally, the use of new motors which has been for a 
 generation destroying the individualist conception of property. 
 The landlord and the capitalist are both finding that the steam- 
 engine is a Frankenstein which they had better not have raised; 
 for with it comes inevitably urban Democracy, the study of 
 Political Economy, and Socialism. 
 
 The event which brought to a head the influences making for 
 
 1 Further detail will be found in the following essay. See also Arnold 
 Toynbee's ‘‘Industrial Revolution.'’ 
 
 2 Between 1801-1845 the population of Manchester grew 109 per 
 cent, Glasgow 108 per cent, Liverpool 100 per cent, and Leeds 99 per 
 cent (Report of Commissioners on State of Health of Large Towns^ 
 1843-45). 
 
3t 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 political change was the French Kevolution. The fall of the 
 Bastille was hailed by all who had been touched by the new 
 ideas. How much the greatest event it is that ever happened 
 in the world! and how much the best!” wrote Charles James 
 Fox.^ It shewed, or seemed to shew, to men that a genuine 
 social reconstruction was not only desirable, but possible. 
 The National Assembly, respectable old oligarchy as it was, 
 pointed the way to legislative fields not even yet completely 
 worked out. 
 
 When the rulers of England perceived that in France at 
 least Humpty Dumpty was actually down, the effect at first 
 was to tighten the existing organization. The mildest agita- 
 tion was put down with a cruelly strong hand. The Whig 
 party in the House of Commons sank to half-a-dozen members. 
 Prices were kept up and wages down, while the heaviest 
 possible load of taxation was imposed on the suffering people. 
 Then came the Peace, and Castlereagh’s AAhite Terror,” 
 culminating in the ‘^massacre of Peterloo” (181 9) and Lord 
 Sidmouth’s infamous “ Six Acts.” But the old order was 
 doomed. The suicide of Castlereagh was not only the end of 
 tlie man, but also the sign of the collapse of the system. With 
 a series of political wrenches there came the Kepeal of the 
 Test and Corporation Acts (1828), Catholic Emancipation 
 (1829), the beginnings of legal and administrative reform, and 
 finally the great Reform Bill of 1832, by which the reign of the 
 middle class superseded aristocratic rule. But the people were 
 no more enfranchised than they had been before. The Factory 
 had beaten the Manor for the benefit, not of the factory hand, 
 but of tlie millowner. Democracy was at the gates ; but it 
 was still on the wrong side of them. Its entry, however, was 
 only a matter of time. Since 1832 English political history is 
 the record of the reluctant enfranchisement of one class after 
 another, by mere force of the tendencies of the age. None of 
 these enfranchised classes has ever sincerely desired to admit 
 new voters to share the privileges and submerge the power 
 which it had won ; but each political party in turn has been 
 driven to “ shoot Niagara ” in order to compete with its oppo- 
 nents. The Wliig Bill of 1832 enfranchised the middle-class 
 for Parliament : tlie Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 gave 
 
 1 W. J. Lecky, History of the Eighteenth Century,” vol. v, p. 453. 
 
HISTORIC. 
 
 35 
 
 them the control of the provincial towns. After a genera- 
 tion of agitation, it w^as ultimately the Tory party which gave 
 the townspeople in 1867 Household Suifrage. Eleven years 
 later a Conservative majority passed Sir Charles Dilke’s Act 
 enfranchising the tenement occupier (1878). In 1885 the 
 Liberals, intending permanently to ruin their opponents, gave 
 the vote to the agricultural laborer ; and last year (1888) it was 
 the Tories, not to be outdone, who gave him the control of the 
 local administration of the counties, and placed the government 
 of London in the hands of a popularly elected council. Neither 
 party can claim much credit for its reform bills, extorted as 
 they have been, not by belief in Democracy, but by fear of the 
 opposing faction. Even now the citizen is tricked out of his 
 vote by every possible legal and administrative technicality ; 
 so that more than one-third of our adult men are unenfran- 
 chised,^ together with the whole of the other sex. Neither the 
 Conservative party nor the self-styled Party of the Masses ’’ 
 gives proof of any real desire to give the vote to this not in- 
 considerable remnant ; but both sides pay lip-homage to Demo- 
 cracy ; and everyone knows that it is merely a waiting race 
 between them as to which shall be driven to take the next 
 step. The virtual completion of the political revolution is 
 already in sight ; and no more striking testimony can be given 
 of the momentum of the new ideas which the Fall of the Bas- 
 tille effectually spread over the world than this democratic 
 triumph in England, within less than a century, over the politi- 
 cal mediaevalism of ten centuries growth. 
 
 The full significance of this triumph is as yet unsuspected by 
 the ordinary politician. The industrial evolution has left the 
 stranger a landless stranger in his own country. The political 
 evolution is rapidly making him its ruler. Samson is feeling 
 for his grip on the pillars. 
 
 The Period of Anarchy. 
 
 The result of the industrial revolution, with its dissolution of 
 mediaBvalism amid an impetuous reaction against the bureau- 
 cratic tyranny of the past, was to leave all the new elements of 
 
 1 The number of registered electors at tlie date of the last Election 
 (1880) was 5,707,828, out of au adult male population of over nine 
 millions. 
 
36 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 society in a state of unrestrained license. Individual liberty, 
 in the sense of freedom to privately appropriate the means of 
 production, reached its maximum at the commencement of the 
 century. No sentimental regulations hindered the free employ- 
 ment of land and capital to the greatest possible pecuniary gain 
 of the proprietors, however many lives of men, women and 
 children were used up in the process. Ignorant or unreflecting 
 capitalists still speak of that te?’rible time with exultation. “It 
 was not five per center ten per cent/’ says one, “but thousands 
 per cent that made the fortunes of Lancashire.” 
 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer and those who agree in his worship of 
 Individualism ^ apparently desire to bring back the legal position 
 which made possible the “ white slavery ” of which the “ sins of 
 legislators ” have deprived us ; but no serious attempt has ever 
 been made to get repealed any one of the Factory Acts. 
 Women working half naked in the coal mines ; young children 
 dragging trucks all day in the foul atmosphere of the under- 
 ground galleries ; infants bound to the loom for fifteen hours in 
 the heated air of the cotton mill, and kept awake only by the 
 onlooker’s lash ; hours of labor for all, young and old, limited 
 only by the utmost capabilities of physical endurance ; complete 
 absence of the sanitary provisions necessary to a rapidly grow- 
 ing population: these and other nameless iniquities will be 
 found recorded as the results of freedom of contract and com- 
 plete laisser faire in the impartial pages of successive blue-book 
 reports.^ But the Liberal mill-owners of the day, aided by 
 some of the political economists, stubbornly resisted every 
 attempt to interfere with their freedom to use “ their ” capital 
 and “ their ” hands as they found most profitable, and (like 
 their successors to-day) predicted of each restriction as it 
 
 1 Few, however, of Mr. Spencer’s followers appear to realize that he 
 presupposes Land Nationalization as the necessary condition of an In- 
 dividualist community (see “Social Statics,” passm). 
 
 2 It is sometimes asserted nowadays that the current descriptions of 
 factory life under the regime of freedom of contract are much exag- 
 gerated. This is not the case. The horrors revealed in the reports of 
 official enquiries even exceed those commonly quoted. For a full ac- 
 count of the legislation, and the facts on which it was founded, see Von 
 l^lener’s “ English Factory Legislation.” The chief official reports are 
 those of tlie llouse of Commons Committee of 1815-6, Hou.se of Lords 
 Committee, 1819, and Koyal Commission, 1840. Marx (“Capital”) 
 gives many other references. See also F. Engel’s “ Condition of the 
 English AYorking Classes.” 
 
HISTOIUC. 
 
 3T 
 
 arrived that it must inevitably destroy the export trade and 
 deprive them of all profit whatsoever. 
 
 But this “ acute outbreak of individualism, uncliecked by the 
 old restraints, and invested with almost a religious sanction by 
 a certain soulless school of writers,’’ ^ was inevitable, after the 
 economic Jblundering of governments in the eighteenth century. 
 Prior to the scientific investigation of economic laws, men had 
 naturally interfered in social arrangements with very unsatisfac- 
 tory results. A specially extravagant or a specially thrifty 
 king debased the currency, and then was surprised to hnd that 
 in spite of stringent prohibitions prices went up and all good 
 money fled the country. Wise statesmen, to keep up wages, 
 encouraged the woollen manufactures of England by ruining 
 those of Ireland, and were then astonished to find English 
 wages cut by Irish pauper immigration. Benevolent parlia- 
 ments attempted to raise the worker’s income by poor law allow- 
 ances, and then found that they had lowered it. Christian kings 
 eliminated half the skilled artisans from their kingdoms, and 
 then found that they had ruined the rest by disabling industry. 
 Government inspectors ordered how the cloth should be woven, 
 what patterns should be made, and how broad the piece should 
 be, until the manufacturers in despair cried out merely to be let 
 alone. 
 
 When the early economists realized how radically w^ong had 
 been even the well-meant attempts to regulate economic rela- 
 tions by legislation, and how generally these attempts multi- 
 plied private monopolies, they leaned in their deductions heavily 
 towards completein dividual liberty. The administration of a 
 populous state is such a very difficult matter, and when done 
 on false principles is so certain to be badly done, that it was 
 natural to advocate rather no administration at all than the 
 interference of ignorant and interested bunglers. Nature, glori- 
 fied by the worship of a famous school of Erench philosophers 
 and English poets, and as yet unsuspected of the countless 
 crimes of the struggle for existence,” appeared at least more 
 trustworthy than Castlereagh. Beal Democratic administration 
 seemed, in the time of the ‘AYliite Terror,” and even under 
 the milder Whig hypocrisy which succeeded it, hopelessly re- 
 mote. The best thing to work and fight for was, apparently, 
 
 1 Prof. II. S. Foxwell (University College London, p. 249 of Essay on 
 the “ Claims of Labor ” (Edinburgh : Co-operative Printing Company, 
 
38 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 the reduction to impotence and neutrality of all the Powers 
 that Be.” Their influence being for the moment hostile to the 
 people, it behooved the people to destroy their influence alto- 
 gether. And so grew up the doctrine of what Professor Huxley 
 has since called ‘^Administrative Nihilism.” It was the apo- 
 theosis of Laisser Faire, Laisser Aller. • 
 
 Though the economists have since had to bear all the blame 
 for what nearly everyone now perceives to have been an 
 economic and social mistake, neither Hume nor Adam Smith 
 caught the laisser faire fever to as great an extent as their 
 French contempories and imitators. The English industrial 
 position was not the same as that of France. The “mercantile 
 system” by which, as by “Fair Trade” to-day, foreign trade 
 was to be regulated and encouraged according as it tended to 
 cause the stock of goods, especially coin and bullion, to increase 
 in the country, was the same on both sides of the Channel. 
 But our political revolution had already been partly accomplished ; 
 and the more obvious shackles of feudalism had been long since 
 struck off. No Englishman was compelled to grind his corn 
 at the mill of the lord of the manor ; ^ to give up unpaid days 
 to plough the lord’s field and cart the lord’s hay ; or to spend 
 his nights in beating the waters of the lord’s marsh so that the 
 croaking of the frogs might not disturb the lord’s repose. Our 
 labor dues had long before been commuted for money payments ; 
 and these had become light owing to the change in currency 
 values. Our apprenticeship laws and guild regulations were 
 becoming rapidly inoperative. No vexatious excise or gabelle 
 hampered our manufactures. 
 
 Tyranny there was, enough and to spare, and economic 
 spoliation ; but they did not take the form of personal inter- 
 ferences and indignities. The non-noble Frenchman was bond, 
 and he knew it ; the middle-class Englishman to a great extent 
 
 1 This statement, though generally true of England, is not absolutely 
 so. It needed an Act of Parliament in 1758 (32 George II, c. 61) to free 
 the inhabitants of the “ village ” of Manchester from the obligation to 
 grind all their corn and grain at the manorial watermills (Clifford’s 
 “ History of Private Bill Legislation,” vol. ii, p. 478). Even so late as 
 1809 they liad to obtain the consent of Sir Oswald Mosley, the lord of 
 the manor, before a company could be incorporated to provide a water 
 supply {Ibid., p. 480). Leeds was theoretically compelled to grind its 
 corn, grain and malt at the lord’s mills down to 1839, and actually had 
 then to pay £13,000 to extinguish this feudal “ due ” {Ibid., p. 498). 
 
HISTOKIO. 
 
 39 
 
 thought himself free : his economic servitude, though it galled 
 him, was not clearly distinguishable from the niggardliness of 
 nature. The landlord in France was an obvious tyrant: here 
 he certainly caused (by the abstraction of the economic rent) an 
 artificial barrenness of the workers’ labor ; but the barrenness 
 was so old and had been so constant that it was not seen to be 
 artificial, and was not resented as such. No peasant rebels 
 against the blight. Accordingly, we have, since 1381, never had 
 in England a burning of the chateaux ; and, accordingly, too, 
 Adam Smith is no complete champion of laisser faire^ though 
 his great work was effective mainly in sweeping away foreign 
 trade restrictions and regulations, and in giving viability to 
 labor by establishing the laborer’s geographical freedom to move 
 and to enter into the wage contract when and where he best 
 could. The English economists, stopping illogically short of 
 the complete freedom preached by Rousseau and Godwin and 
 the scientific Anarchists of to-day, advocated just as much 
 freedom as sufficed to make the fortunes of Lancashire 
 capitalists and to create the modern proletariat. The Utili- 
 tarians are appropriately coupled with the Political Economists 
 in connexion with this phase of thought. Although Adam 
 Smith did not belong to their school, almost the whole work of 
 developing and popularizing the new science was done by them. 
 It was not until after the Peace — when Bentham and James 
 Mill were in full vigor, and soon to be reinforced by Austin, 
 Yilliers, Jolm Stuart Mill, Roebuck, Grote, Ricardo, and 
 others — that Political Economy became a force in England. 
 The motive and enthusiasm for the new science undoubtedly 
 came from the Utilitarian ethics. If the sole masters of man 
 were pleasure and pain, the knowledge of the natural laws 
 expressing the course of social action, and thus regulating 
 pleasure and pain, became of vital importance. If it is God’s 
 will, as Paley and Austin asserted, that men should seek for 
 happiness, than the study of how to obtain economic comfort 
 becomes a sacred duty, and has ever been so regarded by such 
 rational divines as Malthus, Chalmers, Maurice, Kingsley, and 
 the young High Church party of to-day. Christianity and the 
 course of modern thought began to join hands ; and we may see 
 in Bishop Berkeley and Paley the forerunners of such a develop- 
 ment as the Guild of St. Matthew.^ 
 
 1 See its organ, the Church Reformer, London* 8 Duke Street, 
 Adelphi. 
 
40 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 The Utilitarian philosophy, besides aiding in the populariza- 
 tion of economic science, strongly influenced its early character. 
 The tendency to Laisser Faire inherited from the country and 
 century of upheaval and revolt against authority, was fostered 
 by Bentham’s destructive criticism of all the venerable relics 
 of the past. What is the use of it, he asked, of every shred 
 of social institution then existing. What is the nett result of 
 its being upon individual happiness ? Few of the laws and 
 customs — little, indeed, of the social organization of that time 
 could stand this test. England was covered with rotten sur- 
 vivals from bygone circumstances ; the whole administration 
 was an instrument for class domination and parasite nurture ; 
 the progress of the industrial revolution was rapidly making 
 obsolete all laws, customs, proverbs, maxims, and nursery tales ; 
 and the sudden increase of population was baffling all expecta- 
 tions and disconcerting all arrangements. At last it came to 
 be carelessly accepted as the teaching both of philosophy and of 
 experience that every man must fight for himself ; and the devil 
 take the hindmost” became the accepted social creed of what 
 was still believed to be a Christian nation. Utilitarianism be- 
 came the Protestantism of Sociology, and ‘‘ how to make for 
 self and family the best of both worlds ” was assumed to be the- 
 duty, as it certainly was the aim, of every practical Englishman. 
 
 The Intellectual and Moral Revolt, and its Politi- 
 cal Outcome. 
 
 The new creed of Philosophic Radicalism ” did not have 
 matters all its own way. Its doctrines might suit millowners 
 and merchant princes, and all who were able to enjoy the de- 
 light of their own strength in the battle of life. But it was 
 essentially a creed of Murdstones and Gradgrinds ; and the first 
 revolt came from the artistic side. The “nest of singing birds” 
 at the Lakes would have none of it, tiiough De Quincey worked 
 out its abstract economics in a manner still unsurpassed. Cole- 
 ridge (lid his best to drown it in German Transcendentalism. 
 Robert Owen and his following of enthusiastic communistic 
 co-operators steadfastly held up a loftier ideal. The great mass 
 of the wage earners never bowed the knee to the principles upon 
 which the current “ White Slavery ” was maintained. But the 
 first man who really made a dint in the individualist shield was 
 
HISTOKIC. 
 
 41 
 
 Carlyle, who knew how to compel men to listen to him. Oftener 
 wrong than right in his particular proposals, he managed to keep 
 alive the faith in nobler ends than making a fortune in this 
 world and saving one’s soul in the next. Then came Maurice, 
 Kingsley, Ruskin, and others who dared to impeach the current 
 middle class cult; until finally, through Comte and John Stuart 
 Mill, Darwin and Herbert Spencer, the conception of the Social 
 Organism has at last penetrated to the minds, though not yet 
 to the books, even of our professors of Political Economy. 
 
 Meanwhile, caring for none of these things, the practical man 
 had been irresistibly driven in the same direction. In the teeth 
 of the current Political Economy, and in spite of all the efforts 
 of the millowning Liberals, England was compelled to put forth 
 her hand to succor and protect her weaker members. Any 
 number of Local Improvement Acts, Drainage Acts, Truck 
 Acts, Mines Regulation Acts, Factory Acts, Public Health Acts, 
 Adulteration Acts, were passing into law.^ The liberty of the 
 property owner to oj^press the propertyless by the levy of the 
 economic tribute of rent and interest began to be circumscribed, 
 pared away, obstructed and forbidden in various directions. 
 Slice after slice has gradually been cut from the profits of capi- 
 tal, and therefore from its selling value, by socially beneficial re- 
 strictions on its user’s liberty to do as he liked with it. Slice 
 after slice has been cut off the incomes from rent and interest by 
 the gradual shifting of taxation from consumers to persons en- 
 joying incomes above the average of the kingdom.*^ Step by 
 
 1 The beginning of factory legislation is to be found in the Morals 
 and Health Act/’ 42 Geo. Ill, c. 73 (1802). Others followed in 1819, 
 1825, and 1831 ; but their provisions were almost entirely evaded owing 
 to the absence of inspectors. After the Reform Bill more stringent 
 enactments in 1833, 1844, and 1847 secured some improvement. The 
 Act of 1878 consolidated the law on the subject. The Radical and 
 Socialist proposals for further development in this direction will be 
 found at page 55. Nearly 400 Local Improvement Acts had been 
 passed up to 1845. In the succeeding years various general Acts were 
 passed, which were henceforth incorporated by reference in all local 
 Acts. The first “Public Health Act’' was passed in 1848; and suc- 
 cessive extensions were given to this restrictive legislation with sanitary 
 ends in 1855, 1858, 1861, and 1866. Consolidating Acts in 1871, and 
 finally in 1875, complete the present sanitary code, which now forms a 
 thick volume of restrictions upon the free use of land and capital. 
 
 2 The minimum income chargeable to Income Tax (L150) closely cor- 
 responds with the average family income. See Eabian Tract, No 5, 
 “Pacts for Socialists." 
 
42 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 step the political power and political organization of the country 
 have been used for industrial ends, until to-day the largest em- 
 ployer of labor is one of the ministers of the Crown (the Post- 
 master-General) ; and almost every conceivable trade is, some- 
 where or other, carried on by parish, municipality, or the 
 National Government itself without the intervention of any 
 middleman or capitalist. The theorists who denounce the taking 
 by the community into its own hands of the organization of its 
 own labor as a thing economically unclean, repugnant to the 
 sturdy individual independence of Englishmen, and as yet outside 
 the sphere of practical politics, seldom have the least suspicion 
 of the extent to which it has already been carried.^ Besides our 
 international relations and the army, navy, police, and the courts 
 of justice, the community now carries on for itself, in some part 
 or another of these islands, the post-office, telegraphs, carriage 
 of small commodities, coinage, surveys, the regulation of the 
 currency and note issue, the provision of weights and measures, 
 the making, sweeping, lighting, and repairing of streets, roads, 
 and bridges, life insurance, the grant of annuities, shipbuilding, 
 stockbroking, banking, farming, and money-lending. It provides 
 for many thousands of us from birth to burial — midwifery, nursery, 
 education, board and lodging, vaccination, medical attendance, 
 medicine, public worship, amusements, and interment. It fur- 
 nishes and maintains its own museums, parks, art galleries, 
 libraries, concert-halls, roads, streets, bridges, markets, slaughter- 
 houses, fire-engines, lighthouses, pilots, ferries, surf boats, steam- 
 tugs, life-boats, cemeteries, public baths, washhouses, pounds, 
 harbors, piers, wharves, hospitals, dispensaries, gasworks, water- 
 works, tramways, telegraph cables, allotments, cow meadows, 
 artizans’ dwellings, schools, churches, and reading-rooms. It 
 carries on and publishes its own researches in geology, meteorol- 
 ogy, statistics, zoology, geography, and even theology. In our 
 Colonies the English Government further allows and encourages 
 the communities to provide for themselves railways, canals, pawn- 
 broking, theatres, forestry, cinchona farms, irrigation, leper 
 villages, casinos, bathing establishments, and immigration, and 
 to deal in ballast, guano, quinine, opium, salt, and what not. 
 Every one of these functions, with those of the army, navy, 
 police, and courts of justice, were at one time left to private 
 
 ^ See The Progress of Socialism.” (London: The Modern Press, 13 
 Paternoster Bow, E. C. Price One Penny.) 
 
HISTORIC. 
 
 43 
 
 enterprise, and were a source of legitimate individual investment 
 of capital. Step by step the community has absorbed them, 
 wholly or partially ; and the area of private exploitation has 
 been lessened. Parallel with this progressive nationalization or 
 municipalization of industry, there has gone on the elimination 
 of the purely personal element in business management. The 
 older economists doubted whether anything but banking and in- 
 surance could be carried on by joint stock enterprise : now every 
 conceivable industry, down to baking and milk-selling, is suc- 
 cessfully managed by the salaried officers of large corporations 
 of idle shareholders. More than one-third of the whole business 
 of England, measured by the capital employed,^ is now done by 
 joint stock companies, whose shareholders could be expropriated 
 by the community with no more dislocation of the industries 
 carried on by them than is caused by the daily purchase of shares 
 on the Stoqk Exchange. 
 
 Besides its direct supersession of private enterprise, the 
 State now registers, inspects, and controls nearly all the indus- 
 trial functions which it has not yet absorbed. In addition to 
 births, marriages, deaths, and electors, the State registers all 
 solicitors, barristers, notaries, patent agents, brokers, newspaper 
 proprietors, playing-card makers, brewers, bankers, seamen, 
 captains, mates, doctors, cabmen, hawkers, pawnbrokers, tobac- 
 conists, distillers, plate dealers, game dealers ; all insurance 
 companies, friendly societies, endowed schools and charities, 
 limited companies, lands, houses, deeds, bills of sale, composi- 
 tions, ships, arms, dogs, cabs, omnibuses, books, plays, pam- 
 phlets, newspapers, raw cotton movements, trademarks, and pa- 
 tents ; lodging-houses, public-houses, refreshment-houses, thea- 
 tres, music-halls, places of worship, elementary schools, and 
 dancing rooms. 
 
 Nor is the registration a mere form. Most of the foregoing 
 are also inspected and criticised, as are all railways, tramways, 
 ships, mines, factories, canal-boats, public conveyances, fish- 
 eries, slaughter-houses, dairies, milkshops, bakeries, baby-farms, 
 gasmeters, schools of anatomy, vivisection laboratories, explo- 
 sive works, Scotch herrings, and common lodging-houses. 
 
 The inspection is often detailed and rigidly enforced. The 
 State in most of the larger industrial operations prescribes the 
 
 1 See Capital and Land^^ (Fabian Tract, No. 7), page 7. 
 
44 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 age of the worker, the hours of work, the amount of air, light, 
 cubic space, heat, lavatory accommodation, holidays and meal- 
 times ; where, when and how wages shall be paid ; how ma- 
 chinery staircases, lift holes, mines and quarries are to be 
 fenced and guarded ; how and when the plant shall be cleaned, 
 repaired and worked. Even the kind of package in which 
 some articles shall be sold is duly prescribed, so that the 
 individual capitalist shall take no advantage of his position. 
 On every side he is being registered, inspected, controlled and 
 eventually superseded by the community ; and in the meantime 
 he is compelled to cede for public purposes an ever-increasing 
 share of his rent and interest. 
 
 Even in the fields still abandoned to private enterprise, its 
 operations are thus every day more closely limited, in order 
 that the anarchic competition of private greed, which at the 
 beginning of the century was set up as the only infallible 
 beneficent principle of social action, may not utterly destroy 
 the State. All this has been done by “practical” men, igno- 
 rant, that is to say, of any scientific sociology, believing 
 Socialism to be the most foolish of dreams, and absolutely 
 ignoring, as they thought, all grandiloquent claims for social 
 reconstruction. Such is the irresistible sweep of social ten- 
 dencies, that in their every act they worked to bring about 
 the very Socialism they despised ; and to destroy the In- 
 dividualistic faith which they still professed. They builded 
 better than they knew. 
 
 It must by no means be supposed that these beginnings of 
 social reorganization have been effected, or the proposals for 
 their extension brought to the front, without the conscious 
 efforts of individual reformers. The “ Zeitgeist ” is potent ; 
 but it does not pass Acts of Parliament without legislators, 
 or erect municipal libraries without town councillors. Though 
 our decisions are moulded by the circumstances of the time, and 
 the environment at least roughhews our ends, shape them as 
 we will ; yet each generation decides for itself. It still rests 
 with the individual to resist or promote the social evolution, 
 consciously or unconsciously, according to his character and 
 information. The importance of complete consciousness of the 
 social tendencies of the age lies in the fact that its existence 
 and comprehensiveness often determine the expediency of our 
 particular action : we move with less resistance with the stream 
 than against it. 
 
HISTORIC. 
 
 45 
 
 The general failure to realize the extent to which our un- 
 conscious Socialism has already proceeded — a failure whicli 
 causes much time and labor to be wasted in uttering and 
 elaborating on paper the most ludicrously unpractical aiiti- 
 Socialistic demonstrations of the impossibility of matters of daily 
 occurrence — is due to the fact that few know anything of local 
 administration outside their own town. It is the municipalities 
 which have done most to socialize ’’ our industrial life ; and 
 the municipal history of the century is yet unwritten. A few 
 particulars may here be given as to this progressive munici- 
 palization ” of industry. Most of us know that the local govern- 
 ments have assumed the care of the roads, streets and bridges, 
 once entirely abandoned to individual enterprise, as well as the 
 lighting and cleansing of all public thoroughfares, and the 
 provision of sewers, drains and storm-water courses.” It is, 
 perhaps, not so generally known that no less than £7,500,000 
 is annually expended on these services in England and Wales 
 alone, being about five per cent of the rent of the country. 
 The provision of markets, fairs, harbors, piers, docks, hospitals, 
 cemeteries and burial-grounds is still shared with private capi- 
 talists ; but those in public hands absorb nearly £2,000,000 
 annually. Parks, pleasure grounds, libraries, museums, baths 
 and washhouses cost the public funds over half a million sterling. 
 All these are, however, comparatively unimportant services. It 
 is in the provision of gas, water and tramways that local 
 authorities organize labor on a large scale. Practically half the 
 gas consumers in the kingdom are supplied by public gas works, 
 which exist in 168 separate localities, with an annual expenditure 
 of over three millions.^ It need hardly be added that the ad- 
 vantage to the public is immense, in spite of the enormous price 
 paid for the work in many instances ; and that the further 
 municipalization of the gas industry is proceeding with great 
 rapidity, no fewer than twelve local authorities having obtained 
 loans for the purpose (and one for electric lighting) in a single 
 year (Local Government Board Report, 1887-8, c — 5526, pp. 
 319-367). With equal rapidity is the water supply becoming 
 a matter of commercial organization, the public expenditure 
 already reaching nearly a million sterling annually. Sixty-five 
 local authorities borrowed money for water supply in 1887-8, 
 
 1 Government Return for 1887-8, see “ Board of Trade Journal,” 
 January, 1889, pp. 70-8. 
 
46 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 rural and urban districts being equally represented (c — 5550, pp. 
 319-367). Tramways and ferries are undergoing the same de- 
 velopment. About thirty-one towns, including nearly all the 
 larger provincial centres, own some or all of their own tramways. 
 Manchester, Bradford, Birmingham, Oldham, Sunderland and 
 Greenock lease their undertakings ; but among the munici- 
 palities Huddersfield has the good sense to work its lines with- 
 out any “ middleman ” intervention, with excellent public re- 
 sults. The tramway mileage belonging to local authorities has 
 increased five-fold since 1878, and comprises more than a 
 quarter of the whole (House of Commons Return, 1887-8, No. 
 347). The last important work completed by the Metropolitan 
 Board of Works was the establishment of a ‘Hree steam 
 ferry” on the Thames, charged upon the rates* This is, in 
 some respects, the most significant development of all. The 
 difference between a free steam ferry and a free railway is 
 obviously only one of degree. 
 
 A few more cases are worth mentioning. Glasgow builds and 
 maintains seven public “ common lodging houses ” ; Liverpool 
 provides science lectures ; Manchester builds and stocks an art 
 gallery ; Birmingham runs schools of design ; Leeds creates 
 extensive cattle markets ; and Bradford supplies water below 
 cost price. There are nearly one hundred free libraries and 
 reading rooms. The minor services now performed by public 
 bodies are innumerable.^ This “Municipal Socialism” has 
 been rendered possible by the creation of a local debt now 
 reaching over £181,000,000.^ Nearly £10,000,000 is annually 
 paid as interest and sinking fund on the debt ; and to this 
 extent the pecuniary benefit of municipalization is diminished. 
 The full advantages ^ of the public organization of labor re- 
 main, besides a considerable pecuniary profit ; whilst the ob- 
 
 1 It is not generally known that the Corporation of London actually 
 carried on the business of fire insurance from 1081 to 1683, but was 
 compelled to abandon it through the opposition of those interested in 
 private undertakings, who finally obtained a mandamus in the Court of 
 King’s Bench to restrain the civic competitor (Walford’s Insurance 
 Cyclopaedia, vol. iii, pp. 446—445). 
 
 C — 5550, p. 436. This, by the way, is just about one year’s rental. 
 We pay every year to the landlords for ])ermission to live in England as 
 much as the whole outstanding cost of the magnificent property of the 
 local governing authorities. 
 
 ^ See ‘‘ The Government Organization of Labor,” Report by a Com- 
 mittee of the Fabian Society, 1886. 
 
HISTOlllC. 
 
 47 
 
 Jective differentiation of the economic classes (by the separation 
 of the idle rentier from the manager or entrepreneur) enormously 
 facilitates popular comprehension of the nature of the economic 
 tribute known as interest. To the extent, moreover, that addi- 
 tional charges are thrown upon the rates, the interest paid 
 to the capitalist is levied mainly at the cost of the landlord, and 
 we have a corresponding ‘‘ nationalization ’’ of so much of the 
 economic rent. The increase in the local rates has been 36 per 
 cent, or nearly £7,000,000, in eleven years, and is still growing. 
 They now amount to over twenty-six millions sterling in England 
 and Wales alone, or about 17 per cent of the rental of the 
 country (C — 5550, p. clxxiv). 
 
 Nor is there any apparent prospect of a slackening of the 
 pace of this unconscious abandonment of individualism. No 
 member of Parliament has so much as introduced a Bill to 
 give effect to the anarchist principles of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s 
 ‘‘ Man versus the State.” The not disinterested efforts of the 
 Liberty and Property Defence League fail to hinder even 
 Conservative Parliament from further Socialistic legislation. 
 Mr. Gladstone remarked to a friend in 1886 that the Home 
 Pule question would turn the Liberal party into a Radical 
 party. He might have said that it would make both parties 
 Socialistic. Free elementary and public technical education is 
 now practically accepted on both sides of the House, provided 
 that the so-called ‘^voluntary schools,” themselves half main- 
 tained from public funds, are not extinguished. Mr. Chamber- 
 lain and the younger Conservatives openly advocate far reaching 
 projects of social reform through state and municipal agency, as 
 a means of obtaining popular support. The National Liberal 
 Federation adopts the special taxation of urban ground values 
 as the main feature in its domestic programme,^ notwith- 
 standing that this proposal is characterized by old fashioned 
 Liberals as sheer confiscation of so much of the landlords’ 
 property. The London Liberal and Radical Union, which 
 has Mr. John Morley for its president, even proposes that the 
 County Council shall have power to rebuild the London slums 
 at the sole charge of the ground landlord.^ It is, therefore, 
 
 1 See Report of the Annual Meeting at Birmingham, September, 
 1888. 
 
 2 See resolutions adopted by the Council, at tlie instance of the 
 Executive and General Committee, February 8th, 1889. (Daily News, 
 
48 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 not surprising that the Trades Union Congress should now 
 twice have declared in favor of Land Nationalization ” by 
 large majorities, or that the bulk of the London County Council 
 should be returned on an essentially Socialistic platform. The 
 whole of the immediately practicable demands of the most 
 exacting Socialists are, indeed, now often embodied in the current 
 Radical programme ; and the following exposition of it, from 
 the pages of the Star newspaper, August 8, 1888, may serve 
 as a statement of the current Socialist demands for further 
 legislation.^ 
 
 Revision or Taxation. 
 
 Object, — Complete shifting of burden from the workers, of whatever 
 grade, to the recipients of rent and interest, with a view to the ultimate 
 and gradual extinction of the latter class. 
 
 Means. — 1. Abolition of all customs and excise duties, except 
 those on spirits. 2. Increase of income tax, differentiating in favor 
 of earned as against unearned incomes, and graduating cumulatively 
 by system of successive levels of abatement. 3. Equalization and 
 increase of death duties and the use of the proceeds as capital, not 
 income. 4. Shifting of local rates and house duty from occupier to 
 owner, any contract to the contrary notwitlistanding. 5. Compulsory 
 redemption of existing land tax and reimposition on all ground rents 
 and increased values. 6. Abolition of fees on licenses for employ- 
 ment. 7. Abolition of police-court fees. 
 
 Extension op Factory Acts. 
 
 Object. — To raise, universally, the standard of comfort by obtaining 
 the general recognition of a minimum wage and a maximum working 
 day. 
 
 Means. — 1. Extension of the general provisions of the Factory and 
 Workshops Acts (or the Mines Regulation Acts, as the case may be) 
 to all employers of labor. 2. Compulsory registration of all employ- 
 ers of more than three (? ) workers. 3. Largely increased number of 
 inspectors, and these to include women, and to be mainly chosen from 
 tlie wage-earning class. 4. Immediate reduction of maximum hours to 
 eight per day in all Government and municipal employment, in all 
 mines, and in all licensed monopolies such as railways, tramways, gas- 
 works, waterworks, docks, harbors, etc. ; and in any trade in which a 
 majority of the workers desire it. 5. The compulsory insertion of 
 
 0th February.) Professor Stuart, M.P., has now introduced a Bill em- 
 bodying these astonishing proposals. 
 
 1 It is interesting to compare this programme, with its primary in- 
 sistence on economic and social reform, with the bare political charac- 
 ter of the “Five Points of the Chartists, viz.. Manhood Suffrage, Vote 
 by Ballot, Annual Parliaments, Payment of Members relieved from the 
 property qualification, and Equal Electoral Districts. 
 
HISTORIC. 
 
 49 
 
 clauses in all contracts for Government or municipal supplies, provid- 
 ing (a) that there shall be no sub-contracting, (6) that no worker shall 
 be employed more than eight hours per day, and (c) that no wages less 
 than a prescribed minimum shall be paid. 
 
 Educational Reform. 
 
 Object. — To enable all, even the poorest, children to obtain not 
 merely some, but the best education they are capable of. 
 
 Means. — 1. The immediate abolition of all fees in public elementary 
 schools. Board or voluntary, with a corresponding increase in the Gov- 
 ernment grant. 2. Creation of a Minister for Education, with control 
 over the whole educational system, from the elementary school to the 
 University, and over all educational endowments. 3. Provision of 
 public technical and secondary schools wherever needed, and creation 
 of abundant public secondary scholarships. 4. Continuation, in all 
 cases, of elementary education at evening schools. 6. Registration 
 and inspection of all private educational establishments. 
 
 Re-organization of Poor Law Administration. 
 
 Object. — To provide generously, and without stigma, for the aged, 
 the sick, and those destitute through temporary want of employment, 
 without relaxing the “tests” against the endowment of able-bodied 
 idleness. 
 
 Means . — 1. The separation of the relief of the aged and the sick from 
 the workhouse system, by a universal system of aged pensions, and 
 public infirmaries. 2. The industrial organization and technical educa- 
 tion of all able-bodied paupers. 3. The provision of temporary relief 
 works for the unemployed. 4. The supersession of the Boards of 
 Guardians by the local municipal authorities. 
 
 Extension of Municipal Activity. 
 
 Object. — The gradual public organization of labor for all public 
 purposes, and the elimination of the private capitalist and middleman. 
 
 Means. — 1. The provision of increased facilities for the acquisition 
 of land, the destruction without compensation of all dwellings found 
 unfit for habitation, and the provision of artisan dwellings by the 
 municipality. 2. The facilitation of every extension of municipal ad- 
 ministration, in London and all other towns, of gas, water, markets, 
 tramways, hospitals, cemeteries, parks, museums, art galleries, libraries, 
 reading-rooms, schools, docks, harbors, rivers, etc. 3. The provision 
 of abundant facilities for the acquisition of land by local rural author- 
 ities, for allotments, common pastures, public halls, reading-rooms, etc. 
 
 Amendment of Political Machinery. 
 
 Object. — To obtain the most accurate representation and expression 
 of the desires of the majority of the people at every moment. 
 
 Means. — 1. Reform of registration so as to give a vote, both Par- 
 liamentary and municipal, to every adult. 2. Abolition of any period 
 of residence as a qualification for regidtration. 3. Bi-annual registra- 
 
50 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 tion by special public officer. 4. Annual Parliaments. 5. Payment of 
 election expenses, including postage of election addresses and polling 
 cards. 6. Payment of all public representatives, parliamentary, county, 
 or municipal. 7. Second ballot. 8. Abolition or painless extinction 
 of the House of Lords. ^ 
 
 This is the programme to which a century of industrial 
 revolution has brought the Radical working man. Like John 
 Stuart Mill,^ though less explicitly, he has turned from mere 
 political Democracy to a complete, though unconscious. So- 
 cialism.^ 
 
 The New Synthesis. 
 
 It need hardly be said that the social philosophy of the time 
 did not remain unaffected by the political evolution and the 
 industrial development. Slowly sinking into men’s minds all 
 this while was the conception of a new social nexus, and a 
 new end of social life. It was discovered (or rediscovered) 
 that a society is something more than an aggregate of so many 
 individual units — that it possesses existence distinguishable 
 from those of any of its components. A perfect city became 
 recognized as something more than any number of good citi- 
 zens — something to be tried by other tests, and weighed in 
 other balances than the individual man. The community must 
 necessarily aim, consciously or not, at its continuance as a 
 community ; its life transcends that of any of its members ; 
 and the interests of the individual unit must often clash with 
 those of the whole. Though the social organism has itself 
 evolved from the union of individual men, the individual is 
 now created by the social organism of which he forms a part : 
 his life is born of the larger life ; his attributes are moulded by 
 the social pressure ; his activities, inextricably interwoven with 
 others, belong to the activity of the whole. Without the con- 
 
 1 It need hardly be said that schemes of “ free land,^^ peasant propri- 
 etorship, or leasehold enfranchisement, find no place in the modern 
 programme of the Socialist Hadical, or Social Democrat. They are 
 survivals of the Individualistic Radicalism which is passing away. 
 Candidates seeking a popular “ cry more and more avoid these reac- 
 tionary proposals. 
 
 2 “ Autobiography,” p. 231-2. See also Book IV. of the “ Principles 
 of Political Economy” (Popular edition, 1865). 
 
 3 For a forecast of the difficulties which this programme will have to 
 encounter as its full scope and intention become more clearly realized, 
 see the eighth essay in this volume, by Hubert Bland. 
 
HISTORIC. 
 
 61 
 
 tinuance and sound health of the social organism, no man can 
 now live or thrive ; and its persistence is accordingly his para- 
 mount end. His conscious motive for action may be, nay, 
 always must be, individual to himself ; but where such action 
 proves inimical to the social welfare, it must sooner or later be 
 checked by the whole, lest the whole perish through the error 
 of its member. The conditions of social health are accord- 
 ingly a matter for scientific investigation. There is, at any 
 moment, one particular arrangement of social relations which 
 involves the minimum of human misery then and there pos- 
 sible amid the ‘^niggardliness of nature.” Fifty years ago it 
 would have been assumed that absolute freedom in the sense 
 of individual or “ manly ” independence, plus a criminal code, 
 would spontaneously result in such an arrangement for each 
 l^articular nation; and the effect was the philosophic apoth- 
 eosis of Laisser Faire, To-day every student is aware that 
 no such optimistic assumption is warranted by the facts of life.^ 
 We know now that in natural selection at the stage of develop- 
 ment where the existence of civilized mankind is at stake, the 
 units selected from are not individuals, but societies. Its 
 action at earlier stages, though analogous, is quite dissimilar. 
 Among the lower animals physical strength or agility is the 
 favored quality ; if some heaven-sent genius among the cuttle- 
 fish developed a delicate poetic faculty, this high excellence 
 would not delay his succumbing to his hulking neighbor. 
 When, higher up in the scale, mental cunning became the fa- 
 vored attribute, an extra brain convolution, leading primitive 
 man to the invention of fire or tools, enabled a comparatively 
 puny savage to become the conqueror and survivor of his 
 fellows. 
 
 Brain culture accordingly developed apace; but we do not 
 yet thoroughly realize that this has itself been superseded as 
 the “selected” attribute, by social organization. The culti- 
 vated Athenians, Saracens, and Proven9als went down in the 
 struggle for existence before their respective competitors, who, 
 individually inferior, were in possession of a, at that time, 
 more valuable social organization. The French nation was 
 beaten in the last war, not because the average German was 
 an inch and a half taller than the average Frenchman, or 
 
 ^ See “Darwinism and Politics/^ by D. G. Ritchie, Fellow and Tutor 
 of Jesus College, Oxford (London : Swan, Sonneshein & Co., 1889). 
 
 U. C.* ILL U8. 
 
52 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 because he had read five more books, but because the German 
 social organism, was, for the purposes of the time, superior in 
 efficiency to the French. If we desire to hand on to the after- 
 world our direct influence, and not merely the memory of our 
 excellence, we must take even more care to improve the social 
 organism of which we form part, than to perfect our own indi- 
 vidual developments. Or rather, the perfect and fitting devel- 
 opment of each individual is not neccessarily the utmost and 
 highest cultivation of his own personality, but the filling, in 
 the best possible way, of his humble function in the great 
 social machine. We must abandon the self-conceit of imag- 
 ining that we are independent units, and bend our jealous 
 minds, absorbed in their own cultivation, to this subjection to 
 the higher end, the Common Weal. Accordingly, conscious 
 
 direct adaptation ’’ steadily supplants the unconscious and 
 wasteful “ indirect adaptation ” of the earlier form of the 
 struggle for existence ; and with every advance in sociological 
 knowledge, Man is seen to assume more and more, not only 
 the mastery of things,’’ but also a conscious control over 
 social destiny itself. 
 
 This new scientific conception of the Social Organism, has 
 put completely out of countenance the cherished principles of 
 the Political Economist and the Philosophic Radical. We left 
 them sailing gaily into Anarchy on the stream of Laisser Faire, 
 Since then the tide has turned. The publication of John Stuart 
 Mill’s ‘^Political Economy” in 1848 marks conveniently the 
 boundary of the old individualist Economics. Every edition 
 of Mill’s book became more and more Socialistic. After his 
 death the world learnt the personal liistory, penned by his own 
 hand,^ of his development from a mere political democrat to a 
 convinced Socialist. 
 
 The change in tone since then has been such that one com- 
 petent economist, professedly ^ anti-Socialist, publishes regret- 
 fully to the world that all the younger men are now Socialists, 
 as well as many of the older Professors. It is, indeed, mainly 
 from tliese that the world has learnt how faulty were the 
 earlier economic generalizations, and above all, how incomplete 
 
 1 Autobiography/’ pp. 231-2. 
 
 2 Kev. F. W. Aveling, Principal of Taunton Ind(^peiulent College, in 
 leaflet “ Down witli tlie Socialists/’ August, 1888. See also Professor 
 H. Sedgwick on “Economic Socialism/’ Contemporary lievitw, 
 November, 1886. 
 
HISTORIC. 
 
 53 
 
 as guides for social or political action. These generalizations 
 are accordingly now to be met with only in leading articles, 
 sermons, or the speeches of Ministers or Bishops.^ The 
 Economist himself knows them no more. 
 
 The result of this development of Sociology is to compel 
 a revision of the relative importance of liberty and equality 
 as principles to be kept in view in social administration. In 
 Bentham’s celebrated ends ’’ to be aimed at in a civil code, 
 liberty stands predominant over equality, on the ground that 
 full equality can be maintained only by the loss of security for 
 the fruits of labor. That exposition remains as true as ever ; 
 but the question for decision remains, how much liberty? Eco- 
 nomic analysis has destroyed the value of the old criterion of 
 respect for the equal liberty of others. Bentham, whose eco- 
 nomics were weak, paid no attention to the perpetual tribute 
 on the fruits of others’ labor which full private property in 
 land inevitably creates. In his view, liberty and security to 
 property meant that every worker should be free to obtain the 
 full result of his own labor ; and there appeared no incon- 
 sistency between them. The political economist now knows 
 that with free competition and private property in land and 
 capital, no individual can possibly obtain the full result of his 
 own labor. The student of industrial development, moreover, 
 finds it steadily more and more impossible to traee what is 
 precisely the result of each separate man’s toil. Complete 
 rights of liberty and property necessarily involve, for example, 
 the spoliation of the Irish cottier tenant for the benefit of Lord 
 Clanricarde. What then becomes of the Benthamic principle 
 of the greatest happiness of the greatest number? When the 
 Benthamite comes to understand the Law of Rent, which of the 
 two will he abandon? For he cannot escape the lesson of 
 the century, taught alike by the economists, the statesmen, and 
 the practical men,” that complete individual liberty, with 
 unrestrained private ownership of the instruments of wealth 
 production, is irreconcilable with the common weal. The 
 free struggle for existence among ourselves menaces our sur- 
 vival as a healthy and permanent social organism. Evolution, 
 Professor Huxley ^ declares, is the substitution of consciously 
 
 1 That is to say, unfortunately, in nearly all the utterances which 
 profess to guide our social and political action. 
 
 2 Contemporary Review ^ February, 1888. 
 
54 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 regulated co-ordination among the units of each organism, for 
 blind anarchic competition. Thirty years ago Herbert Spencer 
 demonstrated the incompatibility of full private property in 
 land with the modern democratic State ; ^ and almost every 
 economist now preaches the same doctrine. The Radical is 
 rapidly arriving, from practical experience, at similar conclu- 
 sions ; and the steady increase of the government regulation 
 of private enterprise, the growth of municipal administration, 
 and the rapid shifting of the burden of taxation directly to 
 rent and interest, mark in treble lines the statesman’s uncon- 
 scious abandonment of the old Individualism, and our irresis- 
 tible glide into collectivist Socialism. 
 
 It was inevitable that the Democracy should learn this 
 lesson. With the masses painfully conscious of the failure of 
 Individualism to create a decent social life for four-fifths of the 
 people,^ it might have been foreseen that Individualism could 
 not survive their advent to political power. If private property 
 in land and capital necessarily keeps the many workers perma- 
 nently poor (through no fault of their own), in order to make 
 the few idlers rich (from no merit of their own), private 
 property in land and capital will inevitably go the way of the 
 feudalism which it superseded. The economic analysis con- 
 firms the rough generalization of the suffering people. The 
 history of industrial evolution points to the same result; and 
 for two generations the world’s chief ethical teachers have been 
 urging the same lesson. No wonder the heavens of Individu- 
 alism are rolling up before our eyes like a scroll ; and even the 
 Bishops believe and tremble.® 
 
 It is, of course, possible, as Sir Henry Maine and others 
 have suggested, that the whole experience of the century is a 
 mistake, and that political power will once more swing back 
 into the hands of a monarcli or an aristocratic oligarchy. It 
 is, indeed, want of faith in Democracy which holds back most 
 educated sympatliisers with Socialism from frankly accepting 
 its principles. What the economic side of such political 
 
 1 “ Social Statistics/' passim. 
 
 2 See Professor Leone Levi’s letter to the Times, 13th August, 1886, 
 and Mr. Frederic Harrison’s speech at the Industrial Remuneration 
 Conference held in danuary, 1885 (Report, p. 429). 
 
 3 See Report of the Lambeth Episcopal Conference, 1888 ; subject, 
 “Soeialism”: also the proceedings of the Central Conference of l)io- 
 cesan Councils, June, 1889 (paper on Socialism by Canon Furse). 
 
HISTORIC. 
 
 55 
 
 atavism would be it is not easy to forecast. The niacliine 
 industry and steam power could hardly be dismissed with the 
 caucus and the ballot-box. So long, however, as Democracy 
 in political administration continues to be the dominant prin- 
 ciple, Socialism may be quite safely predicted as its economic 
 obverse, in spite of those freaks or aberrations of Democracy 
 which have already here and there thrown up a short-lived 
 monarchy or a romantic dictatorship. Every increase in the 
 political power of the proletariat will most surely be used by 
 them for their economic and social protection. In England, at 
 any rate, the history of the century serves at once as their 
 guide and their justification. 
 
INDUSTRIAL. 
 
 BY WILLIAM CLARKE, M.A. 
 
 My object in the following paper is to present a brief narra- 
 tive of the economic history of the last century or century and 
 a half. From this I wish to draw a moral. That moral is 
 that there has been and is proceeding an economic evolution, 
 practically independent of our individual desires or prejudices ; 
 an evolution which has changed for us the whole social problem 
 by changing the conditions of material production, and which 
 ipso facto effects a revolution in our modern life. To learn 
 clearly what that revolution is, and to prepare ourselves for 
 taking advantage of it in due course — this I take to be briefly 
 what is meant by Socialism. The ignorant public, represented 
 by, let us say, the average bishop or member of Parliament, 
 hears of the “ Social Revolution ” and instantly thinks of street 
 riots, noyades, with a coup d'etat: a 10th of August, followed 
 perhaps by its Nemesis in an 18th Brumaire. But these are 
 not the Social Revolution. That great change is proceeding 
 silently every day. Each new line of railway which opens up 
 the trackless desert, every new machine which supplants hand 
 labor, each fresh combination formed by capitalists, every new 
 labor organization, every change in prices, each new invention 
 — all these forces and many more are actually working out a 
 social revolution before our eyes : for they are changing funda- 
 mentally the economic basis of life. There may possibly 
 come some one supreme moment of time in which a great 
 dramatic incident will reveal to men the significance of the 
 changes which have led up to it, and of which it is merely the 
 final expression. And future historians may write of that 
 as The Revolution just as historians now write of the fall of the 
 Bastille, or the execution of Louis XVI, as though these events 
 constituted the French Revolution, instead of being the final 
 
INDUSTRIAL. 
 
 57 
 
 terms in a long series of events which had been loosening the 
 fabric of French feudalism through several generations. The 
 true prophet is not an ignorant soothsayer who foretells some 
 Armageddon, but rather he who perceives tlie inevitable drift 
 and tendency of things. Somewhat in tliis spirit we may con- 
 sider the economic liistory of the modern industrial era in order 
 to discern its meaning, to see what it has led up to, and wdiat, 
 consequently, are the problems with which we find ourselves 
 confronted to-day. 
 
 Had we visited a village or small town in England where 
 industrial operations were going on one hundred and fifty years 
 ago, w hat should we have found ? No tall chimney, vomiting 
 its clouds of smoke, would have been visible ; no huge building 
 w ith its hundred windows blazing with light would have loomed 
 up/ before the traveller as he entered the town at dusk ; no din 
 of machinery would have been heard ; no noise of steam 
 hammers ; no huge blast furnaces would have met his eye, 
 nor would miles of odors wafted from chemical works have 
 saluted his nostrils. If Lancashire had been the scene of 
 his visit he would have found a number of narrow red brick 
 houses with high steps in front, and outside wooden shutters 
 such as one may still see in the old parts of some Lancashire 
 towns to-day. Inside each of these houses was a little family 
 workshop, containing neither master nor servant, in which 
 the family jointly contributed to produce by the labor of their 
 hands a piece of cotton cloth. The father provided his own 
 warp of linen yarn, and his cotton wool for weft. He had 
 purchased the yarn in a prepared state, while the wool for 
 the weft was carded and spun by his wife and daughters, and 
 the cloth was woven by himself and his sons. There was. a 
 simple division of labor in the tiny cottage factory ; but all the 
 implements necessary to produce the cotton cloth were owned 
 by the producers. There was neither capitalist nor wage- 
 receiver : the weaver controlled his own labor, effected his own 
 exchange, and received himself the equivalent of his own 
 product. Such was the germ of the great English cotton 
 manufacture. Ferdinand Lasselle said: “ Society consists of 
 ninety-six proletaires and four capitalists. That is your State.’’ 
 But in old Lancashire there was neither capitalist nor prole- 
 taire. 
 
 Or even much later had one visited — Stafford, let us say, 
 
58 
 
 THE BASIS OE SOCIALISM. 
 
 one would not have found the large modern shoe-factory, with 
 its bewildering variety of machines, each one with a human 
 machine by its side. For shoemaking then was a pure handi- 
 craft, requiring skill, judgment and some measure of artistic 
 sense. Each shoemaker worked in his own little house, bought 
 his own material from the leather merchant, and fashioned 
 every part of the shoe with his own hand, aided by a few 
 simple and inexpensive tools. He believed there was nothing 
 like leather, and had not yet learned the art of putting on 
 cheap soles, not made of leather, to cheap boots, which, in a 
 month’s time, will be almost worn out. Very likely the shoe- 
 maker had no vote ; but he was never liable to be locked out 
 by his employer, or to be obliged to go on strike against a 
 reduction of wages, with his boy in prison for satisfying hunger 
 at the expense of the neighboring baker, or his girl on the 
 streets to pay for her new dress. Such was the simple indus- 
 trialism of our great-great-grandfathers. But their mode of 
 life was destined to change. All progress, says Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer, is differentiation ; and this formidable factor began 
 to appear in the quiet, sleepy, English country. About 1760 
 a large share of calico-printing was transferred from London 
 to Lancashire, where labor was then cheaper. There was a 
 consequent fall in prices, and an increased demand for calicoes 
 of linen warp and cotton weft. Then the Manchester dealers, 
 instead of buying fustians and calicoes from the weaver, began 
 to furnish him with the materials for his cloth, and to pay 
 liim a fixed price per piece for the work when executed. So 
 the Manchester dealer became what the French call an entre- 
 pr^neur ; and the transformation of the independent weaver 
 into a wage receiver began. The iron law of wages and the 
 unemployed question also began to loom dimly up. For as 
 the weaver came to hire himself to the dealer, so the weaver 
 let out part of his work ; and it frequently happened that the 
 sum which the master weaver received from his employer was 
 less than what he found himself compelled to pay to those 
 wliom he employed in spinning. He durst not, however, 
 complain,” says Mr. Watts in his article on cotton (Ency- 
 clopoedia Britannica), ‘‘much less abate the spinner’s price, 
 lest his looms should be unemployed.” The quantity of yarn 
 producible under this simple system by the aid of the one- 
 thread wheel was very small. The whole did not exceed in 
 
INDUSTRIAL. 
 
 e^9 
 
 quantity what 50,000 spindles of our present machinery can 
 yield. As one man can now superintend 2,000 spindles, it 
 will be seen that twenty-five men with machinery can produce 
 as much as the whole population of old Lancashire. In 1750 
 the first important invention in the cotton industry was made 
 in the shape of the fly-shuttle, invented by Kaye of Bury. In 
 17G0 improvements were made in the carding process. In 
 1767 the spinning-jenny was invented by Hargreaves, and tliis 
 was at length brought to work as many as eighty spindles. 
 The ingenious Hargreaves had ample opportunity for practical 
 study of the unemployed ” question ; for the spinners, some 
 of whom were forced into idleness by the new invention, broke 
 into his house and destroyed his machine. Shortly after, there 
 was a general rising over industrial Lancashire: the poor 
 hand-workers, whose prophetic souls were evidently dreaming 
 on things to come, scouring the country and breaking in pieces 
 every carding and spinning machine they could find. 
 
 Progress by differentiation, however, heeded not the second 
 sight of Lancashire workers. In 1769, Arkwright contrived 
 the spinning frame, and obtained his patent for spinning with 
 rollers. In 1775, Crompton, of Bolton, invented the mule-jenny, 
 enabling warps of the finest quality to be spun. In 1 792, further 
 improvements in this machine were made by Pollard, of Man- 
 chester, and Kelly, of Glasgow. In 1785, steam was first ap- 
 plied to the spinning of cotton in Nottinghamshire. In 1784 
 the Rev. E. Cartwright, of Kent, invented power-loom weaving, 
 and completed and patented his invention in August, 1787. 
 Here, then, within a period of about forty years, was a series 
 of mechanical inventions which had the effect of absolutely 
 changing the method of production, and enormously increasing 
 the output; of dividing the labor of producing, which had 
 formerly been effected by a single family within the walls 
 of a single room, between scores and hundreds of people, 
 each of whom only undertook a single process in a complex 
 operation ; of massing together hundreds of thousands of people 
 under new conditions ; of bringing a heretofore isolated district 
 into intimate relations with distant foreign lands : and of sepa- 
 rating the work of spinning or weaving from the ownership 
 of the instruments by whose aid the work was done. The in- 
 dependent weaver was gone ; or rather he was subjected, like 
 an amoeba, to a process of fission, but with this difference : that 
 
60 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 whereas the amoeba produces by fission other similar amoebae, 
 the weaver was differentiated into a person called an employer 
 and another called an employe or hand.” Multiply this 
 “ hand ” by thousands, and we get the mill or factory, divided 
 into departments, each with its special detail of work, each de- 
 tail fitting into all the rest, each machine taking up the work 
 where the last machine left it, and each contributing its share 
 to the joint product. Multiply the employer ; add enormously 
 to the aggregate of his capital ; remove the barrier of national 
 frontiers from his operations ; relieve him of the duty of per- 
 sonal supervision ; and we get the joint-stock capitalist. 
 
 Pause a moment to consider the famous world-events which 
 made so much noise while these industrial processes were going 
 on. The conquest of Canada, the victories of Clive in India, 
 the Seven Years’ War, the successful revolt of the American 
 colonies, the Declaration of Independence and formation of the 
 American Constitution, the deeds of Frederic the Great, Pitt’s 
 accession to power, Washington’s election to the Presidency, 
 the Fall of the Bastille, the death of Mirabeau, the fall of the 
 old French monarchy, the National Convention — all these great 
 events which shook the world were contemporary with the in- 
 dustrial revolution in England ; and that revolution was in 
 promise and potency more important than them all. 
 
 I will glance at the development of another great industry, 
 that of iron. In former times iron was largely worked in the 
 south of England, notably in Sussex, in a district now purely 
 agricultural. By the middle of the I8th century, important iron 
 industries had begun to cluster round Coalbrookdale ; and here 
 many of the industrial changes in the working of iron were first 
 introduced. From 1766 to 1784 improvements were made in the 
 mode of working malleable iron and of transferring cast into 
 wrought iron. The puddling forge was invented in 1784; and 
 it gave an immense impetus to the manufacture. In 1828 the 
 use of the hot blast was substituted for cold air ; in 1842 Nas- 
 myth invented the steam-hammer ; and in 1856 the Bessemer 
 process of making steel was patented. Subsequently we have 
 the Siemens regenerative furnace and gas producer, the use of 
 machinery in lieu of hand labor for puddling, the casting of steel 
 under great pressure, and the improvements in the Bessemer 
 process. As a result of these inventions the increase in the 
 2 )roduction of steel during the last few years, especially in the 
 
INDUSTRIAL. 
 
 61 
 
 United States and Great Britain, has been enormous. In all this 
 we see the same series of phenomena, all tending to huge mo- 
 nopolies. Machinery supplants hand labor ; production is 
 greatly stimulated ; the immense capital needed enables only the 
 large producers to survive in the competitive conflict ; and we 
 get as the net result well defined aggregations of capital on the 
 one hand, and dependent machine minders on the other. 
 
 I have alluded to the shoe industry as having been formerly a 
 pure handicraft. Simple machine processes for fastening soles 
 and heels to inner soles began to be adopted in 1809 ; and from 
 that time onward successive inventions have converted the pure 
 handicraft into one of the most mechanical industries in the 
 world. In the United States in 1881 no less than 50,000,000 
 pairs of boots and shoes were sewn by the Blake-Mackay ma- 
 chines. A visitor to a shoe factory to-day will see the following 
 machines : for cutting leather, for pressing rollers for sole leather, 
 for stamping out sole and heel pieces, for blocking and crimping, 
 for moulding uppers or vamps, for vamp-folding, for eyeletting, 
 lasting, trimming and paring, scouring, sand-papering and bur- 
 nishing, for stamping, peg-cutting, and nail-rasping. It is well 
 to witness all these processes going on in one large factory in 
 order to grasp fully the idea that the old individual industry of 
 the last century is almost as extinct as the mastodon — that the 
 worker in a shoe factory to-day is, so to speak, a machine in a 
 vast complex system. The great industry has supplanted the 
 small one; such great industry involves the aggregation of capi- 
 tal : consequently competition on the part of the small producer 
 is hopeless and impossible. Thus in the proletarian class the 
 intensity of the struggle for existence is increased, keeping down 
 wages and ever widening the margin of the unemployed class. 
 The small producer must become a wage earner either as 
 manager, foreman, or workman. As well attempt to meet Gat- 
 ling guns with bow and arrows, or steel cruisers armed with 
 dynamite bombs with the little cockle-shells in which Henry Y’s 
 army crossed over to win the field of Agincourt, as to set up single 
 shoe-makers or cotton-weavers against the vast industrial armies 
 of the world of machinery. The revolution is confined to no one 
 industry, to no one land. While most fully developed in Eng- 
 land, it is extending to most industries and to all lands. Prince 
 Kropotkin, it is true, reminds us in an interesting article in the 
 Nineteenth Century for October, 1888, that a number of small 
 
62 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 industries can still be found in town and country. That is so, 
 no doubt ; and it is not unlikely that for a long time to come 
 many small trades may exist, and some may even flourish. But 
 the countries in which small industries flourish most are precisely 
 those in which there is least machine industry, and where con- 
 sequently capitalism is least developed. In no country, says 
 Kropotkin, are there so many small producers as in Russia. 
 Exactly : and in no country is there so little machinery or such 
 an inefficient railway system in proportion to population and re- 
 sources. On the other hand, in no country is machinery so 
 extensively used as in the United States ; and it is precisely that 
 country which contains the fewest small industries in proportion 
 to population and resources. IVIany of the small industries, too, 
 as Kropotkin admits, are carried on by persons who have been 
 displaced by machines, and who have thus been thrown unem- 
 ployed on the labor market ; or who have drifted into large towns, 
 especially into London, because in the country there was no 
 work for them. At best the great majority of these people earn 
 but a scanty and precarious living ; and, judging from the num- 
 ber of hawkers and vendors who wander about suburban streets 
 and roads without selling anything, one would imagine that 
 great numbers can scarcely make any living at all. 
 
 Furthermore, when Kropotkin refers to the sweaters’ victims, 
 and to the people in country places who make on a small scale 
 clothes or furniture which they dispose of to the dealers in large 
 towns, and so forth, let it be remembered that so long as human 
 labor is cheaper than machinery it will be utilized by capitalists 
 in this way. The capitalist uses or does not use machinery 
 according as it pays or does not pay ; and if he can draw to an 
 unlimited extent on the margin of unemployed labor, paying a 
 bare subsistence wage, he will do so, as the evidence given before 
 the House of Lords Committee on Sweating shews. While 
 admitting then that a good many small industries exist, and that 
 some will continue to exist for an indefinite time, I do not think 
 that such facts make against the general proposition that the 
 tendency is to large production by machinery, involving the 
 grouping of men and the massing of capital, with all the economic 
 and social consequences thereby involved. 
 
 Even agriculture, that one occupation in which old-fashioned 
 individualism might bo supposed safe, is being subjected to 
 capitalism. The huge farms of Dakota and California, contain- 
 
INDUSTRIAL. 
 
 63 
 
 ing single fields of wheat miles long, are largely owned by joint 
 stock corporations and cultivated exclusively by machinery. It 
 was the displacement of human labor by machinery on these 
 farms as well as the crises in mining operations which helped to 
 bring about the phenomenon of an unemployed class in the 
 richest region of the world, and led Mr. Henry George to write 
 his ‘‘ Progress and Poverty. ” These huge farms, combined 
 with the wheat corners ” in New York and Chicago and the 
 great railway corporations of America, have jilayed havoc with 
 many of the small farmers of the Mississippi Valley, as the 
 statistics respecting mortgaged farms will show. And when it 
 is remembered that the American farmer will be more and more 
 obliged to meet the growing competition of the wheat of India, 
 produced by the cheapest labor in the world, his prospect does 
 not appear to be very bright. 
 
 In order to perceive clearly the immense development of ma- 
 chine industry and the consequent displacement of labor, one 
 must resort to figures, mere rhetoric being of no avail. The 
 following figures are cited from the United States, because 
 American public statistics are so much better than British, 
 being both more complete and more accessible. The facts are 
 taken from the first Annual Report of the United States Com- 
 missioner of Labor Statistics in Washington for 1886. The 
 Commissioner, inquiring into the industrial crisis, finds that it is 
 mainly due to the immense development of machine industry 
 under the joint-stock system ; and he takes up various trades 
 one after another to show how labor has been displaced by 
 machinery. In the timber business, he says, twelve laborers 
 with a Bucker machine will dress 12,000 staves. The same 
 number of men by hand labor would have dressed in the same time 
 only 2,500. In the manufacture of paper a machine now used 
 for drying and cutting, run by four men and six girls, will do the 
 work formerly done by 100 persons, and do it much better. In 
 the manufacture of wall-paper the best evidence puts the dis- 
 placement in the proportion of a hundred to one. In a phos- 
 phate mine in South Carolina ten men accomplish with ma- 
 chinery what 1 00 men handle without it in the same time. There 
 has been a displacement of 50 per cent in the manufacture of 
 rubber boots and shoes. In South Carolina pottery the product 
 is ten times greater by machine processes than by muscular 
 labor. In the manufacture of saws, experienced men consider 
 
64 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 that there has been a displacement of three men out of five. 
 In the weaving of silk the displacement has been 95 per cent, 
 and in the winding of silk 90 per cent. A large soap manufact- 
 uring concern carefully estimates the displacement of labor in 
 its works at 50 per cent. In making wine in California a crush- 
 ing machine has been introduced with which one man can crush 
 and stem 80 tons of grapes in a day, representing an amount of 
 work formerly requiring eight men. In woollen goods modern 
 machinery has, reduced muscular labor 33 per cent in the card- 
 ing department, 50 per cent in the spinning, and 25 per cent in 
 the weaving. In some kinds of spinning one hundred to one re- 
 presents the displacement. In the whole United States in 1886 
 the machinery was equal to 3,500,000 horse power. If men only 
 had been employed, it would have required 21,000,000 to turn 
 out the actual total product : the real number was four millions. 
 To do the work accomplished in 1886 in the United States by 
 power machinery and on the railways would have required men 
 representing a population of 172,500,000. The actual popula- 
 tion of the United States in 1886 was something under 
 60,000,000, or a little more than one-third. 
 
 Commenting on these very remarkable statistics, the Labor 
 Commissioner says : ‘‘ The apparent evils resulting from the 
 introduction of machinery and the consequent subdivision of 
 labor have to a large extent, of course, been offset by advan- 
 tages gained ; but it must stand as a positive statement, which 
 cannot be successfully controverted, that this wonderful intro- 
 duction and extension of power machinery is one of the prime 
 causes, if not the prime cause, of the novel industrial condition 
 in which the manufacturing nations find themselves.’’ One of 
 the results of the novel industrial condition ” in America in 
 1885, was an unemployed class variously estimated at from one 
 to two millions of men, the condition of many of whom as 
 tramps, furnished subjects for some very sorry jests to tlie 
 American press. Such facts as are here suggested, will show 
 how a new country may soon be reduced to a condition which 
 aggregated capital on the one hand and unemployed labor on 
 the other, render little better than that of an old European 
 State with its centuries of misery and oppression. And inci- 
 dentally they also show that such a nostrum as emigration, if 
 intended not as a palliative but as a solution, is simply 
 (juackery. The inference would seem to be irresistible. Just 
 
INDUSTRIAL. 
 
 Go 
 
 as fast as capitalists find it profitable to introduce improved 
 machinery, as fast also will the helplessness of a growing num- 
 ber of the proletariat increase. The unemployed ’’ cpiestion 
 is the sphinx which will devour us if we cannot answer her 
 riddle. 
 
 The wonderful expansion of Lancashire perhaps affords the 
 best illustration of the cliange from individual to collective 
 industry. A cotton-mill in one of the dismal “ hell-holes,” 
 called towns in Lancashire, is a wonderful place, full of bewil- 
 dering machines. Here is a machine called an ^‘opener,” by 
 which 15,000 lbs. of cotton can be opened in 56 hours. There 
 is a throstle, the spindles of which make from 6,000 to 7,000 
 revolutions per minute. Here is a man who, with the aid of 
 two piecers to take up and join the broken ends, can work 
 2,000 spindles. Among the distinct separate machines used 
 are opener, scutcher and lap machine, drawing frame, slubbing 
 frame, intermediate frame, roving frame, throstle, self-acting 
 mule and hand mule, doubling frame, and mule doublers or 
 twiners. By means of these appliances the following results 
 have been attained. Within eight years, from 1792 to 1800, 
 the quantity of cotton exported from the United States to 
 Lancashire had increased from 138,000 lbs. to 18,000,000 
 lbs. In 1801 Lancashire took 84,000 bales of cotton from the 
 United States; in 1876 she took 2,075,000 bales; and whereas 
 in the former year only 14,000 bales came from India, in 
 1876 from that country came 775,000 bales, besides a great 
 increase in Brazilian cotton, and a new import of 332,000 bales 
 from Egypt. In 1805, one million pieces of calico were sold 
 in the Blackburn market during the whole year ; and that was 
 considered a very large sale. In 1884, according to Ellison’s 
 Annual Review of the Cotton Trade, there were exported 
 4,417,000,000 yards of piece goods besides the vast quantity 
 produced for home consumption. In 1875, in place of the little 
 cottages with their hand-looms of a century before, Lancashire 
 contained 2,655 cotton factories with 37,515,772 spinning spin- 
 dles and 463,118 power looms; and she produced yarn and 
 piece goods to the weight of 1,088,890,000 lbs. and of the 
 value of £95,447,000. See, too, how through the use of 
 machinery the cost of production had been lowered. In 171U) 
 the price of spinning the yarn known technically as No. 100 
 was 4s. per lb. : in 1826 it had been reduced to 6^d. The sale 
 
66 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 price of yarn No. 100 in 1786 was 38s. : in 1793 it was 
 reduced to 15s. Id., in 1803 to 8s, 4d., in 1876 to 2s. 6d. 
 The decreased cost in each case followed on economy in pro- 
 duction, itself dependent on increased differentiation in ma- 
 chinery ; that in turn involving larger and larger capital, and 
 that again necessitating aggregation and the crushing out of 
 small concerns which could not command machinery or sell at 
 a profit ill competition with it. 
 
 Speculating on the possibility of foreign competition de- 
 stroying the industrial supremacy of Lancashire, Mr. Watts 
 writes in the Encyclopaedia Britannica : It may perhaps be 
 sufficient to recall to our readers the small part of the cost of 
 the commodity which now belongs to the labor of the hand, and 
 the daily diminution which is taking place even of that part, 
 by the introduction of new mechanical substitutes.” ^ Mr. 
 Watts wrote as a expert; and the inference one is compelled to 
 draw from his dictum is that concentration of capital and 
 growth of monopoly must continue to develop ; and that the 
 ^‘unemployed” problem must force itself on Lancashire. One 
 who is not an expert will only venture to criticise with great 
 diffidence Mr. Watts’s optimistic tone ; but it is well to point 
 out that in India capitalists can command the cheapest labor in 
 the world — labor too, at present entirely unregulated by law. 
 The cotton of India, and also of Asiatic Russia, is spun and 
 woven near to where it is grown, and where it can easily com- 
 mand the great Asiatic market. One is not surprised to find 
 therefore that the Bombay cotton mills are already giving cause 
 for some anxiety in Lancashire ; and there seems no rational 
 ground for supposing that that anxiety will decrease ; in which 
 case the increasing competition would seem to involve in Lan- 
 cashire either immense development of machinery or reduction 
 in wages in order to cheapen the cost of production. Either 
 alternative forces the social problem forward. 
 
 I now pass on to consider the social problem as it has 
 actually been forced on the attention of the British Govern- 
 ment through tlie new industrial conditions. 
 
 Tlie unrestrained power of capitalism very speedily reduced 
 a large part of England to a deplorable condition. The Mrs. 
 Jellybys of the philanthropic world were busy ministering to the 
 
 1 Enc. Brit., art. “ Cotton.' 
 
INDUSTRIAL. 
 
 67 
 
 wants of Borioboola Gha by means of tracts and blankets, 
 neither of which were of the slightest use to those for whom 
 they were intended. But Borioboola Gha was an earthly 
 paradise compared with civilized England. There was not a 
 savage in the islands of the Pacific who was not better fed, 
 happier, healthier, and more contented than the majority of the 
 workers in the industrial parts of England. Children, it was 
 discovered, were transferred in large numbers to the north, 
 where they were housed in pent-up buildings adjoining the 
 factories, and kept to long hours of labor. The work was 
 carried on day and night without intermission ; so that the beds 
 were said never to become cold, inasmuch as one batch of 
 children rested while another batch went to the looms, only 
 half the requisite number of beds being provided for all. 
 Epidemic fevers were rife in consequence. Medical inspectors 
 reported the rapid spread of malformation of the bones, curva- 
 ture of the spine, heart diseases, rupture, stunted growth, 
 asthma, and premature old age among children and young per- 
 sons : the said children and young persons being worked by 
 manufacturers without any kind of restraint. Manufacturing 
 profits in Lancashire were being at the same time reckoned at 
 hundreds and even thousands per cent. The most terrible con- 
 dition of things existed in the mines, where children of both 
 sexes worked together, half naked, often for sixteen hours a 
 day. In the fetid passages, children of seven, six, and even 
 four years of age, were found at work. Women were 
 employed underground, many of them even while pregnant, at 
 the most exhausting labor. After a child was born, its mother 
 was at work again in less than a week, in an atmosphere 
 charged with sulphuric acid. In some places women stood all 
 day knee-deep in water and subject to an intense heat. One 
 woman when examined avowed that she was wet through all 
 day long, and had drawn coal carts till her skin came off. 
 Women and young children of six years old drew coal along 
 the passages of the mines, crawling on all fours with a girdle 
 passing round their waists, harnessed by a chain between their 
 legs to the cart. A sub-commissioner in Scotland reported 
 that he “ found a little girl, six years of age, carrying half a 
 cwt, and making regularly fourteen long journeys a day. The 
 height ascended and the distance along the road exceeded in 
 each journey the height of St. Paul’s Cathedral.” I have 
 
68 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 repeatedly worked,” said one girl seventeen years of age, for 
 twenty-four hours.” The ferocity of the men was worse than 
 that of wild beasts ; and children were often maimed and some- 
 times killed with impunity. Drunkenness was naturally general. 
 Short lives and brutal ones were the rule. The men, it was 
 said, “ die off like rotten sheep ; and each generation is com- 
 monly extinct soon after fifty.” Such was a large part of indus- 
 trial England under the unrestrained rule of the capitalist. 
 There can be no doubt that far greater misery prevailed than 
 in the Southern States during the era of slavery. The slave 
 was property — often valuable property ; and it did not pay his 
 owner to ill-treat him to such a degree as to render him useless 
 as a wealth-producer. But if the free ” Englishman were 
 injured or killed, thousands could be had to fill his place for 
 nothing. 
 
 Had this state of things continued we should have returned 
 to a state of nature with a vengeance. Of man thus depicted 
 we may say with Tennyson : 
 
 “ Dragons of the prime, 
 
 That tare each other in their slime, 
 
 Were mellow music matchM with him.’’ 
 
 It was evident that capitalist monopoly must be restrained, 
 reluctant as English statesmen brought up under the com- 
 mercial system were to interfere. The zenith of laisser faire 
 was at the close of the last century ; but a great fabric often 
 looks most imposing shortly before it begins to collapse. The 
 first piece of labor legislation was the Morals and Health Act 
 of 1802, which interfered with the accommodation provided to 
 children by the employers, to which reference has been made. 
 The Cotton Mills Act was passed in 1819, partly owing to the 
 exertions of Robert Owen. It limited the age at which children 
 might work in factories ; and it limited the time of their labor 
 to seventy-two hours per week. Seventy-two hours for a child 
 of nine who ought to have been playing in the green fields ! 
 And even that was a vast improvement on the previous state 
 of things. Saturday labor was next shortened by an Act passed 
 by the Radical politician. Sir John Cam Hobhouse, in 1825. 
 Workmen, Radicals, Tories and Philanthropists then joined in 
 an agitation under Mr. Richard Oastler, a Conservative member 
 of Parliament, to secure a Ten Hours’ Bill. Hobhouse tried by 
 
INDUSTRIAL. 
 
 69 
 
 a Bill introduced in 1831 to reduce the time in textile industries ; 
 but he was beaten by the northern manufacturers. However, 
 A1 thorp, the Whig leader, who had helped to defeat Hobhouse, 
 was obliged himself to introduce a measure by which night 
 work was prohibited to young persons, and the hours of work 
 were reduced to sixty-nine a week. Cotton-mill owners were 
 at the same time disqualified for acting as justices in cases of 
 infringement of the law. This measure is regarded by Dr. E. 
 Von Plener in his useful manual as the first real Factory Act. 
 Mr. Thomas Sadler, who had succeeded Oastler as leader in the 
 cause of the factory operatives, brought in a Bill in 1832 limit- 
 ing the hours of labor for persons under eighteen ; but it was 
 met by a storm of opposition from manufacturing members and 
 withdrawn. 
 
 To Sadler succeeded that excellent man, who has perhaps 
 done more for the working-classes than any other public man 
 of our time. Lord Ashley, better known as Lord Shaftesbury. 
 And here let me pause to point out that it was the Radicals 
 and a large section of the Tories who took the side of the 
 operatives against the Whigs, official Conservatives and manu- 
 facturing class. The latter class is sometimes regarded as 
 Liberal. I think the truth is, that it captured and held for 
 some time the Liberal fort, and made Liberalism identical with 
 its policy and interests. If the men of this class had the cynical 
 candor of Mr. Jay Gould, they might have imitated his reply 
 when examined by a legislative committee : “ What are your 
 politics, Mr. Gould?” ‘‘Well, in a Republican district I am 
 Republican, in a Democratic district I am a Democrat ; but I 
 am always an Erie Railroad man.” One of Lord Ashley’s 
 strong opponents was Sir Robert Peel, the son of a Lancashire 
 capitalist; but the most bitter and persistent was Mr. John 
 Bright. Lord Ashley introduced a Ten Hours’ Bill which 
 included adults. Lord Althorp refused to legislate for adults, 
 but himself passed an Act in 1833 prohibiting night work to 
 those under eighteen ; fixing forty-eight hours per week as the 
 maximum for children, and sixty-nine for young persons ; also 
 providing for daily attendance at school, and certain holidays in 
 the year. As this Act repealed that of 1831, manufacturers 
 were again eligible to sit as justices in factory cases ; and al- 
 though numerous infractions were reported by inspectors, the 
 offenders in many cases got off scot free. In 1840 Lord Ash- 
 
70 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 ley brought to the notice of Parliament the condition of young 
 people employed in mines ; and through his activity was passed 
 tlie first Mining Act, prohibiting underground work by women 
 and by boys under ten. Peel then passed a consolidating 
 Factory Act in 1844. Lord Ashley proposed to restrict to ten 
 per day the working hours for young persons ; but Peel defeated 
 the proposal by threatening to resign if it were carried. By 
 the Act of 1844 the labor of children was limited to six and a 
 half hours per day ; and they had to attend school three hours 
 daily during the first five days of the week. The next year, 
 1845, Lord Ashley secured the passage of a Bill forbidding 
 night work to women. In 1847 Mr. Fielden introduced a Bill 
 limiting the time of labor for all women and young persons to 
 eleven hours per day, and after May, 1848, to ten hours. Peel 
 and the factory owners opposed ; but the Bill was carried. The 
 Act of 1850 further reduced the legal working day for women 
 and young persons ; and an Act of 1853 prohibited the employ- 
 ment of children before 6 A. M. or after 6 r. m. In 1860 bleach- 
 ing and dyeing works were subjected to the factory laws. 
 Further legislation on this branch of industry took place in 1870. 
 A Mines Act was passed in 1860, and made more stringent 
 ill 1862 with reference to safety and ventilation. Acts with 
 reference to the lace industry were passed in the years 1861-64, 
 to bakehouses in 1863, chimney-sweeping and pottery works in 
 1864. The Workshops Regulation Act, relating to small trades 
 and handicrafts, was passed in 1867, and a consolidating Fac- 
 tory and Workshops Act in 1871. The Act now in force is 
 the Factory and Workshops Act, 1878, modified in respect of 
 certain industries by the Act of 1883. Further Acts relative 
 to the regulations of mines were passed in 1872 and 1887. 
 
 This brief and imperfect survey of the legislation which has 
 destroyed the regime of laisser faire is sufficient for my purpose 
 to prove: (1) That with private property in the necessary in- 
 struments of production, individual liberty as understood by the 
 eighteenth century reformers must be more and more restricted, 
 i. 6., that in our existing economic condition individualism is 
 impossible and absurd. (2) That even hostile or indifferent 
 })oliticians liave been compelled to recognize this. (3) That 
 unrestrained capitalism tends as surely to cruelty and oppres- 
 sion as did feudalism or chattel slavery. (4) That the remedy 
 lias been, as a matter of fact, of a Socialistic character, involv- 
 
INDUSTRIAL. 
 
 71 
 
 ing collective checking of individual greed and the paring of 
 slices off the profits of capital in the interests of the working 
 community. These four propositions can scarcely be con- 
 tested. 
 
 I'he immense development of English industry under the 
 conditions ])reviously set forth was due in great degree to the 
 fact that England had secured an immense foreign market in 
 which she had for a long time no formidable rival. Most of 
 the wars in which England was engaged during the eighteenth 
 century are quite unintelligible until it is understood that they 
 were commercial wars intended to secure commercial supremacy 
 for England. The overthrow of the Stuart monarchy was 
 directly associated with the rise to supreme power of the rich 
 middle class, especially the London merchants. The revolution 
 of 1G88 marks the definite advent to political power of this 
 class, which found the Whig party the great instrument for ef- 
 fecting its designs. The contrast between the old Tory squire 
 who stood for Church and King, and the new commercial magnate 
 who stood by the Whigs and the House of Hanover, is well 
 drawn by Sir Walter Scott in ‘‘Rob Roy.” The Banks of 
 England and Scotland and the National Debt are among the 
 blessings conferred on their descendants by the new mercantile 
 rulers. They also began the era of corruption in politics, which 
 is always connected closely with predominance of capitalists in 
 the State, as we see in France, the United States and the 
 British Colonies. “ The desire of the moneyed classes,” says 
 Mr. Lecky,^ “ to acquire political power at the expense of the 
 country gentlemen was the first and one of the chief causes of 
 that political corruption which soon overspread the whole 
 system of parliamentary government.” What remained of the 
 old aristocracy often found it convenient to form alliances with 
 the new plutocracy ; and it was this combination which governed 
 England during the eighteenth century, and which specially de- 
 termined her foreign policy. That policy was directed towards 
 the securing of foreign markets and the extension of English 
 trade. Napoleon’s sneer at the “ nation of shopkeepers ” was 
 not undeserved. The conquest or Canada, the conquest of 
 India under Clive and Warren Hastings ^ — the latter an agent 
 of a great capitalist body, who illustrated well in his Indian 
 
 1 History of the Eighteenth Century/^ i, 202. 
 
72 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 career the methods of his class — the Colonial policy, the base 
 destruction of Irish manufactures in the interest of English 
 capitalists, were all part of the same scheme. The policy was 
 successfully consummated in the war waged by Pitt against the 
 French Revolution. That revolution was itself brought about 
 mainly by poverty. Not only was the French peasantry beg- 
 gared ; but some of the new machinery which had been brought 
 from England had thrown many persons out of work. It was 
 mainly unemployed workmen who stormed and captured the 
 Bastille.^ The chief counterblast to the Revolution was pre- 
 pared by Pitt. What were his motives ? The Austrian and 
 Prussian monarchs, the emigrant nobles, the imbecile English 
 king and the Tory English bishops may perhaps have seriously 
 believed that England was fighting for altar and throne. But 
 Pitt was under no such delusion. While he derived from his 
 illustrious father a real pride in England, his divinities were 
 rather the ledger and the cash-box. He was no bigot: even 
 while an undergraduate at Cambridge he was a close student of 
 Adam Smith ; he started in public life as a reformer, and his 
 refusal to bow to the ignorant prejudices of George III cost 
 him office in 1801. It has been abundantly proved that at first 
 he felt no violent antipathy to the Revolution. A long period 
 elapsed before he was brought to join the monarchical alliance. 
 But he was essentially the great capitalist statesman, the politi- 
 cal successor of Walpole, the political predecessor of Peel. He 
 saw that French conquest might threaten seriously the English 
 social fabric, and that if England’s chief rival were struck down, 
 the English commercial class might gain control of the world’s 
 commerce. To secure that end he skilfully welded together all 
 the moneyed interests^ the contractors, landlords, financiers and 
 shopkeepers; and he tried to persuade the simpler portion of 
 the country that he was fighting for the sacred cause of religion 
 and morality. Those who resisted him he flung into prison or 
 transported beyond the seas. When the long war was brought 
 to an end, the working-classes were in a wretched condition ; 
 although in those days also there were sophistical politicians 
 who tried to prove that never had the people so much reason 
 to be contented. When, in 1823, the Lancashire weavers 
 petitioned Parliament to look into their grievances, an honor- 
 
 ^ See the evidence contained in Vol. I of Mr. Morse Stephen’s “His- 
 tory of the French Revolution.” 
 
INDUSTRIAL. 
 
 73 
 
 able member, who had presumably dined well if not wisely, 
 had the audacity to declare that the weavers were better off 
 than the capitalists — an observation not dissimilar to those we 
 have heard in more recent times. As a matter of fact, the 
 landlords, through protection and high rents — the capitalists, 
 through enormous profits, were enriched ‘‘beyond the dreams 
 of avarice.” But the time had come for a conflict between 
 these two classes : the conflict which is known as the Free 
 Trade controversy. Protection was no longer needed by the 
 manufacturers, who had supremacy in the world-market, un- 
 limited access to raw material, and a long start of the rest of 
 the world in the development of machinery and in industrial 
 organization. The landlord class, on the other hand, was 
 absolutely dependent on Protection, because the economic 
 isolation of England by means of import duties maintained the 
 high prices of food which were the source of the high agri- 
 cultural rents. Capitalist interests, on the contrary, were 
 bound up with the interaction between England and the rest of 
 the world; and the time had come when the barriers which 
 had prevented that interaction must be pulled down. The 
 triumph of Free Trade therefore signifies economically the 
 decay of the old landlord class pure and simple, and the victory 
 of capitalism. The capitalist class was originally no fonder of 
 Free Trade than the landlords. It destroyed in its own interest 
 the woollen manufacture in Ireland ; and it would have throttled 
 the trade of the Colonies had it not been for the successful 
 resistance of Massachusetts and Virginia. It was Protectionist 
 so long as it suited its purpose to be so. But when cheap raw 
 material was needed for its looms, and cheap bread for its 
 workers : when it feared no foreign competitor, and had estab- 
 lished itself securely in India, in North America, in the Pacific ; 
 then it demanded Free Trade. “Nothing in the history of 
 political imposture,” says Mr. Lecky, “ is more curious than 
 the success with which, during the Anti-Corn Law agitation, 
 the notion was disseminated that on questions of Protection 
 and Free Trade the manufacturing classes have been peculiarly 
 liberal and enlightened, and the landed classes peculiarly selfish 
 and ignorant. It is indeed true that when in the present cen- 
 tury the pressure of population on subsistence had made a 
 change in the Corn Laws inevitable, the manufacturing classes 
 placed themselves at the head of a Free Trade movement from 
 
74 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 which they must necessarily have derived the chief benefit, 
 while the entire risk and sacrifice were thrown upon others. 
 But it is no less true that there is scarcely a manufacture in 
 England which has not been defended in the spirit of the nar- 
 rowest and most jealous monopoly ; and the growing ascen- 
 dancy of the commercial classes after the Revolution is nowhere 
 more apparent than in the multiplied restrictions of the English 
 Commercial Code.” ^ 
 
 Cheap raw material having been secured by the English manu- 
 facturer through a series of enactments extending over a genera- 
 tion ; and machinery having been so developed as to enormously 
 increase production, England sent her textile and metal products 
 all over the world ; and her manufacturers supported exactly that 
 policy which enabled them to secure markets for their goods or 
 raw produce to work up in their mills. Cobdenism was in the 
 ascendant ; and the State was more and more regarded from the 
 commercial point of view. The so-called Manchester school ” 
 was in the main a peace party, because war weakens that confi- 
 dence on which commerce is based. But this attachment to 
 peace principles did not prevent Cobden himself from declaring 
 for a powerful navy as an instrument of commercial insurance. 
 Nor did it prevent Manchester from supporting Palmerston's 
 nefarious Chinese policy in 1857, or the equally nefarious ag- 
 gression in Egypt in 1882 : both being regarded as helpful to 
 Manchester trade. In behalf of this extension of English trade 
 to new markets war has been made on China, Egypt, the 
 Soudan, Burmah, and Thibet. Germany follows England with 
 cautious tread. Adventurers like Emin, Stanley, and Bartelott 
 are employed to “ open up ” Africa to the gentle influences of 
 civilization by the agency of rum and revolver, under the pretence 
 of putting down the slave trade. France, not to be beWd, ex- 
 ploits Tonquin in the interests of Paris speculators. An un- 
 scrupulous government in Italy attempts to divert the attention 
 of the country from domestic reforms to expeditions in Africa in 
 the interests of moneyed people in Europe. Perhaps the great- 
 est move is yet to come : the move on the vast market of China. 
 For this England, America, France, and Germany will compete. 
 Tentative steps are already being taken. By her absorption of 
 Burmah and her operations in Thibet, England is approaching 
 
 1 History of the Eighteenth Century, iv, 450. 
 
INDUSTRIAL. 
 
 75 
 
 nearer to China. By lier acciuisition of Tonquin, France lias 
 been brought into actual contact with China. America will 
 probably, by a judicious reduction of her tariff, compete with 
 England all over the Pacific, and will send her goods from the 
 Atlantic ports through the Panama or Nicaragua Canal of the 
 near future. In short, the machinery for the wholesale exploita- 
 tion of Asia and Africa is in rapid progress. The whole globe 
 will soon be the private property of the capitalist class. 
 
 The appropriation of the planet has been powerfully aided by 
 the developments of transport and communication in our time ; 
 indeed, it would have been impossible without them. The mere 
 application of machinery to production could not have produced 
 the economic results of to-day but for the shrinkage of the globe 
 caused by railways and telegraphs. For it is through these in- 
 ventions that the capitalist class has become cosmopolitan, has 
 broken up old habits, destroyed local associations, spared nothing 
 either beautiful or venerable where profit was concerned. It has 
 assimilated the conditions of life in various lands, and has brought 
 about a general uniformity which accounts for much of the ennui 
 felt in modern life. 
 
 As England was the first country to develop machine indus- 
 try, so was she the first to develop railways and to form a 
 powerful steam mercantile marine. Through the latter agency 
 she has now in her hands about sixty-four per cent of the carry- 
 ing trade of the world. Within sixty years about 850,000 miles 
 of railway have been built throughout the globe. Atlantic and 
 Pacific are united by several lines of steel ; while the locomo- 
 tive has penetrated remote regions of Africa inhabited by bar- 
 barous tribes, and wastes of central Asia where it confronts the 
 relics of the dead and buried civilizations. This immense power, 
 the greatest in the modern world, is mainly in the hands of mo- 
 nopolist corporations, among whom there is the same necessary 
 tendency to aggregation, only far more marked, as is found in 
 productive industries. The first small lines built to connect 
 towns not far off have been added to others bit by bit ; as from 
 the original Stockton and Darlington Railway, less than twenty 
 miles long, we get the great and wealthy North Eastern Rail- 
 way of to-day. In America a single corporation controls as 
 much as 7,000 miles of rail : and the end of the century will 
 perhaps see the great Siberian Pacific in actual existence. As 
 in railways, so in steam vessels. Huge fleets like the Cunard, 
 
76 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 the Orient, the Messageries Maritimes, are owned by cosmopolh 
 tan capital, and sustain the traffic and commerce, not of a country, 
 not even of a continent, but of the whole world. Such is the 
 immense revolution in the methods of distribution effected in 
 our time by the operation of capitalism. 
 
 We must now consider what the term capitalist” is coming 
 to signify. Had the term been used half a century ago it would 
 have connoted a class, unscrupulous perhaps in the main, with 
 low aims, little culture, and less fine sympathy or imagination. 
 It was nevertheless a socially useful class, which at that time 
 performed real service. It is a leading thought in modern phil- 
 osophy that in its process of development each institution tends 
 to cancel itself. Its special function is born out of social neces- 
 sities : its progress is determined by attractions or repulsions 
 which arise in society, producing a certain effect which tends to 
 negate the original function. Thus early society among the 
 Aryan peoples of Europe develops a leader in war or council 
 who grows, by processes which in England, e, g,, can be clearly 
 traced, into a king with genuine functions, a leader of the people 
 in war like William I, or a powerful civil ruler and statesman 
 like Henry I. The fact that such men were brutal or wicked is 
 of little account : the important fact about them is, that in a 
 barbarous chaotic society they performed some indispensable 
 services. But the very putting forth of the kingly power arouses 
 antagonism; then produces armed resistance by a combined 
 group ; and finally leads to overthrow either by the destruction 
 of the king or by depriving him of all real power and reducing 
 him to a mere ornamental puppet. The very power originally 
 believed to be beneficent becomes tyrannical : it needs to be 
 checked more and more, until finally it practically ceases to exist, 
 and the curious paradox is seen of a monarch who does not rule. 
 History proves abundantly that men do not rise and overthrow 
 wicked and corrupt rulers merely because they are wicked and 
 corrupt. It is part of the terrible irony of history that a Louis 
 XV dies in his bed, while a William the Silent or a Lincoln 
 falls a victim to the assassin. What men do not long tolerate 
 is either obstructiveness or uselessness. 
 
 Now, if we apply these ideas to the evolution of the capitalist, 
 what is it we see ? The capitalist was originally an entrepreneur^ 
 a manager who worked hard at his business, and who received 
 what economists have called the “ wages of superintendence.” 
 
INDUSTKIAL. 
 
 77 
 
 So long as the capitalist occupied that position, lie miglit be re- 
 strained and controlled in various ways ; but he could not bo got 
 rid of. His “ wages of superintendence ” were certainly often 
 exorbitant ; but he performed real functions ; and society, as yet 
 unprepared to take those functions upon itself, could not afford 
 to discharge him. Yet, like the King, he had to be restrained 
 by the legislation already referred to ; for his power involved 
 much suffering to his fellows. But now the capitalist is fast 
 becoming absolutely useless. Finding it easier and more rational 
 to combine with others of his class in a large undertaking, he 
 has now abdicated his position of overseer, has put in a salaried 
 manager to perform his work for him, and has become a mere 
 rent or interest receiver. The rent or interest he receives is 
 paid for the use of a monopoly which not he, but a whole mul- 
 titude of people, created by their joint efforts. 
 
 It was inevitable that this differentiation of manager and 
 capitalist should arise. It is part of the process of capitalist 
 evolution due to machine industry. As competition led to waste 
 in production, so it led to the cutting of profits among capi- 
 talists. To prevent this the massing of capital was necessary, 
 by which the large capitalists could undersell his small rivals 
 by offering, at prices below anything they could afford to sell 
 at, goods produced by machinery and distributed by a plexus 
 of agencies initially too costly for any individual competitor to 
 purchase or set on foot. Now for such massive capitals, the 
 contributions of several capitalists are needed ; and hence has 
 arisen the Joint Stock Company or Compagnie Anonyme, 
 Through this new capitalist agency a person in England can 
 hold stock in an enterprise at the Antipodes which he has never 
 visited and never intends to visit, and which, therefore, he can- 
 not superintend ” in any way. He and the other shareholders 
 put in a manager with injunctions to be economical. The man- 
 ager’s business is to earn for his employers the largest dividends 
 possible : if he does not do so he is dismissed. The old per- 
 sonal relation between the workers and the employer is gone ; 
 instead thereof remains merely the cash nexus. To secure high 
 dividends the manager will lower wages. If that is resisted 
 there will probably be either a strike or lock-out. Cheap labor 
 will be perhaps imported by the manager; and if the work- 
 people resist by intimidation or organized boycotting, the forces 
 of the State (which they help to maintain) will be used against 
 
78 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 them. In the majority of cases tliey must submit. Such is a 
 not unfair picture of the relation of capitalist to workman to- 
 day : the former having become an idle dividend-receiver. The 
 dictum of orthodox political economy, uttered by so competent 
 an authority as the late Professor Cairnes, runs : — 
 
 It is important, on moral no less than on economic grounds, to in- 
 sist upon this, that no public benetit of any kind arises from the exist- 
 ence of an idle rich class. The wealth accumulated by their ancestors 
 and others on their behalf, where it is employed as capital, no doubt 
 helps to sustain industry ; but what they consume in luxury and idle- 
 ness is not capital, and helps to sustain nothing but their own unprofit- 
 able lives. By all means they must have their rents and interest, as it 
 is written in the bond ; but let them take their proper place as drones 
 in the liive, gorging at a feast to which they have contributed 
 nothing.^’ i 
 
 The fact that the modern capitalist may be not only useless but 
 positively obstructive was well illustrated at a meeting of the 
 shareholders of the London and South Western Railway on 7 th 
 February last. Three shareholders urged a reduction in third- 
 class fares. The chairman pointed out the obvious fact that 
 such a reduction would probably lower the dividend, and asked 
 the meeting if that was what they wished. He was, of course, 
 answered by a chorus of “ No, no ! ” and all talk of reduction 
 of fares was at an end. Here is a plain sample (hundreds 
 might be quoted) of the evident interests of the public being 
 sacrificed to those of the capitalist. 
 
 That joint-stock capitalism is extending rapidly everyone 
 knows. In the United States, according to Mr. Bryce, the 
 wealth of joint-stock corporations is estimated at one-fourth of 
 the total value of all property.^ In England every kind of 
 business, from breweries, banks, and cotton-mills down to auto- 
 matic sweetmeat machines, is falling into the hands of the joint- 
 stock capitalist, and must continue to do so. Twenty years ago 
 who would have supposed that a brewery like that of Guinness 
 or such a banking firm as Glyn Mills, and Co. would become 
 a joint-stock company? Yet we know it is so to-day. Capi- 
 talism is becoming impersonal and cosmopolitan. And the 
 combinations controlling production become larger and fewer. 
 Baring’s are getting hold of the South African diamond fields : 
 
 1 Some Leading Princdples of Political Economy,^’ p. 32. 
 
 2 The American Commonwealth,^^ hi, note on p. 421. 
 
INDUSTRIAL. 
 
 79 
 
 A few companies control the whole anthracite coal produce of 
 Pennsylvania. Each one of us is quite ‘^free’’ to compete ’’ 
 with these gigantic com})inations, as the Principality of Monaco 
 is “free’’ to go to war with France should the latter threaten 
 lier interests. The mere forms of freedom remain ; but 
 monopoly renders them nugatory. The modern State, having 
 parted with the raw material of the globe, cannot secure free- 
 dom of competition to its citizens ; and yet it was on the basis of 
 free competition that capitalism rose. Thus we see that capi- 
 talism has cancelled its original principle — is itself negating 
 its own existence. Before considering its latest forms, atten 
 tion may here be conveniently directed to the Co-operative 
 movement, which is, on one side at any rate, closely allied to 
 the joint-stock development. 
 
 The Co-operative movement had in England a Socialistic 
 origin : for its founder was Robert Owen. As Mr. Seligman 
 says very truly in the Political Science Quarterly : “ Owen was 
 the founder of the Co-operative movement in England, a fact 
 often ignored by those who glibly use the word to-day with an 
 utter failure to discern its true significance.” And Owen him- 
 self avowed that his grand ultimate object was “ community in 
 land,” with which he hoped would be combined “unrestrained 
 co-operation on the part of all, for every purpose of human 
 life.” It is thus important to associate co-operation with Rob- 
 ert Owen — clarum et venerahile Tzomm —because there are 
 many persons who suppose that co-operation began with the 
 Rochdale Pioneers in 1844. What the Rochdale movement 
 really did was to commence the process of joint-stock shop- 
 keeping, a very different thing from that which Owen had in 
 view. 
 
 A powerful impetus was given to co-operation by the Chris- 
 tian Socialist movement under Maurice and Kingsley. “ Of all 
 narrow, conceited, hyprocritical, anarchic and atheistic schemes 
 of the Universe,” said Kingsley, “ The Cobden and Bright one 
 is exactly the worst.” The orthodox economic conclusions of 
 the day fared badly at Kingsley’s hands. “ The man who tells 
 us,” said he, “ that we ought to investigate Nature, simply to 
 sit patiently under her, and let her freeze, and ruin, and starve, 
 and stink us to death, is a goose, whether he calls himself a 
 chemist or a political economist.” These Christian Socialist 
 leaders felt deeply the anguish and poverty of the workers and 
 
80 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 the selfish apathy of the rich. Mammon/’ says Kingsley, 
 shrieks benevolently whenever a drunken soldier is flogged ; 
 but he trims his paletot and adorns his legs with the flesh of 
 men and the skins of women, with degradation, pestilence, 
 heathendom, and despair ; and then chuckles complacently over 
 his tailor’s bills. Hypocrite ! straining at a gnat and swallow- 
 ing a camel.” All this is very admirable ; but cheap clothes 
 are not made solely or chiefly for Mammon, but for the masses, 
 who are poor people. It is part of the sad irony of the situ- 
 ation that the great majority are obliged to accept the alterna- 
 tive of cheap clothes or none at all. And as the English 
 climate and the British matron combine to exercise an absolute 
 veto over the latter form of prehistoric simplicity, it follows 
 that one portion of the working-classes must, in order to be 
 clothed, connive at the sweating of another portion. 
 
 The Christian Socialist^ which was the organ of Maurice 
 and Kingsley, betrayed great simplicity as to the real nature of 
 the economic problem. It neglected Owen’s principle of com- 
 munity in land,” and supposed that by working together and 
 selling articles of good quality at a fair price poverty could be 
 eliminated, while yet every worker in the community was pay- 
 ing his tribute of economic rent to the owners of the instru- 
 ments of production. Thus the movement had no economic 
 basis ; and when the moral idealism had departed from it, no 
 wonder that it degenerated into mere divvy ” hunting and 
 joint-stock shop-keeping. The economic advantages of joint- 
 stock shop-keeping are thus summed up by Mr. Robert 
 Somers in the “ Encyclopaedia Britannica ” (Art., Co-opera- 
 tion ” ) : ‘‘ Wholesome commodities, ready-money payments, a 
 dividend of from five to ten per cent on share capital, and a 
 bonus to non-members on the amount of their purchases.” As 
 joint-stock shop-keeping, co-operation is a useful and cheap 
 metliod of distribution, which has doubtless benefited a con- 
 siderable number of persons ; but the notion that it can solve 
 the economic problem before society is “ chimerical,” as Dr. 
 J. K. Ingram tells us is the opinion of modern economists.^ 
 This, indeed, might only be expected from the fact that 961 out 
 of every 1,000 persons in England die without furniture, 
 investments, or effects worth £300. Economically considered, 
 
 1 “ Encyclopaedia Britannica ” : Art., Political Economy.” 
 
 2 Mulhall : “ Dictionary of Statistics.” 
 
INDUSTRIAL. 
 
 81 
 
 co-operation is, now that the initial enthusiasm has died out of 
 it, a subsidiary branch of the great joint-stock enterprise. 
 Ethically considered, its results are often doubtful. In its chief 
 stronghold, Lancashire, one observes a narrow selfishness among 
 its votaries, which could not be surpassed in the most genteel 
 quarters of Bays water. Its ideal is not the raising of the 
 working class as a whole, but the raising of certain per- 
 sons out of the working into the middle class. If the ad- 
 vocates of co-operation will abate their pretensions, and 
 claim merely (1) that their method is a useful and 
 economic means of distribution among the lower-middle and 
 upper-working classes ; and (2) that by its agency working 
 men can learn the important functions of organization and ad- 
 ministration, their claim will be freely admitted. But if they 
 go further their vaulting ambition will o’erleap itself. At the 
 present rate of progress made by co-operative societies as com- 
 pared with joint-stock capitalist companies, several generations 
 will be in their graves before any deep or general impression is 
 made. And meanwhile, unless economic rent is diverted from 
 the class which at present absorbs it to the community which 
 creates it, co-operators, like the rest of us, must pay tribute to 
 the lords of the soil and of money. But the noteworthy fact 
 about co-operation, is that its very existence testifies to the 
 process of industrial and capitalist aggregation here insisted 
 on as the great social factor of our period. For co-operative 
 societies supersede individual by social distribution, effecting it 
 without the waste attendant on a number of little shops all 
 competing against each other, the owners of none of which can 
 make a decent living. Co-operation, therefore, well illustrates 
 the economic evolution of the present age. 
 
 I now come to treat of the latest forms of capitalism, the 
 ring ’’and the trust,” whereby capitalism cancels its own 
 principles, and. as a seller, replaces competition by combina- 
 tion. When capitalism buys labor as a commodity it effects 
 the purchase on the competitive principle. Its indefinitely ex- 
 tended market enables it to do so ; for it knows that the work- 
 man must sell his labor to secure the means to live. Other 
 things being equal, therefore, it buys its labor in the cheapest 
 market. But when it turns round to face the public as a seller, 
 it casts the maxims of competition to the winds, and presents 
 itself as a solid combination. Competition, necessary at the 
 
82 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 outset, is found ultimately, if unchecked, to be wasteful and 
 ruinous. It entails great expense in advertising ; it necessitates 
 the employment of much unproductive labor; it tends to the 
 indefinite lowering of prices ; it produces gluts and crises, and 
 renders business operations hazardous and precarious. To es- 
 cape these consequences, the competing persons or firms agree 
 to form a close combination to keep up prices, to augment 
 profits, to eliminate useless labor, to diminish risk, and to 
 control the output. This is a ring,” which is thus a federa- 
 tion of companies. The best examples of ‘‘rings” and 
 “ pools ” are to be found in America, where capitalism is more 
 unrestrained and bolder in its operations than in Europe ; and 
 also where nearly all the active intellect is attracted to those 
 commercial pursuits that dominate American life. 
 
 The individualist devotees of laisser faire used to teach us 
 that when restrictions were removed, free competition would 
 settle everything. Prices would go down, and fill the “ con- 
 sumer ” with joy unspeakable ; the fittest would survive ; and 
 as for the rest — it was not very clear what would become of 
 them, and it really didn’t matter. No doubt the “consumer” 
 has greatly benefited by the increase in production and the fall 
 in prices ; but where is “ free competition ” now ? Almost the 
 only persons still competing freely are the small shop-keepers, 
 trembling on the verge of insolvency, and the working-men, 
 competing with one another for permission to live by work. 
 Combination is absorbing commerce. Here are a few instances 
 of the formation of rings. 
 
 A steel rail combination was some years ago formed among 
 previously competing firms in America. This combination 
 discovered that too many rails were being made and that prices 
 were being cut. Accordingly, one of the mills in the combina- 
 tion — the Vulcan mill of St. Louis — was closed, and stood 
 smokeless for years : its owners meanwhile receiving a subsidy 
 of $400,000 a year from the other mills in the combination for 
 7iot making rails. That is how the owners of the Vulcan mill 
 earned their “wages of superintendence.” It is needless to 
 add that no payment was made to the men for not working: 
 they were thrown on the streets to meditate on the right to 
 “ liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” secured to them by the 
 Decdaration of Independence. 
 
 Or, again, take the case of the anthracite coal lands of 
 
INDUSTRIAL. 
 
 83 
 
 Peiiusylvania, occupying an area of some 270,000 acres, and 
 held by the Reading Coal and Iron Company, the Lehigh 
 Valley Railroad, the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western 
 Railroad, the Delaware and Hudson Railroad, the Pennsylvania 
 Railroad, the Pennsylvania Coal Company, and smaller firms 
 and corporations tributary to these. The rich owners, popu- 
 larly known as the coal barons,” agree to fix absolutely the 
 wholesale price of coal, always securing an immense rise just 
 before the winter sets in. There is no such thing known or 
 possible as free trade or open competition in the anthracite coal 
 produce of America. 
 
 Combinations in the United States have been made by the 
 Western millers, the New York icemen, Boston fish dealers, 
 manufacturers of sewer-pipe, copper miners, makers of lamps, 
 pottery, glass, hoop-iron, shot, rivets, candy, starch, sugar, 
 preserved fruits, glucose, chairs, vapor stoves, lime, rubber, 
 screws, chains, harvesting machinery, pins, salt, hardware, type, 
 brass tubing, silk and wire. In these trades freedom of produc- 
 tion and sale has been for a time partially or wholly destroyed. 
 The American business man is very angry when boycotting is 
 resorted to by workmen ; but he is quite ready to boycott others 
 when his interests lead that way. The stamped tinware makers 
 in 1882, formed a ring and expelled members who sold at lower 
 prices than the fixed rates, and refused to allow anyone in the 
 pool to sell to the offenders. Some of the previous facts are 
 taken from an article by Mr Henry D. Lloyd,^ who has investi- 
 gated capitalist combinations with much knowledge and insight. 
 From the same article I quote the following : 
 
 On the 1st of April, 1882, when the rest of us were lost in the reck- 
 less gaity of All Fools^ Day, forty-one tack manufacturers found out 
 that there were too many tacks, and formed the Central Manufacturing 
 Company of Boston, with 3,000,000 dollars capital. The tack-mills in 
 the combination ran about three days in the week. When this com- 
 bination a few weeks ago silenced a Pittsburg rival by buying him out, 
 they did not remove the machinery. The dead chimneys and idle ma- 
 chines will discourage new men from starting anotlier factory, or can 
 be run to ruin them if they are not to be discouraged in any other way. 
 The first fruits of the tack-pool were an increase of prices to twice 
 what they had been."’ 
 
 Again I quote Mr. Lloyd : 
 
 The men who make our shrouds and coffins have formed a close 
 
 1 “Lords of Industry.’' North American Review, June, 1834. 
 
84 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 corporation known as the ^National Burial Case Association/ and held 
 their annual convention in Chicago last year. Their action to keep up 
 prices and keep down the number of coffins was secret, lest mortality 
 should be discouraged.” 
 
 From coffins to crackers is a short step in the study of capi- 
 talist methods ; 
 
 ‘‘The Western Cracker Bakers^ Association met in Chicago, in Feb- 
 ruary, to consider among other things ‘ the reprehensible system of 
 cutting prices ’ {i. e., the reprehensible system of free competition which 
 capitalists in buying labor tell us is our salvation). They first had a 
 banquet. After their ‘merriment and diversion’ the revellers, true to 
 Adam Smith’s description, turned to consider ‘ some contrivance to 
 raise prices.’ ‘ The price-lists were perfected,’ said the newspaper re- 
 port; ‘ and then they adjourned.’” 
 
 In 1875 broke out a severe competition among the fire in- 
 surance companies, upon the collapse of a previous pool ; and 
 the competition cost them in New York City alone $17,500,000 
 in seven years. Consequently in 1882 they made a new 
 combination which covei^ed the whole country, and which Mr. 
 Lloyd declares to be wealthy, cohesive, and powerful. Though 
 there is no pool or ring, I am credibly informed that there is 
 a common understanding among the fire insurance companies 
 of London. One of the most noted of combinations has been 
 the great Copper Syndicate which attracted world-wide atten- 
 tion early in 1888. It was formed by some French speculators 
 in October, 1887, and during the eighteen months of its exist- 
 ence, maintained copper at a purely arbitrary price in all the 
 markets of the world. At its head was M. Eugmie Secretan, 
 managing director of the Societe des Mc'Taux, the world’s 
 largest buyer of, and dealer in, manufactured copper. The 
 syndicate’s agents bought all the copper that was visible and 
 for sale, the result of their speculation beiug that the price of 
 copper in the London market rose from less than £40 to over 
 £80 a ton, and the price of Lake Superior co})per in America 
 rose from 10|- cents to 17f cents per pound. M. Secretan 
 informed a London journal that his designs were purely philan- 
 thropic. Our only purpose,” said he, is that every miner, 
 dealer and manufacturer should have fair remuneration for his 
 work.” Thanks to M. Secretan’s philanthropy, copper, tin, 
 lead and spelter rose enormously in price ; several trades were 
 more or less paralysed ; and in France large numbers of work^ 
 
INDUSTRIAL. 
 
 85 
 
 men were thrown out of employment. And let it not be sup- 
 posed that the suicide of M. Denfert-Rochereau, which her- 
 alded the collapse of this first attempt to corner the world’s 
 copper — a collapse due to a miscalculation of the extent to 
 which the supply of copper could increase under the stimulus 
 of high prices — offers us any security against a repetition 
 of the attempt. On the contrary, it has shewn how the 
 thing may be safely done. The metal hoarded by the un- 
 lucky speculators is still so far cornered that it has been ke})t 
 off the market up to the present, prices being not yet normal. 
 “ To a regular trust it must and will come at last,” says Mr. 
 E. Benjamin Andrews, of Cornell University. Nor has 
 aught taken place to indicate that a Copper Trust, organized 
 like the Standard Oil Trust, with its energy and relentless 
 methods, would fail.” ^ 
 
 The Individualist who supposes that Free Trade plus private 
 property will solve all economic problems is naturally surprised 
 at these rings,” which upset all his crude economic notions ; 
 and he very illogically asks for legislation to prevent the natural 
 and inevitable results of the premises with which he starts. It 
 is amusing to note that those who advocate what they call self- 
 reliance and self-help are the first to call on the State to interfere 
 with the natural results of that self-help, of that private enter- 
 prise, when it has overstepped a purely arbitrary limit. Why, 
 on ordinary commercial principles, should not a copper syndi- 
 cate grasp all the copper in the world? It is merely the fittest 
 surviving. The whole case against Socialism is assumed by its 
 most intelligent opponents to lie in that Darwinian theory. And 
 yet when the copper syndicate or the coal barons ” survive, they 
 arouse against themselves the fiercest and, from the commercial 
 point of view, the most unreasonable antagonism. As sin when 
 it is finished is said to bring forth death, so capitalism when it is 
 finished brings forth monopoly. And one might as well quarrel 
 with that plain fact as blame thorns because they do not produce 
 grapes, or thistles because they are barren of figs. 
 
 The story of the growth of capitalism is not yet complete. 
 The “ ring ” is being succeeded by a more elaborate organization 
 known as the “ trust.” Although in England great combinations 
 like the Salt Union are rapidly rising, yet we must again travel 
 
 1 Quarterly Journal of Economics, July, 1889. 
 
86 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 to America to learn what the so-called trust ’’ is. The fullest 
 information on the subject of trusts is contained in a report of 
 a Committee of the New York State Legislature, which was 
 appointed to investigate the new combination. The following 
 trusts were inquired into : Sugar, milk, rubber, cotton-seed oil, 
 envelope, elevator, oil-cloth. Standard oil, butchers’, glass, and 
 furniture. A trust is defined by the Committee as a combination 
 to destroy competition and to restrain trade through the stock- 
 holders therein combining with other corporations or stockholders 
 to form a joint-stock company of corporations, in effect renounc- 
 ing the powers of such several corporations, and placing all 
 powers in the hands of trustees.” The general purposes and 
 effects are stated to be to control the supply of commodities 
 and necessities ; to destroy competition ; to regulate the quality ; 
 and to keep the cost to the consumer at prices far beyond their 
 fair and equitable value.” It is unnecessary to deal with all these 
 trusts, which possess certain features in common. I will select 
 one or two, particularly the great Standard Oil Trust and the 
 Cotton-seed Oil Trust. 
 
 The Standard Oil Trust is probably the largest single business 
 monopoly in the world, the value of all its included interests 
 being estimated, according to the evidence submitted, at 
 £29,600,000. In the report it is described as ‘‘one of the most 
 active and possibly the most formidable monied power on this 
 continent. Its influence reaches into every State, and is felt in 
 remote villages ; and the products of its refineries seek a market 
 in almost every seaport on the globe.” The germ of this huge 
 monopoly was a small petroleum refinery near Cleveland, bought 
 by one Rockefeller, a book-keeper in a store, and a friend of his, 
 a porter, with borrowed money. Rockefeller formed an acquain- 
 tance with a rich whiskey distillei', who advanced money and 
 put his son-in-law Flagler into the business. This person’s 
 doctrines are thus described : He says that there is no damned 
 sentiment about business ; that he knows no friendship in trade; 
 and that if he gets his business rival in a hole he means to keep 
 him there.” Such a man is eminently fitted to be the founder 
 of a monopoly : he is a hero of self-help ; for he helps himself 
 to anything he can lay his hands on. A second refinery was 
 established in Ohio, and a warehouse opened in New York. The 
 concern grew, and was incorporated as the Standard Oil Com- 
 pany. It is charged with having secured special legislation by 
 
INDUSTRIAL. 
 
 87 
 
 judicious expenditure in the lobbies of the Ohio and rcnnsyl- 
 vania Legislatures. By entering into arrangements with the 
 trunk railway lines, it secured special rates for transit. New 
 refineries were established and new oil lands in Pennsylvania 
 acquired ; the capital was increased ; and an enormous yearly 
 business was done. After a time the company controlled every 
 avenue of transportation ; managed all the largest refineries in 
 the land ; and was able to shut off every competitor from either 
 receiving supplies or shipping its products. New companies, 
 nominally distinct, but all under the control of the same men, 
 were incorporated in New Jersey, Ohio, West Virginia and 
 other States. The monopoly elected one of its chief stockholders 
 into the United States Senate, it is said, through bribery in the 
 Ohio Legislature over which body it certainly acquired strong 
 hold. These tactics were known as coal oil politics.” All the 
 dirty work was, of course, done through agents, the directors 
 pretending perfect innocence. In 1882 the Standard Oil 
 Companies were consolidated in the Standard Oil Trust.^ The 
 stockholders surrendered their stock to the trustees, nine in 
 number, created under the agreement, and received certificates 
 in the place thereof, the representatives of the trust and the 
 stockholders in the refineries making a joint valuation of the re- 
 fineries, and the certificates being issued to that amount. Thus 
 the separate concerns were merged in one gigantic business, 
 controlled by nine men (owning a majority of the stock), having 
 a monopoly of nearly all the oil lands in America, controlling 
 legislative votes, forming a solid alliance with the railway and 
 shipping interests, and determining to a gallon how much oil 
 shall be produced and refined, and to a fraction of a cent what 
 shall be its price. In 1887 there was a cash dividend of 10 per 
 cent, declared, besides a stock dividend of 20 per cent, on the 
 certificates of four years’ aggregation. In addition to the enor- 
 mous stock they hold, the trustees receive an annual salary 
 of £5,000. What are the economic results of this combination ? 
 It has not raised prices, as the trusts were charged by the com- 
 mittee with doing. On the contrary there has been a steady 
 decrease in price during the decade 1877-1887. The consump- 
 tion of oil has also enormously increased. The working and 
 producing expenses have been greatly lowered by the dismissal of 
 
 1 Report of Senate Committee, p. 419. 
 
88 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 needless labor and vast improvements in machinery ; the pipe 
 lines controlled by the trust having displaced 5,700 teams of 
 horses and 11,400 men in handling the oil. Thus of this trust 
 we may say that though the means used to establish it were 
 morally doubtful or even bad, the political results disastrous, the 
 economic results have been beneficial, except in the matter of 
 helping to form an unemployed class through the dismissal of 
 needless labor consequent on the development of machinery. 
 
 The Cotton-seed Oil Trust was organized two or three years 
 ago in the State of Arkansas.^ Upwards of seventy different 
 companies had been competing with each other and consequently 
 suffering heavy losses. Their mills being comparatively small 
 and equipped with imperfect machinery, they were glad to com- 
 bine ; and those that did not were forced to close. The seventy 
 corporations, the vast majority of the members of which had 
 agreed to the combination, surrendered their stock to a body of 
 trustees and received in return $100 certificates. The various 
 mills send a monthly report to the trust ; and if the officers in a 
 given mill do not sell at the terms imposed, they are dismissed 
 by the trust.^ The object of the trust was declared by a witness 
 to be to prevent bankruptcy, to improve methods, to find 
 markets, to develop the enterprise and to make money. The 
 economic result has been displacement of labor by the machinery 
 and great economy in production. Incidentally it came out that 
 much cotton-seed oil was sold to the French and Italian buyers, 
 who mix it with a little olive oil and export it back to America 
 and to England, where a confiding public purchases it as pure 
 Tuscan olive oil — an interesting illustration of international 
 trade morality. 
 
 An examination of the milk and butchers’ trust ought to be 
 a revelation to those who imagine that trade is ‘^free,” and 
 that competition rules. On April 29th, 1885, the directors of 
 the Milk Exchange met in New York and unanimously resolved : 
 
 “ That on the first day of May next, and until otherwise ordered, the 
 market price of milk produced from meadow hay and sound cereals be 
 2^ cents per quart, and that produced from brewers^ grains and glucose 
 and corn starch refuse be 2 cents per quart/’ ^ 
 
 A representative of the Sheep and Lamb Butchers’ Mutual 
 
 1 Ileport of Senate Committee, p. 233, et seq. 
 
 ^ Ileport, p. 244. 
 
 ^ Report of Senate Committee, p. 305. 
 
INDUSTRIAL. 
 
 89 
 
 Benefit Association testified that tlie members of that body 
 agreed that they would only buy sheep and calves from tlie 
 Sheep Brokers’ Association, a penalty for violation of this rule 
 being imposed at the rate of 15 cents a head per sheep or calf. 
 The absolute despotism, and the system of espionage involved 
 ill such regulation is obvious. Here is a copy of a document 
 issued by this body : 
 
 New York, January 9, 1888. Permission has been granted by the 
 board of trustees of this association to Simon Strauss to buy sheep and 
 lambs in New York markets, providing he buys no sheep and lambs 
 from outsiders, under penalty of 15 cents per head fine. Richard S. 
 Tobin, Secretary.”! 
 
 Occasionally the Association relaxed. On November 5th, 1887, 
 according to its minutes, 
 
 ‘‘The application of John Healey, No. 2, to be granted tlie privilege 
 of buying a few sheep and lambs without the 15 cents being charged 
 to the brokers, was favorably acted upon.” 
 
 This is not a record of Bagdad under the caliphs, but of the 
 Republican State of New York! The threatened despotism of 
 Socialism has been often eloquently dwelt on ; but what of the 
 actual despotism of to-day ? 
 
 Now what does this examination of trusts show? That, 
 granted private property in the raw material out of which 
 wealth is created on a hugh scale by the new inventions which 
 science has placed in our hands, the ultimate effect must be 
 the destruction of that very freedom which the modern demo- 
 cratic State posits as its first principle. Liberty to trade, 
 liberty to exchange products, liberty to buy where one pleases, 
 liberty to transport one’s goods at the same rate and on the 
 same terms enjoyed by others, subjection to no imperiuih to 
 imperio : these surely are all fundamental democratic principles. 
 Yet by monopolies every one of them is either limited or de- 
 nied. Thus capitalism is apparently inconsistent with democ- 
 racy as hitherto understood. The development of capitalism 
 and that of democracy cannot proceed without check on parallel 
 lines. Rather are they comparable to two trains approaching 
 each other from different directions on the same line. Collision 
 between the opposing forces seems inevitable. 
 
 But both democracy and the new capitalist combinations 
 
 1 Report of Senate Committee, p. 497. 
 
90 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 which threaten it are inevitable growths of an evolutionary 
 process. We are therefore brought to consider the question 
 whether the ring, syndicate, or trust either can or ought to be 
 destroyed. These combinations can be shown to be the most 
 economical and efficient methods of organizing production and 
 exchange. They check waste, encourage machinery, dismiss 
 useless labor, facilitate transport, steady prices, and raise 
 profits — i.e., they best effect the objects of trade from the 
 capitalist’s point of view. Now, the opponents of Socialism 
 say that without this enterprising capitalist we cannot live. 
 He ‘‘provides employment,” they say. Well, if we need him, 
 we must obviously pay his price. If he has a natural monopoly 
 of a function indispensable to social progress, society must con- 
 cede the terms he imposes. These terms are briefly large com- 
 binations of capitalist ownership. In this way he can best 
 organize business ; if we do not choose to let him do it in this 
 way, he will not do it for us at all. From his point of view 
 that is a fair position to take up ; and it places the Individualist 
 opponent of trusts in an awkward dilemma. For he must 
 either submit to trusts or give up capitalists, in which latter 
 case he becomes a Socialist. The answer of Socialism to the 
 capitalist is that society can do without him, just as society 
 now does without the slave-owner or feudal lord, both of whom 
 were formerly regarded as necessary to the well-being and even 
 the very existence of society. In organizing its own business 
 for itself, society can employ, at whatever rate of remuneration 
 may be needed to call forth their powers, those capitalists who 
 are skilled organizers and administrators. But those who are 
 mere dividend-receivers will no longer be permitted to levy a 
 contribution on labor, but must earn their living by useful in- 
 dustry as other and better people have to do. 
 
 It may be said that society is not yet ripe for this trans- 
 formation, nor is it. The forms of the democratic State are 
 not yet perfected, nor has the economic evolution yet proceeded 
 generally far enough, even in England, not to speak of the less 
 advanced European countries. Much yet remains to be done 
 through both the education of the intellect and the development 
 of a nobler public spirit. But on the other hand we seem to be 
 rapidly approaching such an impasse that some very large and 
 definite extension of collective authority must be made. This 
 would seem to involve on one side general reduction of the 
 
INDUSTRIAL. 
 
 91 
 
 hours of labor, arid on the other an attempt to absorb by the 
 community a portion of those social values which it creates. 
 In reference to ground values it may be anticipated that local 
 democratic authorities will secure them for the benefit of the 
 people by any means which may be found expedient. 
 
 As regards the great combinations of capital, State action 
 may take one of three courses. It may prohibit and dissolve 
 them ; it may tax and control them ; or it may absorb and 
 administer them. In either case the Socialist iheovy ipso facto 
 admitted , for each is a confession that it is well to exercise a 
 collective control over industrial capital. If the first of these 
 courses is taken a distinctly retrogressive policy is definitely 
 adopted, a policy of alarm at what Mr. Cleveland called the 
 communism of capital,” a policy of reversion to the chaos of 
 “free competition,” and of cession of the undoubted benefits 
 which combination has secured. Such a policy would signify 
 the forcible prevention of acquisition of property, the very thing 
 dearest to the Individualist. If the powers of acquisition, now 
 evidently dependent on combination, are to be restricted, what 
 becomes of the “incentive to industry,” the “reward of absti- 
 nence,” and all the ^•est of the worn out phrases which have so 
 often done duty in the place of argument ? If the syndicate or 
 the trust represents the legitimate outcome of capitalism' — if it 
 is necessary to give order to trade and to prevent the ruinous 
 waste of unrestricted competition, how absurd it is for the State 
 to say to the capitalist: “You shall carry your privileges of 
 acquisition just up to the point where competition is likely to 
 ruin you ; but there you shall stop. Immediately you and your 
 friends combine to prevent waste, to regulate production and 
 distribution, to apply new methods of manufacture, we shall 
 absolutely prevent you or restrain you by vexatious regula- 
 tions.” To which the capitalist may be supposed to reply : 
 “ I cannot fulfil my function in society at this serious risk. I 
 shall never know security — never be even moderately sure of 
 reaping that reward to which I am admittedly entitled. If 
 you intend to fetter my action in this way after having pro- 
 claimed me free to own the raw material out of which wealth 
 is made — if you compel me to stop at a purely arbitrary line, I 
 must inform you that I am not going to undertake business on 
 such terms.” Would not the capitalist say something like this ; 
 and from his point of view would he not be right? 
 
 If it were instantly possible to do so, we should take the 
 
92 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 capitalist at liis word ; appropriate the necessary instruments of 
 production ; and make them common property, the values they 
 create accruing to the community. But the human race 
 generally contrives to exhaust every device which stupidity can 
 suggest before the right line of action is ultimately taken. I 
 think therefore that some probably inefficient method of taxation 
 and public control over combinations will, as a matter of fact, 
 be adopted. Such legislation will immensely restrict individual 
 liberty in certain directions, will produce much friction, and may 
 possibly hamper production ; until by a long series of experi- 
 ments men shall discover what is the most reasonable way of 
 acquiring for the community as a whole the wealth which it 
 produces. But in any case individualism or anything whatever 
 in the nature of laisser faire goes by the board. 
 
 And now, finally, what is the immediate policy for rational 
 students of economics and genuine social reformers to adopt ? 
 Their motto must be. Nulla vestigia retrorsum. To all quack 
 proposals tliey must offer a steady resistance. These proposals 
 will take the form of attempts to bring back some economic 
 condition out of which society has emerged. One quack will 
 desire to revive the old British yeomanry ; another will talk 
 nonsense about Fair Trade ; ” a third will offer to the rustic 
 ‘Hhree acres and a cow’’ ; while a fourth will see salvation in 
 getting rid of primogeniture and entail and planting ” pros- 
 perous laborers on tlie soil — as though the laborers grew there 
 like trees. Those who understand the economic crisis may be 
 ready and eager to support any reform, however small, which 
 is a genuine step forward : but they cannot support any effort 
 to call back the past. They may help to build a new bridge 
 across the gulf that separates us from the Co-operative Com- 
 monwealth ; but they can never repair the old broken-down 
 structure which leads back to Individualism. Instead, there- 
 fore, of attempting to undo the work which capitalists are 
 unconsciously doing for the people, the real reformer will 
 rather prepare the people, educated and organized as a true 
 industrial democracy, to take up the threads when they fall 
 from the weak hands of a useless possessing class. By this 
 means will the class struggle, with its greed, hate, and waste, 
 be ended, and the life hinted at by Whitman in his ‘‘ Song of 
 the Exposition ” be attained : 
 
 “ Practical, peaceful life, the people^s life, the People themselves, 
 Lifted, illumined, batlied in peace — -elate, secure in peace/^ 
 
MORAL. 
 
 BY SYDNEY OLIVIER. 
 
 The argument of this fourth instalment of Socialist criticism 
 may be provisionally described as an attempt to justify Socialist 
 ideals by the appeals to canons of moral judgment accepted 
 generally and supported by the results of positive ethical 
 science. The previous essays have made it clear that we are 
 dealing with Socialism in that restricted sense in which it is 
 defined by Schaeffle,^ as having for its aim the replacement of 
 private capital by collective capital : that is, by a method of 
 production which, upon the basis of the collective property 
 of the sum of all the members of the society in the instru- 
 ments of production, seeks to carry on a co-operative organiza- 
 tion of national work.” We are not dealing with Socialism as 
 a religion, nor as concerned with questions of sex or family : 
 we treat it throughout as primarily a property-form, as the 
 scheme of an industrial system for the supply of the material 
 requisites of human social existence. 
 
 If it were admitted that the establishment of such a system 
 would guarantee just this much — that abject poverty should 
 be done away, and that every man and woman should be 
 ensured the opportunity of obtaining sufficient food and cov- 
 ering in return for a moderate day’s work, we might still be far 
 from convincing some people that the realization of that ideal 
 will be a good thing for the world. There are still a great 
 many who, though they may not join in the common prophecy 
 that the chief results of such a system would be an increase in 
 beer-drinking and other stupid self-indulgence,^ yet regard 
 starvation and misery as part of the inevitable order of nature, 
 
 1 “The Quintessence of Socialism.” Swan, Sonnenscliein and Co. 
 
 2 E, G., see “ Communism and Socialism,” by Theodore D. Woolsey. 
 Sampson, Low and Co., London. 
 
94 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 and as necessary conditions of progress, conducive to the sur- 
 vival of what they are pleased to call the fittest ” types of life. 
 Such critics see danger to progress in any attempt to enrol 
 intelligence and adaptiveness into conscious combination 
 against starvation and misery, to extinguish by concerted effort 
 survivals of the accidents of primitive barbarism against which 
 as individuals we are always struggling. This aim of Socialism, 
 accordingly, does not wholly commend itself to their moral 
 judgment, to their oj)inion of what is good in the widest sense, 
 although they may willingly admit that the aim possesses a cer- 
 tain element of shortsighted good intention. Other persons, 
 influenced by religious conceptions older than that of progress, 
 and regarding morality less as determined by reference to that 
 end than as a concern of the individual, a certain state of the 
 soul of each man, are inclined to view the material evils which 
 Socialists desire to get rid of, as a necessary schooling and 
 discipline without which individual morality would decay. 
 
 Against these doctrines Socialists would maintain that the 
 ordering of our national life, and of the relations between 
 individuals and social groups throughout the world in accord- 
 ance with the principles of Socialism, is the effectual and indis- 
 pensable process for ensuring to the mass of mankind the 
 advantages of progress already effected and its continued and 
 orderly development, and for the realisation, in individuals 
 and the State, of the highest morality as yet imagined by us. 
 
 It may be well at this point to anticipate a challenge to 
 define what is meant by the word “ Morality,” and to briefly 
 explain the position which will be assumed, and the method 
 which will be followed throughout the succeeding observations. 
 It must be remembered that the subject of this essay is “ The 
 Moral Aspect of the Basis of Socialism,” and not ^^The 
 Socialist View ol the Basis of Morals.” We may therefore 
 conscientiously steer clear of the whirlpool of agelong con- 
 troversy as to what that basis is, merely noting as we pass that 
 any metaphysic of Ethics being necessarily universal, there 
 is in this sense no special ethic or morality of Socialism. By 
 such cautious procedure we sacrifice indeed the fascinating 
 ambition to exhibit, by impressive dialectic pageant of deduction 
 from first principles, the foundation of formal Socialism in the 
 Idea that informs the universe. But we also avoid the cer- 
 tainty of losing, at the very outset of our attempted demon- 
 
MOKAL. 
 
 95 
 
 stration, the company of all but that minority who miglit 
 assent to our fundamental propositions. A further sacrifice 
 we shall make, in descending to the unpretentious methods 
 of empiricism ; for we thereby renounce the right of appeal to 
 that theologic habit of mind common to Socialists with other 
 pious persons. Mr. Henry George, educated under the 
 American Constitution, may share the familiarity of its fram- 
 ers with the intentions of the Creator and the natural rights of 
 Man. He may prove, as did Mr. Herbert Spencer in his gen- 
 erous youth, that private property in land is incompatible with 
 the fundamental right of each individual to live and to own 
 the product of his labor. But positive ethical science knows 
 nothing of natural and fundamental rights: it knows nothing 
 of individual liberty, nothing of equality, nothing of under- 
 lying unity. Yet here again our loss has some redress ; for a 
 brief survey will assure us that various schools of moral phil- 
 osophy, differing in their characteristic first principles, are con- 
 verging in the justification of Socialism; and that the practical 
 judgments of contemporary mankind as to what sort of con- 
 duct is ‘‘moral,’’ and what conditions make for the increase of 
 “ common morality,” are in practice largely coincident. They 
 offer, at least, a body of provisional opinion, or prejudice, to 
 which we can appeal in presenting Socialism for criticism of 
 its morality. The tribunal is by no means infallible : still, the 
 common contemporary sense of humanity may count for 
 something. But in approaching the criticism of Socialism 
 from the point of view of ethics, we are bound to go a little 
 deeper than this. While accepting the phenomena of current 
 opinion on morality as part of our material, we must follow 
 the explorations of ethical speculation into the causes and his- 
 tory of the development of those opinions. By examining the 
 genesis of convictions that this or that kind of action is good 
 or bad, moral or immoral, we shall be helped to form a judg- 
 ment as to which appears likely to persist and be strengthened, 
 and which to be modified, weakened, or forgotten. If the 
 claim of Socialism rests on judgments of the latter class, we 
 may know that it is a moribund bantling ; if they preponderate 
 among the obstacles to its credit, we may prophesy encourag- 
 ingly of it ; if it is supported by those judgments whose 
 persistence seems essential to the survival of the individual 
 and of society, we may be assured of its realisation in the 
 future. 
 
96 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 Socialism appears as the offspring of Individualism, as the 
 outcome of individualist struggle, and as the necessary condi- 
 tion for the approach to the individualist ideal. The oppo- 
 sition commonly assumed in contrasting the two is an accident 
 of the now habitual confusion between personality and person- 
 alty, between a man’s life and the abundance of things that he 
 has. Socialism is merely Individualism rationalized, organized, 
 clothed, and in its right mind. Socialism is taking form in 
 advanced societies and the social revolution must be brought 
 to its formal accomplishment through the conscious action of 
 innumerable individuals seeking an avenue to rational and 
 pleasant existence for themselves and for those whose happiness 
 and freedom they desire as they do their own. All conscious 
 action, all conscious modification of conditions, is inspired by 
 the desire of such personal relief, satisfaction, or expression, 
 by the attempt to escape from some physical or intellectual 
 distress. Subjective volition, passion it is,” says Hegel, 
 that sets men in activity : men will not interest themselves 
 for anything unless they find their individuality gratified by its 
 attainment.” This common end, this desire of personal relief 
 or satisfaction, we see throughout recorded or indicated history 
 impelling every living creature on the earth ; merging itself, 
 as we trace it backwards, in the mere apparent will to live of 
 organisms not recognized as conscious, and in the indestructible 
 energy of the inorganic. The field of activity thus conceived 
 presents a panorama of somewhat large extent; but a very 
 smairdivision of it is all that we shall have to do with. For 
 morality, whatever be its nature and basis, certainly does not 
 become recognizable to us, we cannot attribute the quality of 
 rightness or wrongness, until the formation of society has begun, 
 until individuals are in conscious relation with individuals other 
 than themselves. 
 
 If we could imagine an individual absolutely isolated, and 
 having no relation at all with other sentient beings, we could 
 not say that it was moral or immoral for him to eat, drink, 
 sleep, breathe, wash himself, take exercise, cough, sneeze, and 
 the like, just as much or as little, wlien or where he felt inclined, 
 llis conduct in these activities must appear to us absolutely 
 indifferent. We may have some vague reflected suppositions 
 as to what is necessary for the dignity and development of the 
 Plan’s self,” as we might call it ; but this is a matter about 
 
MORAL. 
 
 97 
 
 which the man may pretend to know as much as we do ; and 
 we have really no valid ground for prejudice against the habits 
 of the recluse Indian fakir, who has, on the other hand, con- 
 siderable claims to be regarded as a peculiarly holy individual. 
 l)ut of every man living in society we can say, that if he sbtrves 
 himself into inefficiency ; if he gorges or fuddles himself ; if he 
 sleeps unseasonably ; if he abstains from the fresh air, the 
 cleanliness, and the exercise, necessary to keep his body healthy 
 and his presence pleasant ; if he destroys his powers by over- 
 work ; then he is acting wrongly, immorally, unreasonably, in 
 extreme cases insanely. (Insanity is only the name we give to 
 abnormal deviation from what are accepted as reasonable and 
 intelligible desires and behavior.) And if this is the case with 
 actions of the kind loosely described as self-regarding, with those 
 which most nearly concern the agent’s own person, much more 
 is it so with the kind of actions which necessarily and invariably 
 affect other persons. Those relations of the individual with his 
 fellows in which subjective morality is chiefly recognized, have 
 no existence at all apart from society. Subjective morality, 
 then, being only distinguishable in the State, the extent of our 
 panorama is already much diminished ; for in every gentile or 
 national society, and to some degree in the World-State of to- 
 day, we find the individualist activity, the desire and passion of 
 the human unit, very largely exercising itself in accordance with 
 what we call a moral habit. Innumerable types of society have 
 been formed in the process of life-development. In the oldest 
 of these we recognize the elements of a conventional morality, 
 similar to that by which our own human society is held to- 
 gether. We consider the ways of the ant; and we see that 
 they are wise. 
 
 We find that in all societies those actions and habits are 
 approved as moral which tend to preserve the existence of 
 society and the cohesion and convenience of its members ; and 
 that those which are or seem to be fraught with contrary 
 tendencies are considered immoral. It is plain that no society 
 in which these judgments were habitually reyersed could con- 
 tinue in existence ; and this fact will account for much of that 
 general inherited disposition to actions socially beneficial, and 
 inherited repugnance to those presumably the reverse, whicli 
 form so large a part of what we speak of as conscience. So 
 deep in grain have many of these common judgments come to 
 
98 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 be that their influence has passed out of consciousness ; and 
 they are obeyed automatically or instinctively without any 
 reflexion as to their moral aspect arising in the agent’s mind. 
 It is, for example, so necessary for the existence of society that 
 the citizen should abstain from slaughtering at large, such self- 
 restraint is so evidently reasonable, its non-observance so con- 
 trary to common sense, that when we find a murder done for 
 mere desire of bloodshed and under the impulse of no other 
 passion whatsoever, we do not think of the murderer as im- 
 moral, but rather as insane, judging the man who would destroy 
 the life of society as coroners’ juries by their habitual verdict 
 upon suicides pronounce of the man who destroys his own. 
 
 Most of the habits of activity and avoidance, necessary for 
 the mere physical existence of the individual as moral actions 
 and abstentions are necessary for the existence of society, have 
 long ago become automatic, and are sunk, so far as common 
 opinion is concerned, permanently out of the purview of moral 
 criticism. All the involuntary functions of the human body 
 which conduce to its nutrition and maintenance in health have 
 been gradually acquired in the course of ages, as the conditions 
 necessary for the expression of the mere animal will to live the 
 largest and freest life permitted by the physical environment. 
 And as the bodily form and functions of the typical individual 
 of each species have accrued and become established as the 
 indispensable mechanic of the mere determination to exist, so 
 the form and institution of society, and the relations and mutual 
 behavior of its individuals, have been adjusted and established 
 as the equally indispensable conditions for the expression of 
 the determination to exist more fully, for the enlargement of 
 freedom and opportunity for the gratification of those passions 
 and aspirations, the display of those energies and activities 
 whicli characterize the more complex forms of life as it passes 
 from the inororanic and vcfjetative to the conscious and self- 
 conscious stages of its evolution. 
 
 The primitive forms of liuman society we must infer to have 
 grown up and survived simply because they increased the 
 efficiency of man as a feeding and a fighting animal, just as did 
 those of the wolf, the beaver, and the ant. Society has now 
 grown to be for man the indispensable guarantee not only of 
 nutrition and protection, but of the opportunity to imagine and 
 attain a thousand varieties of more refined satisfaction. So far 
 
MOKAL. 
 
 99 
 
 as man has attained freedom to do and be as he desires, he has 
 attained it only through the evolution of society. When a so- 
 ciety perishes, as societies organically weak among stronger 
 competitors have done and will do, the individual perishes with 
 it, or is forced backwards with impaired freedom until a fresh 
 social integration renews and extends his powers of self-develop- 
 ment. Societies, as has been pointed out by Sidney Webb on 
 page 51, must safeguard their existence to-day for the very same 
 reasons for which society has formed itself. It has grown up 
 for the convenience of individuals, for their defence and relief 
 under the pressure of all that was not themselves — of Nature, 
 as we call it — -beasts, and competing men, to give a little 
 breathing space, a little elbow room, amid the storm and stress 
 of primaeval existence; and from that beginning it has been 
 unfolded and elaborated, each step of progress effected for the 
 convenience of active individuals, until the individual of to-day 
 is born as a leaf upon a mighty tree, or a coral insect in a 
 sponge, himself to live his individual life, and in living it to 
 modify the social organism in which he has his being. 
 
 Reviewing the development in society of the conditions for 
 the satisfaction of the individual will to live, and to live in the 
 best way conceivable, we see in the progress of moral ideas the 
 progress of discovery of the most reasonable manner of ordering 
 the life of the individual and the form of social institutions 
 under the contemporary environment. It has already been 
 pointed out that some kinds of anti-social action are so un- 
 reasonable, so obviously prejudicial to the attainment of the 
 common end of conscious individuals, that we brand them un- 
 hesitatingly as insane. Instances suggested were extreme per- 
 sonal uncleanliness or dissipation, and extreme cruelty or blood- 
 thirstiness. The reason why other anti-social or indirectly 
 suicidal kinds of action are not yet classed as madness, tliougli 
 there is a steady tendency towards so treating them, is plainly 
 that some activities of the individual, though hurtful to other 
 citizens just as the activity of a pack of wolves or a predatory 
 tribe is hurtful to adjacent societies, are commonly aimed at 
 gratifying impulses and passions which are not yet grown so 
 rare as blood-thirst, are not yet recognized as irrational or 
 valueless, or even are acknowledged to be in their proper scope 
 harmless, desirable, or necessary. 
 
 It is an established social convention (in England) that it is 
 
100 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 immoral to steal or to defraud. Only in very extreme cases do 
 we account these pursuits as evidences of mania ; for though in- 
 justice and dishonesty are incompatible with the health of society, 
 and thus actually unreasonable and indirectly suicidal, the 
 desires which prompt men to them are only at worst exaggera- 
 tions of the desire for wealth or subsistence, which everyone re- 
 cognizes as a necessary condition of the mere continuance of life. 
 Nay, where the alternative is death for lack of subsistence, many 
 consider that neither are immoral. At the other extreme, when 
 the instinct prompts aggression in defiance of the conscious 
 reason and without assignable purpose of gain, when Jean Yal- 
 jean robs the little Savoyard, or a noble earl pockets the sugar- 
 tongs, we speak of mental aberration or of kleptomania. 
 
 The case of self-defence is similar. Quarrelsomeness and 
 violence are destructive of social existence, or at best impede its 
 higher elaboration. But readiness of resentment and quickness 
 of fist were forages and ages necessities for individual survival ; 
 and for ages and ages more their kindred social qualities or spirit 
 and valor were necessary for social survival, and accordingly 
 ranked as virtues. The instruction to turn the other cheek to 
 the smiter is even now, perhaps, an exaggeration of the precept 
 commendable to Socialists when charged by the London police : 
 to suffer one’s self to be killed without reason is clearly and unmis- 
 takably immoral. As the western world advances out of war- 
 fare into industry, more and more of what was once military 
 virtue becomes immorality in the individual ; until an habitual 
 ferocity which might once have qualified its subject for chieftain- 
 ship may nowadays consign him to penal servitude or Bedlam. 
 
 The foregoing illustrations have been treated, for the present 
 purpose, with reference only to the effect of the behavior of the 
 individual upon society. It is indeed certain that anti-social 
 action does not, as a rule, effect permanent satisfaction for the 
 individual (isolated instances, of the type of Shelley’s Count 
 Cenci, notwithstanding) ; but, independently of this, the actions 
 and propensities of the individual have always, it appears, been 
 judged by his fellows moral or immoral chiefly according to their 
 supposed effects upon society. The object of every living crea- 
 ture being to do as he pleases, if what he pleases to do incom- 
 modes other people they will take measures to restrain him from 
 doing it. This they strive to effect by means of laws and con- 
 ventional codes of morality, the main difference between the two 
 
MORAL. 
 
 101 
 
 being that the code of law is enforced by the infliction of direct 
 personal punishment by the officers of the State. This accep- 
 tance of codes of laws and conventions of morality leads to a 
 secondary series of judgments as to right and wrong ; for it 
 comes to be accounted immoral to break the law whether the 
 law itself be good or not, and reprehensible to depart from con- 
 vention whether convention be any* longer reasonable or not. 
 This secondary morality is as it were the bud-sheath of the indi- 
 vidual, which support he cannot dispense with until he has come 
 to his full powers, but which he must dispense with if he is to 
 fully realise his own freedom. Customary morality prevents 
 him during the process of his education from pursuing his own 
 satisfaction across the corns of his fellow creatures. In the 
 process of education he learns that for the unit in society the 
 word self includes more than the individual : the infant very soon 
 finds out that what disagrees with his mother disagrees with him ; 
 the child, that the failure of his father’s income means misery 
 and hunger to the family. To say nothing of the facts of sym- 
 pathy, every man born into an advanced society is early made 
 aware that the satisfaction of his mere material needs depends 
 upon the activities of that society around him quite as much as 
 upon his own. All through the growth of nations and societies 
 the complexity of this interdependence of individuals has in- 
 creased, the areas of social consciousness have been extended and 
 unified, from the solitary cave-dweller to the family or horde, 
 from the tribe to the nation, and from the nation, by commerce, 
 to the world, till the fortunes of each people have power over the 
 hopes and fears of workers in every other, and the arts, the 
 learning, and the literature of a hundred painful civilizations are 
 available for us to-day, all the kingdoms of the earth and their 
 glory displayed in a moment of time. 
 
 But not by bread alone does mankind live. Very early in the 
 course of human evolution must the type of individual to whom 
 all society was repugnant have been eliminated and suppressed 
 by natural selection. The social instinct, the disposition to find 
 comfort in comradeship independently of its material advantages, 
 is of such evident antiquity in Man that we are justified in 
 speaking of it as one of his fundamental and elementary charac- 
 teristics. It is easy enough to suggest theories of the origin of 
 this adhesiveness, this affection, this sympathy, in the conditions 
 of racial survival : the important fact for us is its remarkable 
 
102 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 susceptibility of cultivation and extension. The individual in 
 society does that which is pleasant to his friends, and abstains 
 from doing that which is unpleasant, not because he likes to be 
 thought a good fellow, or expects benefits in return, but simply 
 because it gives him immediate pleasure so to act. He is sen- 
 sitive to that which hurts them, not because he fears that his 
 own defences are weakened by their injury, but because they 
 have actually become part of himself by the extension of his 
 consciousness over them. This social instinct, this disposition 
 to benevolent sympathy, appears almost as inextinguishable as 
 the personal desire of life : in innumerable instances it has 
 proved far stronger. 
 
 The recognition by each individual of his dependence on 
 society or sensitiveness to his own interest, and his affection 
 towards society or sensitiveness to its interest : these two faces 
 of the same fact represent an intricate tissue of social conscious- 
 ness extremely sensitive to all kinds of anti-social, or immoral, 
 action. The moral education of the individual appears formally 
 as the process of learning, by sheer extension of knowledge and 
 experience, and nothing else, how he may harmonise and follow 
 out his own desires in these two aspects and their combinations. 
 He has to learn how to provide for the needs of his bodily life 
 in a manner that will not interfere with the freedom of others to 
 do the same. Laws and conventions of morality guide him at 
 first in this respect ; but the man cannot be said to be free until 
 he acts morally because, foreseeing that on the satisfaction of 
 these primary needs new desires will emerge whose satisfaction 
 will give him a more exquisite contentment, he perceives that it 
 is reasonable so to act. The existence and stability of society 
 are the indispensable guarantee for the general satisfaction of 
 the primary desires of individuals, therefore it is unreasonable to 
 weaken society by immoral action ; but much more are the ex- 
 istence and health of society indispensable conditions for the 
 common birth and satisfaction of the secondary desires, the 
 desires which have created all that is most valuable in civilisa- 
 tion and which find their satisfaction in art, in culture, in human 
 intercourse, in love. The moral education of the individual is 
 the lesson, not that desire is evil, and that he can only attain his 
 freedom by ceasing to desire, for this is death, or desertion, and 
 the army of the living presses on to fuller life ; but that the 
 wider, fuller satisfaction is built upon the simpler, and common 
 
MORAL. 
 
 103 
 
 morality a condition of its possibility ; that there are certain 
 manners and methods in which, if he goes about to save his life, 
 he most infallibly will lose it ; and that love, the social instinct, 
 and science, which is ordered knowledge, are his only reliable 
 tutors ill practical morality. 
 
 But mail ill society not only lives his individual life : he also 
 modihes the form of social institutions in the direction indi- 
 cated by reason — in such a manner, that is, as it seems to his 
 understanding will render them more efficient for securing free- 
 dom for that life of his. And just as certain forms of indi- 
 vidual activity, in their passage into and through the field of 
 positive criticism, appear first' as indifferent, because they seem 
 to concern the individual only, then as moral or immoral, be- 
 cause recognized as affecting society, later as simply rational 
 or insane, morality having here formally attained its identifica- 
 tion with reason and immorality with folly, and at last become 
 habitual, instinctive, and unconscious ; so institutions, origi- 
 nating in modes apparently accidental, come to be recognized 
 as useful and valuable additions to the machinery of existence, 
 are buttressed with all the authority and sanction of religion, 
 and finally pass into unquestioned acceptance by the common- 
 sense of men. In time some fundamental change in the con- 
 ditions of the life of individuals is introduced by causes 
 similarly unforeseen : the form of the old institution ceases to 
 subserve the common end : it begins to cramp the freedom of 
 the majority, who no longer require its support. Meanwhile it 
 has established a minority, ostensibly controlling it for the com- 
 mon weal, in a position to administer it in the sole interest of 
 their class. These, as their existence appears dependent on 
 their so administering it, cannot be untaught the habit except 
 by such modification of the institution as will render it again 
 impossible for any class to have a special interest in its contem- 
 porary form. 
 
 This process is so familiar in history that it would be a waste 
 of time here to illustrate it by tracing it in the growth of mon- 
 archies, aristocracies, priesthoods, chattel slavery, feudal bon- 
 dage, representative government, or others of its innumerable 
 manifestations. The institution of private property in certain 
 things is in many respects so reasonable and convenient for the 
 majority of mankind, and was so conspicuously advantageous 
 for those stronger individuals under whose leadership the 
 
104 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 begiiiiiiiigs of tribal civilisations were developed, that very 
 early in their history it received the sanction of moral conven- 
 tion, religion, and law. It was obviously necessary for the 
 establishment of industrial society, that each man should own 
 the product of his labor and the tools necessary for him to 
 labor effectually. But the Industrial Revolution described 
 in the third paper of this series has entirely changed the con- 
 ditions under which men produce wealth, and the character 
 of the tools with which they work, while the sanctions of law 
 and conventional morality still cling to all that has been 
 imported under the old definition of property. If the idea so 
 constantly appealed to in justification of property law is to be 
 realised ; if the fruits of each man’s labor ^ are to be guaran- 
 teed to him and he is to own the instruments with which he 
 works ; if the laws of property are not to establish a para- 
 sitic class taking tribute from the labor of others in the forms 
 of Rent and Interest, then we must modify our administration 
 of property. We must admit that as the agricultural laborer 
 cannot individually own the fai:m he works on and its stock, 
 as the factory hand cannot individually own the mill land and 
 industrial capital are things in which private property is impos- 
 sible, except on condition of a small minority owning all such 
 property and the great majority none at all. 
 
 Socialists contend that this system of private property in 
 land and capital is actively destructive of the conditions in 
 which alone the common morality necessary for happy social 
 life is possible. Without any demand upon the faith of those 
 persons who deny the capacity of average human nature for 
 the temperance and kindliness indispensable for the success of 
 a true co-operative commonwealth, they assert that this mod- 
 ern development of the property system (a development of the 
 last few generations only, and unprecedented in the history of 
 the world), is more and more forcing the individual into anti- 
 cocial disposition and action, and thereby destroying the prom- 
 ise of free and full existence, which only the health and 
 progressive development of the social organism can give him. 
 It has become plainly reasonable that when this is the effect of 
 our property system, we should modify our institutions in the 
 
 1 To the intelligent Socialist this phrase has, of course, no meaning. 
 But against the non-Socialist who employs it, it may be legitimately 
 used, ad captandum. 
 
MORAL. 
 
 105 
 
 directions which will give us freedom, just as we modified the 
 institutions which subjected us to a feudal aristocracy, and 
 abolished for ever the laws which enabled one man to hold 
 another as his chattel slave. 
 
 There is on record a Greek proverb, that so soon as a man 
 has ensured a livelihood, then he should begin to practise 
 virtue. We all protest that he will do well to practise virtue 
 under any circumstances ; but we admit on reflection that our 
 judgment as to what is virtuous action, depends upon the cir- 
 cumstances under which action is to be taken. Whether we 
 approve the killing of one man by another, depends entirely 
 on the circumstances of the case; and there is scarcely one 
 of the acts which our law^s regard as criminal, which could 
 not, under imaginable circumstances, be justified. Our laws, 
 and our conventional opinions, as to what conduct is moral or 
 immoral, are adapted to the ordinary circumstances of the 
 average man in society, society being in them presumed to be 
 homogeneous, not to contain in itself essential distinctions 
 between classes, or great contrasts between the conditions of 
 individuals. 
 
 But that element in our private property system w^hich is 
 at present the main object of the Socialist attack, the indi- 
 vidual ownership of the instruments of production, land and 
 capital, in an age when the use of those instruments has 
 become co-operative, results, and must inevitably result, as the 
 foregoing dissertations have sought to prove, in the division 
 of society into two classes, whose very livelihood is ensured to 
 them by methods essentially different. The livelihood of the 
 typical proletarian is earned by the exercise of his faculties 
 for useful activity : the livelihood of the typical capitalist, or 
 owner of property, is obtained, without any contributian of 
 his or her activity, in the form of a pension called rent, inter- 
 est, or dividend, guaranteed by law out of the wealth produced 
 from day to day by the activities of the proletariat. 
 
 Observe the effect of this distinction in moral phenomena. 
 Most of our common opmions as to social morality, are 
 adapted to a society in which every citizen is contributing 
 active service. The most ancient and universal judgments of 
 mankind as to the virtues of industry, of honesty, of loyalty 
 and forbearance between man and man, of temperance, 
 fortitude and just dealing, point to the elementary conditions 
 
106 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 necessary for the survival and strengthening of societies of 
 equal and free individuals dependent for their subsistence upon 
 the exercise of each one’s abilities, and upon his fitness for 
 co-operation with his fellows. But where a class or society 
 exists, not dependent upon its own industry, but feeding like a 
 parasite upon another society or class ; when the individuals of 
 such a parasitic society in no way depend for their livelihood 
 or their freedom upon their fitness for co-operation one with 
 another upon themselves, or upon any personal relation with 
 the class that feeds them ; then the observation of the moral 
 conventions of industrial and co-operative societies is in many 
 respects quite unnecessary for the continuance of the life of 
 the parasitic society, or for the pleasant existence of the 
 individuals composing it. All that is necessary is that 
 the established laws and conventions should continue to be 
 observed by the industrial class ( “ it is required in stewards 
 that a man be found faithful”); and as the existence of the 
 propertied class in modern societies, does depend ultimately 
 upon the observance by the bulk of the people of this conven- 
 tional morality, the propertied class professes publicly to ven- 
 erate and observe conventions, which, in its private practice, it 
 has long admitted to be obsolete. This complication is a 
 perennial source of cant. To this we owe the spectacle of 
 Sir William Harcourt advocating total abstinence, of Mr. 
 Arthur Balfour commending Christianity ; to this the con- 
 tinual inculcation of industry and thrift by idle and extrava- 
 gant people, with many another edifying variation on the 
 theme of Satan’s reproval of sin. Temperance, Christian 
 morality, industry, and economy are of considerable social 
 utility ; but for the members of a propertied class they are 
 not necessitated by the conditions of its existence, and conse- 
 quently in such classes are neither observed nor commonly 
 made the subject of moral criticism. 
 
 Consider the case of industry alone — of the moral habit of 
 earning one’s subsistence by useful activity. Assuming suste- 
 nance to be guaranteed, there is no obvious and pressing social 
 necessity for such exertion. No doubt the paradise of the 
 maid-of-all-work — where she means to do nothing for ever and 
 ever — is the paradise of an undeveloped intelligence. A society 
 relieved of the function of providing its own material sustenance 
 need not relai)se into general torpor, though the result is very 
 
MOKAL. 
 
 107 
 
 commonly that an individual so circumstanced relapses into 
 uselessness. It will be vain to preach to such an individual 
 that he will find his fullest satisfaction in honest toil : he will 
 simply laugh in your face, and go out partridge shooting, hunt- 
 ing, or yachting, or to Monte Carlo or the Rocky Mountains, 
 finding in such an exercise of his capacities the keenest imagin- 
 able enjoyment for months in succession. He may feel no in- 
 clination at all to work for the benefit of the people whose 
 work is supporting him : all that he, like the rest of us, requires 
 is to find some means of passing his time in an agreeable or 
 exciting manner. Accordingly, in that section of our nation 
 which speaks of itself as ‘‘ society,” being indeed a society 
 separated by economic parasitism from the common mass, we 
 find that the characteristic activity is the provision of agree- 
 able and exciting methods of passing time. This being the 
 end of fashionable society, its code of morality is naturally 
 quite different from the code suitable for industrial societies. 
 Truthfulness is preached in these as a cardinal virtue. Lying 
 is of course common enough in all classes, and is generally im- 
 moral ; but in the fashionable world it is not only a perfectly 
 legitimate means of avoiding an undesired visitor, or almost any 
 other unpleasant experience : it is a positive necessity of con- 
 ventional politeness and good manners. It is really harmless 
 here, almost a virtue. To return to the virtue of industry : though^ 
 the conventional morality of the people, necessary for the life 
 of the nation, permeates with its vibrations this parasitic society 
 which it enfolds ; and though the unfailing contentment which 
 a really intelligent man finds in social activity keeps a good 
 many of the propertied class usefully occupied, the actual public 
 opinion of that class is absolutely in accordance with the con- 
 ditions of their life. The clerk in a Government office is con- 
 gratulated by middle-class ac(][uaintances on his luck in obtain- 
 ing a berth where he need do no more work than he chooses ; 
 and it is habitually assumed that he will choose, like the Trafal- 
 gar Square fountains, to play from ten to four, with an interval 
 for lunch. That may or may not be an adequate account of 
 his activities : the significant thing is that such an assumption 
 should not be considered insulting. But how indignantly will 
 the very same acquaintances denounce the idleness and un- 
 trustworthiness of a British working man suspected, in the 
 service of a private master, of interpreting his time work as 
 
108 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 most servants of the public are good humoredly assumed, with- 
 out hint of disapproval, to interpret theirs ! 
 
 This obsolescence of elementary social morality is most 
 noticeable in women dependent upon incomes from property. 
 They are doubly removed from the primary conditions of life ; 
 they are less likely than their men folk to be engaged in any 
 work of perceptible social utility outside of their own homes ; 
 and their intellectual education being generally far more im- 
 perfect, it is only natural that their ideas of morality should be 
 still more intimately adapted to the conditions of their class, 
 and less to the general conditions of human society. The angels 
 of heaven, we have always understood, are exempt from the 
 apparatus of digestion, and are clothed as freely as the lilies of 
 the field. In any society where all common needs are so 
 supplied it would be immoral, surely, because a waste of time, 
 to work as for a living. Now the universal ideal of capitalism 
 is that man, being created a little lower than the angels, should 
 raise himself to their level in this respect by the acquisition of 
 property, a process pleasantly described as attaining a com- 
 petence or independence, that is to say the right to be dependent 
 and incompetent. The result of this has been a prejudice, 
 which only within quite recent years has begun to be seriously 
 shaken, that it is humiliating, even disgraceful, for a lady to 
 have to earn her own living at all, for a gentleman to practise 
 a handicraft for money, for a nobleman to go into trade : a 
 prejudice for which, in a class society, there was much justifi- 
 cation, but which is obviously a fragment of class morality 
 directly antagonistic to the common social morality which 
 recognises all useful industry as praiseworthy. It is now yield- 
 ing to economic pressure and to the stimulus of the desire to 
 get rich. Ladies are being driven, and in spite of Mr. Walter 
 Besant’s protestations will continue to be driven, into most 
 of the female handicrafts, though some are still outside the 
 pale of respectability. Ranching in America, though not yet 
 drovering and butchering in England, is suitable occupation 
 for the aristocracy. The “directing” of companies and the 
 patronizing of nitrogenous Volunteer Colonels are legitimate 
 modes of exploiting of a title. The prejudice against useful 
 employments is balanced for decency’s sake by a hypocritical 
 laudation of useless ones. The fiction so dear to the Primrose 
 Dame, that the rich are the employers of the poor, the idlers 
 
MORAL. 
 
 109 
 
 the supporters of the industrious, takes nowadays forms more 
 insidious than the rugged proposition that private vices are 
 public benefits. The amusements, the purely recreational . 
 activities, of country gentlemen are glorified in the National 
 Review^ as ‘‘hard work.” It is pretended that the leisured 
 class is the indispensable patron and promoter of culture and 
 the fine arts. The claim that such functions are virtues is a 
 direct concession to the feeling that some effort must be made 
 to exhibit the practices of parasitic society as compatible with 
 its preaching of the common social morality. 
 
 The same necessity causes an exaggerated tribute of praise 
 to be paid to such really useful work as is done under no com- 
 pulsion but that of the social instinct. This kind of activity is 
 habitually pointed to, by the friends of those who are engaged 
 in it, as evidence of extraordinary virtue. A few hours of 
 attention every w^eek to the condition of the poor, a few 
 gratuitously devoted to local administration, a habit of industry 
 in any branch of literature or science : these are imputed as an 
 excess of righteousness by persons who denounce the wage 
 laborer as an idler and a shirk. Such activity is work of 
 supererogation, approved but not required or expected. The 
 motto of “noblesse oblige” has not been adopted by the 
 plutocracy. Similar approbation and admiration are extended 
 to those who, while already earning their living by a reason- 
 able day’s work, employ their spare time, or a part of it, in 
 gratuitous activities of the kinds referred to. It may be safely 
 said that by far the greater portion of this kind of work is 
 done by people who are simultaneously earning an income in 
 middle class professions or by the less exhausting forms of 
 wage labor. Most of them have probably had experience of 
 the ridiculous inappropriateness of the commendation usually 
 paid to their gratuitous energy by well-to-do friends. The 
 activity is moral, no doubt ; but its exercise gives no sensation 
 of virtue or praiseworthiness ; it is followed because it is seen 
 to be reasonable, because it is the path indicated by common- 
 sense towards the satisfaction of the individual passion for the 
 extension of freedom and love. 
 
 The phenomena of class morality are ancient and familiar 
 enough. They have varied throughout history with the 
 
 ^ See National Review for February, 1888, “ Are Rich Landowners 
 Idlel by Lady Janetta Manners (now Duchess of Rutland). 
 
no 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 changing character of the basis of class distinctions. The great 
 permanent distinction of sex, and the social relations between 
 man and woman which have arisen thereout in the period of 
 civilisation from which the world is now emerging, have 
 resulted not only in the establishment of distinct codes of 
 chastity for the sexes, but also in innumerable prejudices 
 against the participation of one sex or the other in activities 
 having nothing whatever to do with physiological distinction. 
 They have even succeeded in producing, through inequality of 
 freedom and education, well marked differences in mental 
 habit, which show themselves continually when men and women 
 are confronted with the same questions of truthfulness, honor, 
 or logic. It is hardly necessary to observe that most of these 
 differences are distinctly traceable to the institution of private 
 property, and to its concentration in the hands of the male as 
 the stronger individual in a competitive society. The class 
 moralities of societies whose orders have been based immedi- 
 ately on status or caste have formed the subject of an extensive 
 literature. The tracing of all such distinctions to their root in 
 economic circumstances is scarcely less interesting than the 
 investigation of the same foundation for sex morality. But 
 even the interpreters of the Church Catechism have abandoned 
 the appeal to status as the basis of duty ; the idea of hereditary 
 aristocracy is dead ; and class distinctions and their appurtenant 
 ethics are now founded directly and obviously on property. 
 
 We have glanced at some effects of our present property sys- 
 tem which work continually for the destruction of the traditions 
 of social morality in the capitalist class. The fundamental idea 
 of that system, that man can live without working, as the angels 
 of heaven, is (fortunately) self-contradictory in this respect, that 
 in human society no class can so live except by the double labor 
 of another class or classes. The would-be angelic society on 
 earth must either own chattel slaves, or be a military caste taking 
 tribute, or a parasitical and exploiting class extracting rent and 
 interest by the operation of the industrial system analysed in the 
 preceding papers. Such a class and such a system are, as we 
 are all becoming aware, more virulently revolutionary in their 
 operation, and more certain to bring about their own destruction 
 than either chattel slavery or feudalism. Of these three phases 
 of human injustice that of wage slavery will surely be the short- 
 est. But meanwhile the propertied class assumes to represent 
 
MORAL. 
 
 Ill 
 
 civilisation ; its approved morality is preached and taught in 
 church and schools ; it debases our public opinion ; and it directly 
 poisons all that host of workers who are at present hangers-on 
 of the rich, whether as menial servants or as ministering to their 
 especial amusements and extravagance. There is no such snob 
 as a fashionable dressmaker ; and there is no class of the prole- 
 tariat so dehumanised as the class of domestic servants. 
 
 Now if these results are effected in the class whose livelihood 
 is assured, and whose education and culture have given it a hold 
 on the higher inducements to morality — if we here find morality 
 strangled at the root and starving, what shall we find when we 
 turn to the masses whose livelihood is not assured them ? Our 
 Greek, perhaps, would say that it was impossible for them to 
 practise virtue, just as Plato in his ‘‘ Republic ” suggested that 
 only the philosophic class could be really moral, since slaves and 
 the proletariat could not receive the intellectual education nec- 
 essary to train the reason. The great bulk of the wage earning 
 class in modern civilised countries is so far assured of its liveli- 
 liood that it remains thoroughly permeated with common social 
 morality. It is, from habit and preference, generally industrious 
 and kindly, thus exhibiting the two most important qualifications 
 for social life. It remains to a great extent honest, though 
 competition and capitalism are directly antagonistic to honesty. 
 The decalogue of commercial morality has its own peculiar inter- 
 pretation of stealing, murder, false witness and coveting ; and 
 yet the most unscrupulous wrecker in the City will be outraged 
 in his finest feelings by the class morality of the plumber, who, 
 called in to bring the gas to reason, takes the opportunity to 
 disorganise the water-supply and introduce a duster into the 
 drain. The employer is aghast at the increase of idleness and 
 bad workmanship under a system in which the good workman 
 knows that to work his best will not only not be worth his while 
 but will lead to the exaction of heavier tasks from his fellows. 
 
 But it is not in the mass of the proletariat that the action of 
 our property system in destroying elementary morality is most 
 conspicuous. It is in those whom it excludes even from the 
 proletariat proper that this extreme result is clearest. The 
 characteristic operation of the modern industrial economy is con- 
 tinually and repeatedly to thrust out individuals or bodies of the 
 workers from their settlement in the social organism — to eject, 
 as it were, the coral insect from the cell in which he is develop- 
 
112 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 ing. The capitalist farming system expels the agricultural 
 laborer from the village ; the machine expels the craftsman from 
 the ranks of skilled labor ; the perpetual competition and con- 
 solidation of capital in every trade alternately destroys employ- 
 ment in that trade and disorganises others. Overproduction in 
 one year leaves thousands of workers wageless in the next. The 
 ranks of unskilled labor, the army of the unemployed, are day by 
 day recruited in these fashions. An inveterate social habit, an al- 
 most indestructible patience, a tenacious identification of his 
 own desire with the desire of those whom he loves, in most cases 
 preserve the worker from accepting the sentence of exclusion 
 from society. If he is able-bodied, intelligent and fortunate, he 
 will struggle with hard times till he finds fresh occupation among 
 strange surroundings ; but woe to him if he be weakly, or old, 
 or unpractical. In such a case he will almost infallibly become 
 a pauper or an outcast, one of that residuum of unskilled, unem- 
 ployed, unprofital^le and hopeless human beings which in all 
 great cities festers about the base of the social pyramid. And 
 his children will become the street Arabs and the corner-boys 
 and the child-whores and the sneak-thieves who, when they 
 come of age, accept their position as outside of social life and 
 resume the existence of the wild beasts that fathered man — the 
 purely predatory and unsocial activity of harrying their neighbors 
 for their own support. Before society was, morality was not : 
 those who have no part nor lot in the ends for which society 
 exists will adapt their morality to suit their outcast state: there 
 will indeed be honor among thieves, just as there will be cant 
 and insincerity among the parasitic rich ; but the youth who has 
 been nurtured between the reformatory and the slum has little 
 chance of finding a foothold, if he would, in the restless whirl 
 of modern industry, and still less of retaining permanently such 
 foothold as he may manage to find. 
 
 When the conditions of social life are such that the individ- 
 ual may be excluded through no unfitness of his own for co-opera- 
 tion, or may be born without a chance of acquiring fitness for it, 
 we are brought face to face with the conditions of primitive ages. 
 And if you force him back upon the elemental instincts, one of 
 two things will happen. Either, if the individual is weak through 
 physical deterioration or incapacity to combine with his fellow 
 outcasts, he will be crushed and killed by society and putrefy 
 about its holy places ; or, if he has indomitable life and vigor. 
 
MORAL. 
 
 113 
 
 he will revert to the argument of elemental forces : he will turn 
 and explode society. Here, then, we should fear explosion, for 
 we are not as submissive in extremities as the proletariats of 
 arrested Indian civilisations. But with us the class whose free- 
 dom is incessantly threatened by the operation of private capi- 
 talism is the class which by its political position holds in its 
 hands the key to the control of industrial form : that is to say, 
 its members can modify, as soon as they elect to, the laws of 
 property and inheritance in this State of Britain. They can, as 
 soon as they see clearly what is needed supersede institutions 
 now immoral because useless and mischievous by institutions 
 which shall re-establish the elementary conditions of social exis- 
 tence and the possibility of the corresponding morality — namely, 
 the opportunity for each individual to earn his living and the 
 compulsion upon him to do so. 
 
 Returning from the consideration of the “residuum’’ and the 
 “ criminal classes,” we find that even the workers of the em- 
 ployed proletariat are by no means wholly moral. In spite of 
 the massive healthiness of their behavior in ordinary relations, 
 they are generally coarse in their habits ; they lack intelligence 
 in their amusements and refinement in their tastes. The worst 
 result of this is the popularity of boozing and gambling and 
 allied forms of excitement, with their outcomes in violence and 
 meanness. But when once society has ensured for man the 
 opportunity for satisfying his primary needs — once it has en- 
 sured him a healthy body and a wholesome life, his advance in 
 the refinements of social morality, in the conception and satis- 
 faction of his secondary and more distinctly human desires, is 
 solely and entirely a matter of education. This will be attested 
 by every man and woman who has at all passed through the 
 primary to the secondary passions. But education in the sense 
 alluded to is impossible for the lad who leaves school at fourteen 
 and works himself weary six days in the week ever afterwards. 
 
 The oldest Socialistic institution of considerable importance 
 and extent is the now decrepit Catholic Church. The Catholic 
 Church has always insisted on the duty of helping the poor, not 
 on the ground of the social danger of a “ residuum,” but by the 
 nobler appeal to the instinct of human benevolence. The 
 Catholic Church developed, relatively to the enlightenment of its 
 age, the widest and freest system of education the world has 
 ever seen before this century. Catholic Christianity, by its rev- 
 
114 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 olutionary conception that God was incarnated in Man, ex- 
 ploding the hideous superstition that the imagination of the 
 thoughts of man’s heart was only to do evil continually, and 
 substituting the faith in the perfectibility of each individual soul ; 
 by its brilliant and powerful generalisations that God must be 
 Love, because there is nothing better, and that man is freed from 
 the law by the inward guidance of grace, has done more for social 
 morality than any other religion of the world. 
 
 Protestant Individualism in England shattered the Catholic 
 Church ; founded the modern land system upon its confiscated 
 estates ; destroyed the mediaeval machinery of charity and 
 education; and in religion rehabilitated the devil, and the 
 doctrines of original sin and the damnable danger of reason 
 and good works. 
 
 Out of the wreckage of the Catholic Church, and amid the 
 dissolution of the Protestant religion, there successively 
 emerged, at an interval of some three hundred years, the two 
 great socialistic institutions of the Poor Law and the People’s 
 Schools. As the pretence of a foundation of Christian obli- 
 gation withered from out of the Poor Law, till it has come to 
 be outspokenly recognised as nothing but a social safety-valve, 
 the individualist and commercial administration of this rudi- 
 mentary socialistic machinery deprived it of its efficiency even 
 in this elementary function. He to whom the workhouse 
 means the break up of his home, and his own condemnation to 
 a drudgery insulting because useless and wasteful, would as lief 
 take his exclusion from society in another and a less degrading 
 way, either by death, or by reluctant enrolment in the re- 
 siduum and so it has come to pass that outside of their use 
 as hospitals for the aged and infirm, the poor-houses are princi- 
 pally employed as the club-houses and hotels of the great frater- 
 nity of habitual tramps and cadgers ; and not till he has sunk to 
 this level does the struggling proletarian seek work ” there. 
 
 Socialists would realize the idea of the Poor Law, regarding 
 that society as deadly sick in which the individual cannot find 
 subsistence by industry, in the only way in which it can be 
 realised: namely, by the organisation of production and the 
 resumption of its necessary instruments. It is not so great a 
 matter in their eyes that the perpetual toll of rent and inter- 
 est deprives the workers of the wealth which their activities 
 produce ; nor is it the actual pressure of this heavy tribute 
 
MORAL. 
 
 115 
 
 that would force on the Social Revolution, if the system only 
 left men the assurance of the comforts of tame beasts. It is 
 the constant disquiet and uncertainty, the increasing frequency 
 of industrial crises, that are the revolutionary preachers of our 
 age ; and it is the disappearance at the base and at the summit 
 of society of the conditions of social morality, that rouses 
 those whose mere material interests remain unaffected. 
 
 But though it is not envy or resentment at this tribute that 
 mostly moves us to our warfare, this tribute we must certainly 
 resume if the ideal of the school is to effect its social purpose. 
 For the ideal of the school implies, in the first place, leisure to 
 learn : that is to say, the release of children from all non-edu- 
 cational labor until mind and physique have had a fair start 
 and training, and the abolition of compulsion on the adult to 
 work any more than the socially necessary stint. The actual 
 expenditure on public education must also be considerably 
 increased, at any rate until parents are more generally in a 
 position to instruct their own children. But as soon as the 
 mind has been trained to appreciate the inexhaustible interest 
 and beauty of the world, and to distinguish good literature 
 from bad, the remainder of education, granted leisure, is a 
 comparatively inexpensive matter. Literature is become dirt- 
 cheap ; and all the other educational arts can be communally 
 enjoyed. The schools of the adult are the journal and the 
 library, social intercourse, fresh air, clean and beautiful cities, 
 the joy of the fields, the museum, the art-gallery, the lecture- 
 hall, the drama, and the opera ; and only when these schools 
 are free and accessible to all will the reproach of proletarian 
 coarseness be done away. 
 
 Yet the most important influence in the repairing of social 
 morality may perhaps be looked for not so much from the 
 direct action of these elements of the higher education, as 
 from those very socialist forms of property and industry, 
 which we believe to be the primary condition for allowing such 
 higher education to affect the majority at all. Nothing so well 
 trains the individual to identify his life with the life of society 
 as the identification of the conditions of his material suste- 
 nance with those of his fellows, in short, as industrial co-opera- 
 tion. Not for many centuries has there been such compulsion 
 as now for the individual to acknowledge a social ethic. For 
 now, for the first time since the dissolution of the early tribal 
 
116 
 
 THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 communisms, and over areas a hundred times wider than 
 theirs, the individual worker earns his living, fulfils his most 
 elementary desire, not by direct personal production, but by an 
 intricate co-operation in which the effect and value of his per- 
 sonal effort are almost indistinguishable. The apology for indi- 
 vidualist appropriation is exploded by the logic of the facts of 
 communist production : no man can pretend to claim the fruits 
 of his own labor ; for his whole ability and opportunity for 
 working are plainly a vast inheritance and contribution of 
 which he is but a transient and accidental beneficiary and 
 steward ; and his power of turning them to his own account 
 depends entirely upon the desires and needs of other people 
 for his services. The factory system, the machine industry, 
 the world commerce, have abolished individualist production ; 
 and the completion of the co-operative form towards which th.e 
 transition stage of individualist capitalism is hurrying us, will 
 render a conformity with social ethics, a universal condition of 
 tolerable existence for the individual. 
 
 This expectation is already justified by the phenomena of 
 contemporary opinion. The moral ideas appropriate to Social- 
 ism are permeating the whole of modern society. They are 
 clearly recognisable not only in the proletariat, but also in the 
 increasing philanthropic activity of members of the propertied 
 class, w^ho, while denouncing Socialism as a dangerous exag- 
 geration of what is necessary for social health, work honestly 
 enough for alleviatory reforms which converge irresistibly 
 towards it. The form, perhaps, does not outrun the spirit, 
 any more than the spirit anticipates the form ; and it may 
 have been sufficient in this paper to have showm some grounds 
 for the conviction that Socialist morality, like that of all pre- 
 ceding systems, is only that morality which the conditions of 
 human existence have made necessary; that it is only the 
 expression of the eternal passion of life seeking its satisfaction 
 tlirougli tlie striving of each individual for the freest and full- 
 est activity ; that Socialism is but a stage in the unending pro- 
 gression out of the weakness and the ignorance in which 
 society and the individual alike are born, towards the strength 
 and the enlightenment in which they can see and choose their 
 own w^ay forward — from the chaos where morality is not to 
 the consciousness which sees that morality is reason ; and to 
 have made some attempt to justify the claim that the cardinal 
 virtue of Socialism is nothing else than Common Sense, 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 
 

PROPERTY UNDER SOCIALISM. 
 
 BY GRAHAM WALLAS. 
 
 In the early days of Socialism no one who was not ready 
 with a complete description of Society as it ought to be, dared 
 come forward to explain any point in the theory. Each leader 
 had his own method of organising property, education, domestic 
 life, and the production of wealth. Each was quite sure that 
 mankind had only to fashion themselves after his model in 
 order, like the prince and princess in the fairy story, to live 
 happily ever after. Every year would then be like the year 
 before; and no more history need be written. Even now a 
 thinker here and there like Gronlund or Rebel sketches in the 
 old spirit an ideal commonwealth ; though he does so with an 
 apology for attempting to forecast the unknowable. But 
 Socialists generally have become, if not wiser than their spiritual 
 fathers, at least less willing to use their imagination. The 
 growing recognition, due in part to Darwin, of causation in the 
 development of individuals and societies ; the struggles and 
 disappointments of half a century of agitation ; the steady 
 introduction of Socialistic institutions by men who reject 
 Socialist ideas, all incline us to give up any expectation of a 
 final and perfect reform. W^e are more apt to regard the slow 
 and often unconscious progress of the Time spirit as the only 
 adequate cause of social progress, and to attempt rather to 
 discover and proclaim what the future mtist be, than to form an 
 organisation of men determined to make the future what it 
 should be. 
 
 But the new conception of Socialism has its dangers as well 
 as the old. Fifty years ago Socialists were tempted to 
 exaggerate the influence of the ideal, to expect everything from 
 a sudden impossible change of all mens’ hearts. Nowadays 
 we are tempted to under-value the ideal — to forget that even 
 
120 
 
 THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 the Time spirit itself is only the sum of individual strivings and 
 aspirations, and that again and again in history changes which 
 might have been delayed for centuries or might never have 
 come at all, have been brought about by the persistent preach- 
 ing of some new and higher life, the offspring not of circum- 
 stance but of hope. And of all the subjects upon which men 
 require to be brought to a right mind and a clear understand- 
 ing, there is, Socialists think, none more vital to-day than 
 Property. 
 
 The word Property has been used in nearly as many senses 
 as the word Law. The best definition I have met with is John 
 Austin’s ‘^any right which gives to the entitled party such a 
 power or liberty of using or disposing of the subject .... as 
 is merely limited generally by the rights of all other persons.” ^ 
 This applies only to private property. It will be convenient in 
 discussing the various claims of the State, the municipality, 
 and the individual, to use the word in a wider sense to denote 
 not only the power or liberty ” of the individual, but also the 
 ‘^rights of all other persons.” In this sense I shall speak of 
 the property of the State or municipality. I shall also draw a 
 distinction, economic perhaps rather than legal, between prop- 
 erty in things, or the exclusive right of access to defined 
 material objects, property in debts and future services, and 
 property in ideas (copyright and patent right). 
 
 The material things in which valuable property rights can 
 exist, may be roughly divided into means of production and 
 means of consumption. Among those lowest tribes of savages 
 who feed on fruit and insects, and build themselves at night a 
 rough shelter with boughs of trees, there is little distinction 
 between the acts of production and consumption. But in a 
 populous and civilised country very few even of the simplest 
 wants of men are satisfied directly by nature. Nearly every 
 commodity wdiich man consumes is produced and renewed by 
 the deliberate application of human industry to material objects. 
 The general stock of materials on which such industry works is 
 
 Land.” Any materials which have been separated from the 
 general stock or have been already considerably modified by 
 industry, are called capital if they are either to be used to aid 
 production or are still to be worked on before they are con- 
 
 1 Lectures on Jurisprudence. Lecture XLVIII. 
 
PROPERTY UNDER SOCIALISM. 
 
 121 
 
 Slimed. When they are ready to be consumed they are wealth 
 for consumption.” Such an analysis, though generally em- 
 ployed by political economists, is of necessity very rough. No 
 one can tell whether an object is ready for immediate consump- 
 tion or not, unless he knows the way in which it is to be con- 
 sumed. A pine forest in its natural condition is ready for the 
 consumption of a duke with a taste for the picturesque ; for he 
 will let the trees rot before his eyes. Cotton-wool, a finished 
 product in the hands of a doctor, is raw material in the hands 
 of a spinner. But still the statement that Socialists work for 
 the owning of the means of production by the community and 
 the means of consumption by individuals, represents fairly 
 enough their practical aim. Not that they desire to prevent 
 the community from using its property whenever it will for 
 direct consumption, as, for instance, when a piece of common 
 land is used for a public park, or the profits of municipal water- 
 works are applied to keep up a municipal library. Nor do 
 they contemplate any need for preventing individuals from 
 working at will on their possessions in such a way as to make 
 them more valuable. Even Gronlund, with all his hatred of 
 private industry, could not, if he would, prevent any citizen 
 from driving a profitable trade by manufacturing bread into 
 buttered toast at the common fire. But men are as yet more 
 fit for association in production, with a just distribution of its 
 rewards, than for association in the consumption of the wealth 
 produced. It is true indeed that the economies of associated 
 consumption promise to be quite as great as those of associated 
 production ; and it was of these that the earlier Socialists 
 mainly thought. They believed always that if a few hundred 
 persons could be induced to throw their possessions and earn- 
 ings into a common stock to be employed according to a common 
 scheme, a heaven on earth would be created. Since then, an 
 exhaustive series of experiments has proved that in spite of its 
 obvious economy any system of associated consumption as com- 
 plete as Fourier’s ‘‘ Phalanstere ” or Owen’s “ New Hampshire ” 
 is, except under very unusual conditions, distasteful to most 
 men as they now are. Our picture galleries, parks, workmen’s 
 clubs, or the fact that rich people are beginning to live in flats 
 looked after by a common staff of servants, do indeed shew 
 that associated consumption is every year better understood 
 and enjoyed; but it remains true that pleasures chosen by 
 
122 
 
 THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 the will of the majority are often not recognised as pleasures 
 at all. 
 
 As long as this is so, private property and even private 
 industry must exist along with public property and public 
 production. For instance, each family now insists on having a 
 separate home, and on cooking every day a separate series of 
 meals in a separate kitchen. Waste and discomfort are the 
 inevitable result; but families at present prefer waste and 
 discomfort to that abundance which can only be bought by 
 organisation and publicity. Again, English families constitute 
 at present isolated communistic groups, more or less despotically 
 governed. Our growing sense of the individual responsibility 
 and individual rights of wives and children seems already to be 
 lessening both the isolation of these groups and their internal 
 coherency ; but this tendency must go very much further before 
 society can absorb the family life, or the industries of the home 
 be managed socially. Thus, associated production of all the 
 means of family life may be developed to a very high degree 
 before we cease to feel that an Englishman’s home should be 
 his castle, with free entrance and free egress alike forbidden. 
 It is true that the ground on which houses are built could 
 immediately become the property of the community ; and when 
 one remembers how most people in England are now lodged, 
 it is obvious that they would gladly inhabit comfortable houses 
 built and owned by the State. But they certainly would at 
 present insist on having their own crockery and chairs, books 
 and pictures, and on receiving a certain proportion of the value 
 they produce in the form of a yearly or weekly income to be 
 spent or saved as they pleased. Now whatever things of this 
 kind we allow a man to possess, we must allow him to exchange, 
 since exchange never takes place unless both parties believe 
 themselves to benefit by it. Further, bequest must be allowed, 
 since any but a moderate probate duty or personalty would, 
 unless supported by a strong and searching public opinion, 
 certainly be evaded. Moreover, if we desire the personal 
 independence of women and children, then their property, as 
 far as we allow property at all, must for a long time to come be 
 most carefully guarded. 
 
 There would remain therefore to be owned by the com- 
 munity the land in the widest sense of the word, and the 
 materials of those forms of production, distribution, and con- 
 
PKOPERTY UNDER SOCIALISM. 
 
 123 
 
 sumption, which can conveniently be carried on by associa- 
 tions larger than the family group. Here the main problem is 
 to fix in each case the area of ownership. In the case of the 
 principal means of communication and of some forms of 
 industry, it has been proved that the larger the area controlled, 
 the greater is the efficiency of management ; so that the postal 
 and railway systems, and probably the materials of some of the 
 larger industries, would be owned by the English nation until 
 that distant date when they might pass to the United States or 
 the British Empire, or the Federal Republic of Europe. 
 Land is perhaps generally better held by smaller social units. 
 The rent of a town or an agricultural district depends only 
 partly on those natural advantages which can be easily esti- 
 mated once for all by an imperial commissioner. The differ- 
 ence in the rateable value of Warwick and of Birmingham is 
 due, not so much to the sites of the two towns, as to the differ- 
 ence in the industry and character of their inhabitants. If 
 the Birmingham men prefer, on the average, intense exertion 
 resulting in great material wealth, to the simpler and quieter 
 life lived at Warwick, it is obviously as unjust to allow the 
 Warwick men to share equally in the Birmingham ground 
 rents, as it would be to insist on one standard of comfort 
 being maintained in Paris and in Brittany. 
 
 At the same time, those forms of natural wealth which are 
 the necessities of the whole nation and the monopolies of cer- 
 tain districts, mines for instance, or harbors, or sources of 
 water-supply, must be nationalised.” The salt and coal 
 rings of to-day would be equally possible and equally incon- 
 venient under a system which made the mining populations 
 absolute joint owners of the mines. Even where the land was 
 absolutely owned by local bodies, those bodies would still have 
 to contribute to the national exchequer some proportion of 
 their income. The actual size of the units would in each case 
 be fixed by convenience ; and it is very likely that the develop- 
 ment of the County Government Act and of the parochial and 
 municipal systems will soon provide us with units of govern- 
 ment which could easily be turned into units of ownership. 
 
 The savings of communities — if I may use the word com- 
 munity to express any Social Democratic unit from the parish 
 to the nation — would probably take much the same form that 
 the accumulation of capital takes nowadays : that is to say, 
 
124 
 
 THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 they would consist partly of mills, machinery, railways, 
 schools, and the other specialised materials of future industry, 
 and partly of a stock of commodities such as food, clothing, 
 and money, by which workers might be supported while per- 
 forming work not immediately remunerative. The savings of 
 individuals would consist partly of consumable commodities or of 
 the means of such industry as had not been socialised, and 
 partly of deferred pay for services rendered to the community, 
 such pay taking the form of a pension due at a certain age, or of 
 a sum of commodities or money payable' on demand. 
 
 Voluntary associations of all kinds, whether joint-stock com- 
 panies, religious corporations, or communistic groups would, in 
 the eyes of the Social Democratic State, consist simply of so 
 many individuals possessing those rights of property which are 
 allowed to individuals. They might perform many very useful 
 functions in the future as in the past ; but the history of the 
 city companies, of the New River company, the Rochdale Pio- 
 neers, or the Church of England shows the danger of granting 
 perpetual property rights to any association not co-extensive 
 with the coinmunity, although such association may exist for 
 professedly philanthropic objects. Even in the case of univer- 
 sities, where the system of independent property-owning cor- 
 porations has been found to work best, the rights of the State 
 should be delegated and not surrendered. 
 
 On this point the economic position of modern Social Demo- 
 crats differs widely from the transfigured joint stockism of the 
 present co-operative movement or from the object of the earlier 
 Socialists, for whose purposes complete community was always 
 more important than complete inclusiveness. Even Socialist 
 writers of to-day do not always see that the grouping of the 
 citizens for the purpose of property holding must be either on 
 the joint-stock basis or on the territorial basis. Gronlund, in 
 spite of contradictory matter in other parts of his Co-oper- 
 ative Commonwealth,” still declares that each group of wor- 
 kers will have the power of distributing among themselves the 
 whole exchange value of their work,” which either means that 
 they will, as long as they are working, be the absolute joint 
 owners of the materials which they use, or means nothing at 
 all. Now the proposal that any voluntary association of citi- 
 zens should hold absolute and perpetual property rights in the 
 means of production, seems to be not a step towards Social 
 
PEOPERTY UNDER SOCIALISM. 
 
 125 
 
 Democracy, but a negation of tlie whole Social Democratic 
 idea. This of course brings us to the following dilliculty. If 
 our communities even when originally inclusive of the whole 
 population are closed : that is, are confined to original mem- 
 bers and their descendants, new comers will form a class like 
 the plebians in Rome, or the metoeci ’’ in Athens, without a 
 share in the common property though possessed of full per- 
 sonal freedom ; and such a class must be a continual social 
 danger. On the other hand, if all newcomers receive at once 
 full economic rights, then any country in which Socialism or 
 anything approaching it is established, will be at once over-run 
 by proletarian immigrants, from those countries in which the 
 means of production are still strictly monopolised. If this 
 were allowed, then, through the operation of the law of dimin- 
 ishing return and the law of population based on it, the whole 
 body of the inhabitants even of a Socialist State, might con- 
 ceivably be finally brought down to the bare means of subsis- 
 tence. It does not seem necessary to conclude tliat Socialism 
 must be established over the whole globe if it is to be estab- 
 lished anywhere. What is necessary is that we face the fact, 
 every day becoming plainer, that any determined attempt to 
 raise the condition of the proletariat in any single European 
 country must be accompanied by a law of aliens considerate 
 enough to avoid cruelty to refugees, or obstruction to those 
 whose presence would raise our intellectual or industrial aver- 
 age, but stringent enough to exclude the unhappy “ diluvies 
 gentium,’' the human rubbish which the military empires of the 
 continent are so ready to shoot upon any open space. Such a 
 law would be in itself an evil. It might be unfairly adminis- 
 tered ; it might increase national selfishness and would proba- 
 bly endanger international good will ; it would require the 
 drawing of a great many very difficult lines of distinction ; but 
 no sufficient argument has been yet advanced to disprove the 
 necessity of it. 
 
 On the question of private property in debts, the attitude of 
 the law in Europe has changed fundamentally in historical 
 times. Under the old Roman law, the creditor became the 
 absolute owner of his debtor. Nowadays, not only may a 
 man by becoming bankrupt and surrendering all his visible 
 property, repudiate his debts and yet retain liis personal liberty ; 
 but in Factory Acts, Employers’ Liability Acts, Irish Land 
 
126 
 
 THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 Acts, etc., certain contracts are illegal under all circumstances. 
 With the growth of Socialism, this tendency would be quick- 
 ened. The law would look with extreme jealously upon any 
 agreement by which one party would be reduced even for a 
 time to a condition of slavery, or the other enabled to live 
 even for a time without performing any useful social function. 
 And since it has been clearly recognised that a certain access 
 to the means of industry is a first condition of personal free- 
 dom, the law would refuse to recognise any agreement to debar 
 a man from such access, or deprive him of the results of it. 
 No one would need to get into debt in order to provide himself 
 with the opportunity of work, nor would anyone be allowed to 
 give up the opportunity of work in order to obtain a loan. 
 This, by making it more difficult for creditors to recover debts, 
 would also make it more difficult for w^ould-be debtors to obtain 
 credit. The present homestead law would, in fact, be extended 
 to include everything which the State thought necessary for a 
 complete life. But as long as private industry and exchange 
 go on to such an extent as to make a private commercial sys- 
 tem convenient, so long will promises to pay circulate, and, if 
 necessary, be legally enforced under the conditions above 
 marked out. 
 
 To whatever extent private property is permitted, to that 
 same extent the private taking of Rent and Interest must be 
 also permitted. If you allow a selfish man to own a picture 
 by Raphael, he will lock it up in his own room unless you let 
 him charge something for the privilege of looking at it. Such 
 a charge is at once Interest. If we wdsh all Raphael’s pictures 
 to be freely accessible to everyone, we must prevent men not 
 merely from exhibiting them for payment, but from owning 
 them. 
 
 This argument applies to other things besides Raphael’s 
 pictures. If we allow a man to own a printing press, or a 
 plough, or a set of bookbinders’ tools, or a lease of a house or 
 farm, we must allow him so to employ his possession that he 
 may, without injuring his neighbor, get from it the greatest 
 possible advantage. Otherwise, seeing that the community is 
 not responsible for its intelligent use, any interference on the 
 part of the community may well result in no intelligent use 
 being made of it at all ; in which event all privately owned 
 materials of industry not actually being used by their owners 
 
PROPERTY UNDER SOCIALISM. 
 
 127 
 
 would be as entirely wasted as if they were the subjects of a 
 chancery suit. It is easy to see that the Duke of Bedford is 
 robbing the community of the rent of Covent Garden. It is 
 not so easy to see that the owners of the vacant land adjoining 
 Shaftesbury Avenue have been robbing the community for 
 some years past of the rent which ought to have been made out 
 of the sites which they have left desolate. I know that it has 
 been sometimes said by Socialists : “ Let us allow the manu- 
 facturer to keep his mill and the Duke of Argyle to keep his 
 land, as long as they do not use them for exploitation by letting 
 them out to others on condition of receiving a part of the wealth 
 created by those others.” Then, we are told, the manufacturer 
 or Duke will soon discover that he must work hard fora living. 
 Such sentiments are seldom ill received by men in the humor 
 to see dukes and capitalists earning, as painfully as may be, 
 their daily bread. Unluckily, there are no unappropriated 
 acres and factory sites in England sufficiently advantageous to 
 be used as efficient substitutes for those upon which private 
 property has fastened; and the community would be wise if it 
 paid the Duke of Argyle and Mr. Chamberlain anything short 
 of the full economic rent of their properties rather than go 
 further and fare worse. Therefore, if we refused either to allow 
 these gentlemen to let their property to those who would use it, 
 or hesitated to take it and use it for ourselves, we should be 
 actually wasting labor. The progressive socialisation of land 
 and capital must proceed by direct transference of them to the 
 community through taxation of rent and interest and public 
 organisation of labor with the capital so obtained ; not solely 
 by a series of restrictions upon their use in private exploita- 
 tion. Such concurrent private exploitation, however unre- 
 stricted, could not in any case bring back the old evils of 
 capitalism ; for any change in the habits of the people or in the 
 methods of industry which made associated production of any 
 commodity on a large scale convenient and profitable, would 
 result at once in the taking over of that industry by the State 
 exactly as the same conditions now in America result at once 
 in the formation of a ring. 
 
 It is because full ownership is necessary to the most intelli- 
 gent and effective use of any materials, that no mere system of 
 taxation of Rent and Interest, even when so drastic as Mr. 
 Henry George’s scheme of universal State absentee landlord- 
 
128 
 
 THE OEGAKIZATIOISr OF SOCIETY. 
 
 ism, is likely to exist except as a transition stage towards Social 
 Democracy. Indeed the anarchist idea which allows the State 
 to receive Rent and Interest, but forbids it to employ labor, is 
 obviously impracticable. Unless we are willing to pay every 
 citizen in hard cash a share of the State Rent of the future, it, 
 like the taxes of to-day, must be wholly invested in payments 
 for work done. It would always be a very serious difficulty 
 for a Socialist legislature to decide how far communities should 
 be allowed to incur debts or pay interest. Socialism once 
 established, the chief danger to its stability would be just at 
 this point. We all know the inept attack on Socialism which 
 comes from a debating-society orator who considers the subject 
 for the first time, or from the cultured person who has been 
 brought up on the Saturday Review, He tells us that if 
 property were equally divided to-morrow, there would be for 
 the next ten years forty men out of every hundred working ex- 
 tremely hard, and the other sixty lazy. After that time, the 
 sixty would have to work hard and keep the forty, who would 
 then be as lazy as the sixty were before. It is very easy to 
 explain that we do not want to divide all property equally ; 
 but it is not so easy to guard against any result of that ten- 
 dency in human nature on which the argument is grounded. 
 Men differ so widely in their comparative appreciation of pres- 
 ent and future pleasures, that wherever life can be supported 
 by four hours’ work a day, there will always be some men 
 anxious to work eight hours in order to secure future benefits 
 for themselves or their children, and others anxious to avoid 
 their four hours’ work for the present by pledging themselves 
 or their children to any degree of future privation. As long 
 as this is so, communities as well as individuals will be tempted 
 to avail themselves of the freely offered services of the ex- 
 ceptionally energetic and farsighted, and to incur a common 
 debt under the excuse that they are spreading the payment of 
 such services over all those benefited by them. The municipali- 
 ties, Boards of Works, School Boards, etc., of England have 
 already created enormous local debts ; and unless men grow 
 wiser in the next few months the new County Councils will 
 probably add to the burden. As we sit and think, it may seem 
 easy to prevent any such trouble in the future by a law for- 
 bidding communities to incur debts under any circumstances. 
 But in the case of a central and supreme government such a 
 
PROPERTY UNDER SOCIALISM. 
 
 129 
 
 law would, of course, be an absurdity. No nation can escape a 
 national debt or any other calamity if the majority in that 
 nation desire to submit to it. It is reassuring to see how the 
 feeling that national governments should pay their way from 
 year to year grows stronger and stronger. National debts no 
 longer even in France go up with the old light-hearted leaps 
 and bounds. But local debts still increase. In Preston the 
 local debt is said to amount to seven times the annual rating 
 valuation. And although at present (November, 1888), since 
 the “ surf at the edge of civilisation ” is only thundering to 
 the extent of three small colonial wars, our own national debt 
 is slowly going down ; still if war were declared to-morrow 
 with any European State no ministry would dare to raise all 
 the war expenses by immediate taxation either on incomes or 
 on property. It may be objected that no such danger would 
 arise under Socialism ; for there would be no fund from which 
 a loan could be offered that would not be equally easily reached 
 by a direct levy. But if we are speaking of society in the near 
 future there would certainly be plenty of members of non- 
 Socialist States, or English holders of property in them, ready 
 to lend money on good security to a timid or desperate or dis- 
 honest Socialist government. Again, in times of extreme 
 stress a government might believe itself to require even personal 
 possessions ; and it might be difficult under such circumstances 
 not to offer to restore them with or without interest. In any 
 case there would be no more economic difference between the 
 new fund-holders and the old landlords than between Lord 
 Salisbury as owner of the Strand district and Lord Salisbury 
 now that he has sold his slums and bought consols. Perhaps 
 the most serious danger of the creation of a common debt would 
 arise from the earnings of exceptional ability. Modern Social- 
 ists have learnt, after a long series of co-operative experiments 
 and failures, that the profits of private adventure will withdraw 
 men of exceptional business talent from communal service unless 
 work of varying scarcity and intensity is paid for at varying 
 rates. How great this variation need be in order to ensure full 
 efficiency can only be decided by experience ; and as the edu- 
 cation and moralisation of society improves, and industry be- 
 comes so thoroughly socialised that the alternative of private 
 enterprise will be less practicable, something like equality may 
 at last be found possible, But, meanwhile, comparatively large 
 
130 
 
 THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 incomes will be earned by men leading busy and useful lives, 
 but often keenly anxious to secure leisure and comfort for their 
 old age and aggrandisement for their familyd I have already 
 suggested that some of the earnings of a man employed by the 
 community might be left for a time in the common treasury to 
 accumulate without interest. Now, it would suit both these 
 men and the lazier of their contemporaries that the reward of 
 their services should be fixed at a very high rate, and be left to 
 the next generation for payment; while the next generation 
 might prefer a small permanent charge to any attempt to pay 
 off the capital sum. It is often hinted that one way to obviate 
 this would be for each generation to cultivate a healthy indiffer- 
 ence to the debts incurred on its behalf by its forefathers. But 
 the citizens of each new generation attain citizenship not in 
 large bodies at long intervals, but in small numbers every week. 
 One has only to warn sanguine lenders that veiled repudiations 
 may always be effected in such emergencies by a judicious 
 application of the Income Tax, and to hope that the progress 
 of education under Socialism would tend to produce and pre- 
 serve on such matters a certain general minimum of common 
 sense. If this minimum is sufficient to control the central 
 government the debts of local bodies can be easily and sternly 
 restricted. 
 
 Property in services means of course property in future 
 services. The wealth which past services may have produced 
 can be exchanged or owned ; but the services themselves cannot. 
 Now all systems of law which we know have allowed private 
 persons to contract with each other for the future performance 
 of certain services, and have punished, or allowed to be punished, 
 the breach of such contracts. Here as in the case of debts, our 
 growing respect for personal liberty has made the law look 
 jealously on all onerous agreements made either by the citizen 
 liimself or for him by others. In fact, as Professor Sidgwick 
 points out: “ In England hardly any engagement to render per- 
 sonal service gives the promisee a legal claim to more than 
 pecuniary damages — to put it otherwise, almost all such con- 
 tracts, if unfulfilled, turn into mere debts of money so far as their 
 
 1 Happily, the ordinary anxieties as to tlie fate of children left with- 
 out property, especially weaklings or women unlikely to attract hus- 
 bands, may be left out of account in speculations concerning socialised 
 communities. 
 
PKOPEKTY UNDER SOCIALISM. 
 
 131 
 
 legal force goes.” ^ The marriage contract forms the principal 
 exception to this rule ; but even in this case there seems to be a 
 tendency in most European countries to relax the rigidity of the 
 law. 
 
 On the other hand the direct claims of the State to the services 
 of its citizens shew at present no signs of diminishing. Compul- 
 sory military service and compulsory attendance at school already 
 take up a not inconsiderable share of the life of every male in- 
 habitant of France and Germany. So far in England the com- 
 pulsion of grown men to serve in any capacity has been con- 
 demned for a century past, because it is considered wasteful and 
 oppressive as compared with the free contract system of the open 
 market. Most English Socialists seem inclined to believe that 
 all work for the State should be voluntarily engaged and paid 
 for out of the produce of common industry. 
 
 In considering how far the State has a claim upon the services 
 of its members, we come upon the much larger question — How 
 far are we working for Socialism ; and how far for Communism ? 
 Under pure Socialism, to use the word in its narrowest sense, 
 the State would offer no advantage at all to any citizen except 
 at a price sufficient to pay all the expenses of producing it. In 
 this sense the Post Office, for example, is now a purely Socialistic 
 institution. Under such conditions the State would have no 
 claim at all on the services of its members ; and compulsion to 
 work would be produced by the fact that if a man chose not to 
 work he would be in danger of starvation. Under pure Com- 
 munism, on the other hand, as defined by Louis Blanc’s dictum : 
 “ From every man according to his powers : to every man ac- 
 cording to his wants,” the State would satisfy without stint and 
 without price all the reasonable wants of any citizen. Our 
 present drinking fountains are examples of the numerous cases 
 of pure communism which surround us. But since nothing can 
 be made without labor, the commodities provided by the State 
 must be produced by the services, voluntary or forced, of the 
 citizens. Under pure communism, if any compulsion to work 
 were needed, it would have to be direct. Some communistic 
 institutions we must have ; and as a matter of fact there is an 
 increasing number of them already in England. Indeed, if the 
 whole or any part of that Rent Fund which is due to the differ- 
 ence between the best and worst materials of industry in use be 
 1 “ Principles of Political Economy,” p. 435. 
 
132 
 
 THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 taken for the State, by taxation or otherwise, it, or rather the 
 advantages produced by its expenditure, can hardly be distributed 
 otherwise than communis ticully. F or, as men are now, saturated 
 with immoral principles by our commercial system, the State 
 would have to be exceedingly careful in deciding what wants 
 could be freely satisfied without making direct compulsion to 
 labor necessary. It would cost by no means an impossible sum 
 to supply a tolerable shelter with a bed, and a sufficient daily 
 portion of porridge, or bread and cheese, or even of gin and 
 water, to each citizen ; but no sane man would propose to do so 
 in the existing state of public morals. For more than a century 
 the proletarians of Europe have been challenged by their masters 
 to do as little work as they can. They have been taught by the 
 practical economists of the Trades Unions, and have learnt for 
 themselves by bitter experience, that every time any of them in 
 a moment of ambition or goodwill does one stroke of work not 
 in his bond, he is increasing the future unpaid labor not only of 
 himself but of his fellows. At the same time every circum- 
 stance of monotony, ugliness, and anxiety has made the work as 
 wearisome and disgusting as possible. All, almost without ex- 
 ception, now look upon the working day as a period of slavery, 
 and find such happiness as they can get only in a few hours or 
 minutes that intervene between work and sleep. For a few, that 
 happiness consists in added toil of thought and speech in the 
 cause of themselves and their comrades. The rest care only for 
 such rough pleasures as are possible to men both poor and over- 
 worked. There would be plenty of excuse if under these circum- 
 stances they dreamt, as they are accused of dreaming, of some 
 universal division of the good things of the earth — of some 
 means of being utterly at leisure, if only for a week or two. 
 
 But there are products of labor which the workmen in their 
 time of triumph might freely offer each other without causing 
 the weakest brother to forego any form of useful social work. 
 Among such products are those ideas which we have brought 
 under the dominion of private property by means of copyright 
 and patent right. Luckily for us the dominion is neither com- 
 plete nor permanent. If the Whig landlords who are respon- 
 sible for most of tlie details of our glorious constitution had been 
 also authors and inventors for profit, we should probably have 
 had the strictest rights of perpetual property or even of entail in 
 ideas ; and there would now have been a Duke of Shakspere to 
 
PROPERTY UNDER. SOCIALISM. 
 
 133 
 
 whom we should all have had to pay two or three pounds for 
 the privilege of reading his ancestor’s works, provided that we 
 return the copy uninjured at the end of a fortnight. But even 
 for the years during which copyright and patents now last, the 
 system which allows an author or inventor a monopoly in his 
 ideas is a stupid and ineffective way either of paying for his 
 work or of satisfying the public wants. In each case the author 
 or inventor obtains a maximum nett return by leaving unsatisfied 
 the wants, certainly of many, probably of most of those who 
 desire to read his book or use his invention. We all know that 
 the public got a very good bargin when it paid the owners of 
 Waterloo Bridge more than they could possibly have made by 
 any scheme of tolls. In the same way it is certain that any 
 government which aimed at the greatest happiness of the great- 
 est number could afford to pay a capable artist or author possibly 
 even more than he gets from the rich men who are his present 
 patrons, and certainly more than he could get by himself selling 
 or exhibiting his productions in a society where few possessed 
 wealth for which they had not worked. Although the State 
 could thus afford to pay an extravagantly large reward for cer- 
 tain forms of intellectual labor, it does not therefore follow that 
 it would be obliged to do so in the absence of any other impor- 
 tant bidder. 
 
 There would always remain the sick, the infirm, and the school 
 children, whose wants could be satisfied from the general stock 
 without asking them to bear any part of the general burden. In 
 particular, it would be well to teach the children by actual ex- 
 perience the economy and happiness which arise in the case of 
 those who are fitly trained from association applied to the direct 
 satisfaction of wants, as well as from association in the manu- 
 facture of material wealth. If we wish to wean the children 
 from the selfish isolation of the English family, from the worse 
 than savage habits produced by four generations of capitalism, 
 from that longing for excitement, and incapacity for reasonable 
 enjoyment, which are the natural results of workdays spent in Eng- 
 lish factories, and English Sundays spent in English streets, then 
 we must give freely and generously to our schools. If this gen- 
 eration were wise it would spend on education not only more 
 than any other generation has ever spent before, but more than 
 any generation would ever need to spend again. It would fill 
 the school buildings with the means not only of comfort, but 
 
134 
 
 THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 even of the higher luxury ; it would serve the associated meals 
 on tables spread with flowers, in halls surrounded with beautiful 
 pictures, or even, as John Milton proposed, filled with the 
 sounds of music ; it would seriously propose to itself the ideal 
 of Ibsen, that every child should be brought up as a nobleman. 
 Unfortunately, this generation is not wise. 
 
 In considering the degree in which common owning of prop- 
 erty would be possible among a people just at that stage of in- 
 dustrial and moral development at which we now find ourselves, 
 it is expedient to dwell, as I have dwelt, rather upon the neces- 
 sary difficulties and limitations of Socialism, than upon its hopes 
 of future development. But we must always remember that 
 the problems which Socialism attempts to solve, deal with con- 
 ditions which themselves are constantly changing. Just as 
 anything like what we call Socialism would be impossible in a 
 nation of individualist savages like the Australian blacks, and 
 could not, perhaps, be introduced except by external authority 
 among a people like the peasants of Brittany, for whom the 
 prospect of absolute property in any portion of land, however 
 small, is at once their strongest pleasure and their only sufficient 
 incentive to industry ; so among a people further advanced, soci- 
 ally and industrially, than ourselves, a social condition would be 
 possible which we do not now dare to work for or even try to 
 realise. The tentative and limited Social-Democracy which I 
 have sketched is the necessary and certain step to that better 
 life which we hope for. The interests which each man has in 
 common with his fellows tend more and more to outweigh those 
 which are peculiar to himself. We see the process even now 
 beginning. Already, as soon as a public library is started, the 
 workman finds how poor a means for the production of happi- 
 ness are the few books on his own shelf, compared with the 
 share he has in the public collection, though that share may 
 have cost even less to produce. In the same way the score or 
 two of pounds which a workman may possess are becoming daily 
 of less and less advantage in production ; so that the man who 
 a few years ago would have worked by himself as a small capi- 
 talist, goes now to work for wages in some great business, and 
 treats his little savings as a fund to provide for a few months of 
 sickness or years of old age. He will soon see how poor a 
 means for the production of food is his own fire when compared 
 with the public kitchen ; and he will perhaps at last not only 
 
PBOPERTY TINDER SOCIALISM. 
 
 135 
 
 get his clothes from the public store, but the delight of his eyes 
 from the public galleries and theatres, the delight of his ears 
 from the public opera, and it may be, when our present anarchy 
 of opinion be overpast, the refreshment of his mind from the 
 publicly chosen teacher. Then at last such a life will be 
 possible for all as not even the richest and most powerful can 
 live to-day. The system of property holding which we call 
 Socialism is not in itself such a life any more than a good 
 system of drainage is health, or the invention of printing is 
 knowledge. Nor indeed is Socialism the only condition neces- 
 sary to produce complete human happiness. Under the justest 
 possible social system we might still have to face all those vices 
 and diseases which are not the direct result of poverty and 
 over- work ; we might still suffer all the mental anguish and 
 bewilderment which are caused, some say by religious belief, 
 others by religious doubt ; we might still witness outbursts of 
 national hatred and the degradation and extinction of weaker 
 peoples ; we might still make earth a hell for every species 
 except our own. But in the households of the five men out of 
 six in England who live by weekly wage. Socialism would 
 indeed be a new birth of happiness. The long hours of work 
 done as in a convict prison, without interest and without hope ; 
 the dreary squalor of their homes ; above all that grievous un- 
 certainty, that constant apprehension of undeserved misfortune 
 which is the peculiar result of capitalist production : all this 
 would be gone ; and education, refinement, leisure, the very 
 thought of which now maddens them, would be part of their 
 daily life. Socialism hangs above them as the crown hung in 
 Bunyan’s story above the man raking the muck heap — ready 
 for them if they will but lift their eyes. And even to the few 
 who seem to escape and even profit by the misery of our century. 
 Socialism offers a new and nobler life, when full sympathy with 
 those about them, springing from full knowledge of their condi- 
 tion, shall be a source of happiness, and not, as now, of constant 
 sorrow — when it shall no longer seem either folly or hypocrisy 
 for a man to work openly for his highest ideal. To them be- 
 longs the privilege that for each one of them the revolution may 
 begin as soon as he is ready to pay the price. They can live 
 as simply as the equal rights of their fellows require : they can 
 justify their lives by work in the noblest of all causes. For 
 their reward, if they desire any, they, like the rest, must wait. 
 
INDUSTRY UNDER SOCIALISM. 
 
 BY ANNIE BESANT. 
 
 There are two ways in which a scheme for a future organisa- 
 tion of industry may be constructed. Of these, by far the 
 easier and less useful is the sketching of Utopia, an intellectual 
 gymnastic in which a power of coherent and vivid imagination 
 is the one desideratum. The Utopist needs no knowledge of 
 facts ; indeed such a knowledge is a hindrance : for him the 
 laws of social evolution do not exist. He is a law unto him- 
 self ; and his men and women are not the wayward, spasmodic, 
 irregular organisms of daily life, but automata, obeying the 
 strings he pulls. In a word, he creates, he does not construct : 
 he makes alike his materials and the laws within which they 
 work, adapting them all to an ideal end. In describing a new 
 Jerusalem, the only limits to its perfection are the limits of the 
 writer’s imagination. 
 
 The second way is less attractive, less easy, but more useful. 
 Starting from the present state of society, it seeks to discover 
 the tendencies underlying it ; to trace those tendencies to their 
 natural outworking in institutions ; and so to forecast, not the 
 far-off future, but the next social stage. It fixes its gaze on 
 the vast changes wrought by evolution, not the petty variations 
 made by catastrophes ; on the Revolutions which transform so- 
 ciety, not tlie transient riots which merely upset thrones and 
 behead kings. This second way I elect to follow ; and this 
 paper on industry under Socialism therefore starts from William 
 Clarke’s exposition of the industrial evolution which has been 
 in progress during tlie last hundred and fifty years. In thus 
 l)uilding forward — in tlius forecasting the transitions through 
 wliich society will probably pass, I shall scarcely touch on the 
 ideal Social State that will one day exist ; and my sketch must 
 lay itself open to all the criticisms which may be levelled against 
 
INDUSTRY UNDER SOCIALISM. 
 
 137 
 
 a society not ideally perfect. It is therefore necessary to bear 
 in mind that I am only trying to work out changes practicable 
 among men and women as we know them ; always seeking to 
 lay down, not what is ideally best, but what is possible ; always 
 choosing among the possible changes that which is on the line 
 towards the ideal, and will render further approach easier. In 
 fact this paper is an attemiDt to answer the How ? ” so often 
 heard when Socialism is discussed. Large numbers of people 
 accept, wholly or in part, the Socialist theory : they are intel- 
 lectually convinced of its soundness or emotionally attracted by 
 its beauty ; but they hesitate to join in its propaganda, because 
 they don’t see where you are going to begin,” or “ don’t see 
 where you are going to stop.” Both difficulties are disposed of 
 by the fact that we are not “ going to begin.” There will never 
 be a point at which a society crosses from Individualism to So- 
 cialism. The change is ever going forward ; and our society is 
 well on the way to Socialism. All we can do is to consciously 
 co-operate with the forces at work, and thus render the transi- 
 tion more rapid than it would otherwise be. 
 
 The third Fabian essay shews us the success of capitalism 
 bringing about a position which is at once intolerable to major- 
 ity, and easy of capture by them. At this point the destruc- 
 tion of the small industries has broken down most of the 
 gradations which used to exist between the large employer and 
 the hired laborer, and has left in their place a gulf across 
 which a few capitalists and a huge and hungry proletariat face 
 each other. The denial of human sympathy by the employer 
 in his business relations with his “ hands ” has taught the 
 “ hands ” to regard the employer as outside the pale of their 
 sympathy. The ‘^respect of the public conscience for the 
 rights of property,” which was at bottom the private interest 
 of each in his own little property, has diminished since the 
 many lost their individual possessions, and saw property accu- 
 mulate in the hands of the few : it is now little more than a 
 tradition inherited from a former social state. The public 
 conscience ” will soon condone, nay, it will first approve, and 
 then demand, the expropriation of capital which is used anti- 
 socially instead of socially, and which belongs to that imper- 
 sonal abstraction, a company, instead of to our next door 
 neighbor. To the average person it is one thing for the State 
 to seize the little shop of James Smith who married our sister, 
 
138 
 
 THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 or the thriving business of our Sam who works early and late 
 for his living ;• and quite another when James and Sam, ruined 
 by a big Company made up of shareholders of whom nobody 
 knows anything but that they pay low wages and take high 
 dividends, have been obliged to become hired servants of the 
 Company, instead of owning their own shops and machinery. 
 Whose interest will it be to protest against the State taking over 
 the capital, and transforming James and Sam from wage-slaves 
 at the mercy of a foreman, into shareholders and public func- 
 tionaries, with a voice in the management of the business in 
 which they are employed ? 
 
 Let us suppose, then, that the evolution of the capitalist 
 system has proceeded but a little further along the present 
 lines, concentrating the control of industry, and increasingly 
 substituting labor-saving machinery for human beings. It is 
 being accompanied, and must continue to be accompanied, by a 
 growth of the numbers of the unemployed. These numbers 
 may ebb and flow, as some of the waves of a rising tide run 
 forward some feet and then a few touch a lower level ; but as 
 the tide rises despite the fluctuations of the ripples, so the 
 numbers of the unemployed will increase despite transient 
 mountings and fallings. With these, probably, will begin the 
 tentative organisation of industry by the State ; but this or- 
 ganisation will soon be followed by the taking over by the 
 community of some of the great Trusts. 
 
 The division of the country into clearly deflned areas, each 
 with its elected authority, is essential to any effective scheme 
 of organisation. It is one of the symptoms of the coming 
 change, that, in perfect unconsciousness of the nature of his 
 act, Mr. Ritchie has established the Commune. He has 
 divided England into districts ruled by County Councils, and 
 has thus created the machinery without which Socialism was im- 
 practicable. True, he has only made an outline which needs 
 to be filled in ; but Socialists can fill in, whereas they had no 
 power to outline. It remains to give every adult a vote in the 
 election of Councillors ; to shorten their term of office to a year ; 
 to pay the Councillors, so that the public may have a right to 
 the whole of tlieir working time ; to give the Councils power to 
 take and hold land — a reform already asked for by the Liberal 
 and Radical Union, a body not consciously Socialist; and to 
 remove all legal restrictions, so as to leave them as free to act 
 
INDUSTRY UNDER SOCIALISM. 
 
 139 
 
 corporately as an individual is to act individually. These 
 measures accomplished, the rapidity with which our institutions 
 are socialised, depends on the growth of Socialism among the 
 people. It is essential to the stability of the changed forms of 
 industry that they shall be made by the people, not imposed 
 upon them ; hence the value of Mr. Ritchie’s gift of Local 
 Government, enabling each locality to move swiftly or slowly, 
 to experiment on a comparatively small scale, even to blunder 
 without widespread disaster. The mot d'ordre for Socialists 
 now is Convert the electors ; and capture the County Coun- 
 cils.” These Councils, administering local affairs, with the 
 national Executive, administering national affairs, are all des- 
 tined to be turned into effective industrial organisers ; and the 
 unit of administration must depend on the nature of the 
 industry. The post, the telegraph, the railways, the canals, 
 and the great industries capable of being organised into Trusts, 
 will, so far as we can see now, be best administered each from 
 a single centre for the whole kingdom. Tramways, gas-works, 
 water-works, and many of the smaller productive industries, 
 will be best managed locally. In marking the lines of division, 
 convenience and experience must be our guides. The demarca- 
 tions are of expediency, not of principle. 
 
 The first great problem that will press on the County Coun- 
 cil for solution will be that of the unemployed. Wisely or 
 unwisely, it will have to deal with them : wisely, if it organises 
 them for productive industry ; unwisely, if it opens “ relief 
 works,” and tries, like an enlarged Bumble, to shirk the diffi- 
 culty by enforcing barren and oppressive toil upon outlawed 
 wretches at the expense of the rest of the community. Many 
 of the unemployed are unskilled laborers : a minority are skilled. 
 They must first be registered as skilled and unskilled, and the 
 former enrolled under their several trades. Then can begin the 
 rural organisation of labor on county farms, held by the County 
 Councils. The Council will have its agricultural committee, 
 charged with the administrative details ; and this committee 
 will choose well-trained, practical agriculturists, as directors of 
 the farm business. To the County Farm will be drafted from 
 the unemployed in the towns, the agricultural laborers who 
 have wandered townwards in search of work, and many of the 
 unskilled laborers. On these farms every advantage of machin- 
 ery, and every discovery in agricultural science, should be util- 
 
140 
 
 THE OEGANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 ised to the utmost. The crops should be carefully chosen with 
 reference to soil and aspect — cereals, fruit, vegetables — and 
 the culture adapted to the crop, the one aim being to obtain the 
 largest amount of produce with the least expenditure of human 
 labor. Whether land is most profitably cultivated in large or 
 small parcels depends on the crop ; and in the great area of tlie 
 County Farm, la grande et la petite culture might each have its 
 place. Economy would also gain by the large number of labor- 
 ers under the direction of the head farmer^ since they could be 
 concentrated when required at any given spot, as in harvest 
 time, and dispersed to work at the more continuous kinds of til- 
 lage when the seasonal task was over. 
 
 To these farms must also be sent some skilled laborers from 
 among the unemployed, shoemakers, tailors, smiths, carpenters, 
 etc. ; so that the County Farm may be self-supporting as far as 
 it can be without waste of productive power. All the small 
 industries necessary in daily life should be carried on in it, and 
 an industrial commune thus built up. The democracy might be 
 trusted to ordain that an eight hours’ day, and a comfortable 
 home, should be part of the life-conditions on the County Farm. 
 Probably each large farm would soon have its central store, with 
 its adjacent railway station, in addition to the ordinary farm 
 buildings ; its public hall in the centre of the farm village to be 
 used for lectures, concerts, and entertainments of all sorts ; its 
 public schools, elementary and technical ; and soon, possibly 
 from the outset, its public meal-room, saving time and trouble to 
 housewives, and, while economising fuel and food, giving a far 
 greater choice and variety of dishes. Large dwellings, with 
 suites of rooms, might perhaps replace old-fashioned cottages ; 
 for it is worth noting, as showing the tendency already existing 
 among ourselves to turn from isolated self-dependence to the 
 advantages of associated living, that many modern flats are 
 being built without servants’ rooms, the house-cleaning, etc., 
 being done by persons engaged for the whole block, and the 
 important meals being taken at restaurants, so as to avoid the 
 trouble and expense of private cooking. It will surely be well 
 in initiating new organisations of industry to start on the most 
 advanced lines, and take advantage of every modern tendency 
 towards less isolated modes of living. Socialists must work 
 liard to make municipal dealings witli the unemployed avenues 
 to the higlier life, not grudging utilisation of pauper labor. And 
 
INDUSTRY UNDER SOCIALISM. 
 
 141 
 
 as they know their aim, and the other political parties live 
 but from hand to mouth, they ought to be able to exercise 
 a steady and uniform pressure, which, just because it is steady 
 and uniform, will impress its direction on the general move- 
 ment. 
 
 The note of urban industrial organisation, as of all other, 
 must be that each person shall be employed to do what he can 
 do best, not what he does worst. It may be desirable for a man 
 to have two ‘trades ; but watch-making and stone-breaking are 
 not convenient alternative occupations. Where the skilled 
 unemployed belong to trades carried on everywhere, such as 
 baking, shoemaking, tailoring, etc., they should be employed at 
 their own trades in municipal workshops, and their products 
 garnered in municipal stores. These workshops will be under 
 the direction of foremen, thoroughly skilled workmen, able to 
 superintend and direct as though in private employment. The 
 working-day must be of eight hours, and the wages, for the pre- 
 sent, the Trades Union minimum. Then, instead of tailors and 
 shoemakers tramping the streets ragged and barefoot, the tailors 
 will be making clothes and the shoemakers boots and shoes ; 
 and the shoemaker with the wages he earns will buy the tailor’s 
 products, and the tailor the shoemaker’s. Then, instead of sup- 
 porting the unemployed by rates levied on the employed they 
 will be set to work to supply their own necessities, and be pro- 
 ducers of the wealth they consume instead of consuming, in en- 
 forced idleness or barren penal exercises in the stoneyard, the 
 wealth produced by others. Masons, bricklayers, plumbers, 
 carpenters, etc., might be set to work in building decent and 
 pleasant dwellings — in the style of the blocks of flats, not of 
 the barracks called model dwellings — for the housing of the 
 municipal industrial army. I lay stress on the pleasantness of 
 the dwellings. These places are to be dwellings for citizens, not 
 prisons for paupers ; and there is no possible reason why they 
 should not be made attractive. Under Socialism the workers 
 are to be the nation, and all that is best is for their service ; for, 
 be it remembered, our faces are set towards Socialism, and our 
 organisation of labor is to be on Socialist lines. 
 
 It is very likely that among the unemployed some will be 
 found whose trade can only be carried on by large numbers, and 
 is not one of the industries of the town into which their unlucky 
 fate has drifted them. These should be sent into municipal 
 
142 
 
 THE OEGANIZATIOK OF SOCIETY. 
 
 service in the towns where their trade is the staple industry, 
 there to be employed in the municipal factory. 
 
 Concurrently with this rural and urban organisation of noR- 
 centralised industries will proceed the taking over of the great 
 centralised industries, centralised for us by capitalists, who thus 
 unconsciously pave the way for their own supersession. Every- 
 thing which has been organised into a Trust, and has been 
 worked for a time in the Trust fashion, is ripe for appropriation 
 by the community. All minerals would be most properly worked 
 in this centralised way ; and it will probably be found most con- 
 venient to work all the big productive industries — such as the 
 textile — in similar fashion. It is idle to say that it cannot be 
 done by the State when it is being done by a ring of capitalists : 
 a Local Board, an Iron Board, a Tin Board, can be as easily held 
 responsible to the nation as to a casual crowd of shareholders. 
 There need be no dislocation of 2:>roduction in making the trans- 
 ference : the active organisers and directors of a Trust do not 
 necessarily, or even usually, own the capital invested in it. If 
 the State finds it convenient to hire these organisers and direc- 
 tors, there is nothing to prevent its doing so for as long or as 
 short a period as it chooses. The temporary arrangements made 
 with them during the transition period must be governed by ex- 
 pediency. 
 
 Let us pause for a moment to estimate the position so far. The 
 unemployed have been transformed into communal workers — 
 in the country on great farms, improvements of the Bonanza 
 farms in America — in the towns in various trades. Public 
 stores for agricultural and industrial products are open in all 
 convenient places, and filled with the goods thus communally 
 ])roduced. The great industries, worked as Trusts, are controlled 
 by the State instead of by capitalist rings. The private capital- 
 ist, however, will still be in business, producing and distributing 
 on his own account in competition with the communal organi- 
 sations, wliich at present will have occupied only part of the 
 industrial field. But apart from a pressure which will be recog- 
 nised when we come to deal with the remuneration of labor, 
 these private enterj^rises will be carried on under circumstances 
 of ever-increasing difficulty. In face of the orderly communal 
 arrays, playing into eacli other’s hands, with the credit of the 
 country behind them, the ventures of the private capitalist will 
 be at as great a disadvantage as tlie cottage industries of the 
 
INDUSTRY UNDER SOCIALISM. 
 
 143 
 
 last century in face of the factory industries of our own period. 
 The Trusts have taught us how to drive competing capitals out 
 of the market by associated capitals. The Central Boards or 
 County Councils will be able to utilise this power of association 
 further than any private capitalists. Thus the economic forces 
 which replaced the workshop by the factory, will replace the 
 private shop by the municipal store and the private factory by 
 the municipal one. And the advantages of greater concentra- 
 tion of capital and of the association of labor will not be the 
 only ones enjoyed by the communal workers. All waste will 
 be checked, every labor-saving appliance utilised to the utmost, 
 where the object is the production of general wealth and not the 
 production of profit to be appropriated by a class ; for in the 
 one case it is the interest of the producers to produce — inasmuch 
 as their enjoyment depends on the productivity of their labor — 
 whereas in the other it is their interest to sterilise their labor as 
 far as they dare in order to render more of it necessary and so 
 keep up its price. As the organisation of the public industry 
 extends, and supplants more and more the individualist producer, 
 the probable demand will be more easily estimated, and the 
 supply regulated to meet it. The Municipalities and Central 
 Boards will take the place of the competing small capitalists and 
 the rings of large ones ; and production will become ordered and 
 rational instead of anarchical and reckless as it is to-day. After 
 awhile the private producers will disappear, not because there 
 will be any law against individualist production, but because it 
 will not pay. No one will care to face the worries, the harass- 
 ments, the anxieties, of individual struggling for livelihood, when 
 ease, freedom, and security can be enjoyed in the communal ser- 
 vices. 
 
 The best form of management during the transition period, 
 and possibly for a long time to come, will be through the Com- 
 munal Councils, which will appoint committees to superintend 
 the various branches of industry. These committees will engage 
 the necessary manager and foreman for each shop, factory, etc., 
 and will hold the power of dismissal as of appointment. I do 
 not believe that the direct election of the manager and foreman 
 by the employees would be found to work well in practice, or to 
 be consistent with the discipline necessary in carrying on any 
 large business undertaking. It seems to me better that the 
 Commune should elect its Council — thus keeping under its own 
 
144 
 
 THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 control the general authority — but should empower the Council 
 to select the officials, so that the power of selection and dismissal 
 within the various sub-divisions should lie with the nominees of 
 the whole Commune instead of with the particular group imme- 
 diately concerned. 
 
 There is no practical difficulty in the way of the management 
 of the ordinary productive industries, large or small. The Trusts 
 and Co-operation have, between them, solved, or put us in the 
 way of solving, all problems connected with these. But there 
 are difficulties in connexion with the industries concerned in the 
 production of such commodities as books and newspapers. Dur- 
 ing the transitional stage these difficulties will not arise ; but when 
 all industries are carried on by the Commune, or the Nation, 
 how will books and newspapers be produced ? I only throw 
 out the following suggestions. Printing, like baking, tailoring, 
 shoemaking, is a communal rather than a national industry. 
 Suppose we had printing offices controlled by the Communal 
 Council. The printing committee might be left free to accept 
 any publication it thought valuable, as a private firm to-day 
 may take the risk of publication, the arrangement with the 
 author being purchase outright, or royalty on copies sold, in 
 each case so much to be put to his credit at the Communal Bank. 
 But there are many authors whose goods are desired by no one : 
 it would be absurd to force the community to publish all minor 
 poetry. Why not accept the principle that in every case where 
 the printing committee declines to print at the communal risk, 
 the author may have his work printed by transferring from his 
 credit at the Communal Bank to the account of the printing 
 committee sufficient to cover the cost of printing ? The com- 
 mittee should have no power to refuse to print, where the cost 
 was covered. Thus liberty of expression would be guarded as 
 a constitutional right, while the community would not be charged 
 with the cost of printing every stupid effusion that its fond com- 
 poser might deem worthy of publicity. 
 
 Newspapers might be issued on similar terms ; and it would 
 always be open to individuals, or to groups of individuals, to 
 publish anytliing they pleased on covering the cost of publica- 
 tion. With the comparative affluence which would be enjoyed 
 by each member of the community, anyone wffio really cared to 
 reach the public ear would be able to do so by diminishing his 
 expenditure in other directions. 
 
INDUSTRY UNDER SOCIALISM. 
 
 145 
 
 Another difficulty which will meet us although not imme- 
 diately, is the competition for employment in certain pleasanter 
 branches of industry. At present an unemployed person would 
 catch eagerly at the chance of any well-paid work he was able 
 to perform. If he were able both to set type and to stitch 
 coats, he would not dream of grumbling if he were by chance 
 offered the job he liked the less of the two : he would be only 
 too glad to get either. But it is quite possible that as the vast 
 amelioration of life-conditions proceeds, Jeshurun will wax fat 
 and kick if, when he prefers to make microscopic lenses, he is 
 desired to make mirrors. Under these circumstances, Jeshurun 
 will, I fear, have to accommodate himself to the demand. If 
 the number of people engaged in making lenses suffices to meet 
 the demand for lenses, Jeshurun must consent to turn his talents 
 for the time to mirror-making. After all, his state will not be 
 very pitiable, though Socialism will have failed, it is true, to 
 make 2 -\- 2 — 5 , 
 
 This, however, hardly solves the general question as to the 
 apportioning of laborers to the various forms of labor. But a 
 solution has been found by the ingenious author of “ Looking 
 Backward, from a.d. 2000.” Leaving young men and women 
 free to choose their employments, he would equalise the rates 
 of volunteering by equalising the attractions of the trades. 
 In many cases natural bent, left free to develop itself during 
 a lengthened educational term, will determine the choice of 
 avocation. Human beings are fortunately very varied in 
 their capacities and tastes ; that which attracts one repels 
 another. But there are unpleasant and indispensable forms of 
 labor which, one would imagine, can attract none — mining, 
 sewer-cleaning, &c. These might be rendered attractive by 
 making the hours of labor in them much shorter than the nor- 
 mal working day of pleasanter occupations. Many a strong, 
 vigorous man would greatly prefer a short spell of disagreeable 
 work to a long one at a desk. As it is w^ell to leave the great- 
 est possible freedom to the individual, this equalising of advan- 
 tages in all trades would be far better than any atfempt to 
 perform the impossible task of choosing an employment for 
 each. A person would be sure to hate any work into which he 
 was directly forced, even though it were the very one he would 
 have chosen had he been left to himself. 
 
 Further, much of the most disagreeable and laborious work 
 
146 
 
 THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 might be done by machinery, as it would be now if it were not 
 cheaper to exploit a helot class. When it became illegal to 
 send small boys up chimneys, chimneys did not cease to be ' 
 swept: a machine was invented for sweeping them. Coal- 
 cutting might now be done by machinery, instead of by a man 
 lying on his back, picking away over his head at the imminent 
 risk of his own life ; but the machine is much dearer than men, 
 so the miners continue to have their chests crushed in by the 
 falling coal. Under Socialism men’s lives and limbs will be 
 more valuable than machinery ; and science will be tasked to 
 substitute the one for the other. 
 
 In truth the extension of machinery is very likely to solve 
 many of the problems connected with differential advantages in 
 employment ; and it seems certain that, in the very near future, 
 the skilled worker will not be the man who is able to perform a 
 particular set of operations, but the man who has been trained 
 in the use of machinery. The difference of trade will be in the 
 machine rather than in the man : whether the produce is nails 
 or screws, boots or coats, cloth or silk, paper-folding or type- 
 setting, will depend on the internal arrangements of the me- 
 chanism and not on the method of applying the force. What 
 we shall probably do will be to instruct all our youth in the 
 principles of mechanics and in the handling of machines ; the 
 machines will be constructed so as to turn the force into the 
 various channels required to produce the various articles ; and 
 the skilled workman will be the skilled mechanic^ not the skilled 
 printer or bootmaker. At the present time a few hours’ or a 
 few days’ study will make the trained mechanician master of 
 any macliine you can place before him. The line of progress is 
 to substitute machines for men in every department of produc- 
 tion : let the brain plan, guide, control ; but let iron and steel, 
 steam and electricity, that do not tire and cannot be brutalised, 
 do the whole of the heavy toil that exhausts human frames to- 
 day. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that we are 
 at the end of an inventive era. Rather are we only just be- 
 ginning to grope after the uses of electricity : and machinery 
 has before it possibilities almost undreamed of now, the men 
 produced by our system being too rough-handed for the manip- 
 ulation of delicate and complicated contrivances. T suggest 
 this only as a probable simplification of balancing the supply 
 and demand in various forms of labor in the future : our imme- 
 
INDUSTRY UNDER SOCIALISM. 
 
 147 
 
 diate method of regulation must be the equalising of advantages 
 in them. 
 
 One may guess that in each nation all the Boards and com- 
 munal authorities will ultimately be represented in some central 
 Executive, or Industrial Ministry ; that tlie Minister of Agri- 
 culture, of Mineral Industries, of Textile Industries, and so on, 
 will have relations with similar officers in other lands ; and that 
 thus, internationally as well as nationally, co-operation will re- 
 place competition. But that end is not yet. 
 
 We now approach a yet more thorny subject than the organi- 
 sation of the workers. What should be the remuneration of 
 labor — what the share of the product taken respectively by the 
 individual, the municipality, and the State ? 
 
 The answer depends on the answer to a previous question. 
 Is the organisation of the unemployed to be undertaken in 
 order to transform them into self-supporting, self-respecting 
 citizens ; or is it to be carried on as a form of exploitation, 
 utilising pauper labor for the production of profit for non- 
 paupers ? The whole matter turns on this point ; and unless 
 we know our own minds, and fight for the right method and 
 against the wrong from the very beginning, the organisation of 
 the unemployed will be a buttress for the present system instead 
 of a step towards a better. Already there is talk of establishing 
 labor colonies in connexion with workhouses ; and there is no 
 time to be lost if we are to take advantage of the good in the 
 proposal and exclude the bad. The County Councils also will 
 lead to an increase of municipal employment ; and the method 
 of that employment is vital. 
 
 Tlie ordinary vestryman, driven by the force of circumstances 
 into organising the unemployed, will try to extract a profit to 
 the ratepayers from pauper farms by paying the lowest rates of 
 wages. He would find this way of proceeding very congenial, 
 and would soon, if permitted, simply municipalise slave-driving. 
 In this way the municipal and rural organisation of labor, even 
 when its necessity and its advantages are realised, can do 
 nothing but change the form of exploitation of labor if the 
 workers in public employ are to be paid a wage fixed by the 
 competition of the market, and the profits of their labor used 
 only for the relief of the rates. Under such circumstances we 
 should have the whole of the rates paid by the communal 
 workers, while the private employers would go free. This 
 
148 
 
 THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 would not be a transition to Socialism, but only a new way of 
 creating a class of municipal serfs, which would make our 
 towns burlesques of the ancient Greek slaveholdirig ‘'demo- 
 cracies.” We shall find surer ground by recalling and applying 
 the principle of Socialism that the laborers shall enjoy the full 
 product of their toil. It seems to me that this might be worked 
 out somewhat in the following way : 
 
 Out of the value of the communal produce must come rent of 
 land payable to the local authority, rent of plant needed for 
 working the industries, wages advanced and fixed in the usual 
 way, taxes, reserve fund, accumulation fund, and the other 
 charges necessary for the carrying on of the communal business. 
 All thes-e deducted, the remaining value should be divided 
 among the communal workers as a “bonus.” It would be ob- 
 viously inconvenient, if not impossible, for the district authority 
 to sub-divide this value and allot so much to each of its sepa- 
 rate undertakings — so much left over from gas works for 
 the men employed there, so much from the tramways for the 
 men employed on them, and so on. It would be far simpler and 
 easier for the municipal employees to. be regarded as a single 
 body, in the service of a single employer, the local authority ; 
 and that the surplus from the whole of the businesses carried on 
 by the Communal Council should be divided without distinction 
 among the whole of the communal employees. Controversy will 
 probably arise as to the division : shall all the shares be equal ; 
 or shall the workers receive in proportion to the supposed dignity 
 or indignity of their work? Inequality, however, would be 
 odious; and I have already suggested (p. 145) a means of ad- 
 justing different kinds of labor to a system of equal division of 
 net })roduct. This meets the difficulty of the varying degrees 
 of irksomeness without invidiously setting up any kind of soci- 
 ally useful labor as more honorable than any other — a distinc- 
 tion essentially unsocial and pernicious. But since in public 
 affairs ethics are apt to go to the wall, and appeals to social 
 justice too often fall on deaf ears, it is lucky that in this case 
 ethics and convenience coincide. The impossibility of estimat- 
 ing the separate value of each man’s labor with any really valid 
 result, the friction which would arise, the jealousies which 
 woukl be provoked, the inevitable discontent, favoritism and 
 jobbery that would prevail : all these things will drive the 
 Communal Council into the right path, equal remuneration of 
 
INDUSTRY UNDER SOCIALISM. 
 
 149 
 
 all workers. That path once entered on, tlie princi[)le of simpli- 
 fication will spread ; and presently it will probably be found 
 convenient that all the Communal Councils shall send in tlieir 
 reports to a Central Board, stating the number of their em- 
 ployees, the amount of the values produced, the deductions for 
 rent and other charges, and their available surplus. All these 
 surpluses added together would then be divided by the total 
 number of communal employees, and the sum thus reached 
 would be the share of each worker. The national trusts would 
 at first be worked separately on lines analogous to those sketched 
 for the Communes ; but later these would be lumped in with the 
 rest, and still further equalise the reward of labor. As private 
 enterprises dwindle, more and more of the workers will pass 
 into communal employ, until at last the Socialist ideal is touched 
 of a nation in which all adults are workers, and all share the 
 national product. But be it noted that all this grows out of 
 the first organisation of industry by Municipalities and County 
 Councils, and will evolve just as fast or just as slowly as the 
 community and its sections choose. The values dealt with, 
 and the numbers employed at first, would not imply as much 
 complexity of detail as is involved in many of the great busi- 
 nesses now carried on by individuals and by companies. The 
 same brains will be available for the work as are now hired by 
 individuals ; and it is rather the novelty of the idea than the 
 difficulty of its realisation which will stand in the way of its 
 acceptance. 
 
 It is probable, however, tnat for some time to come, the 
 captains of industry will be more highly paid than the rank and 
 file of the industrial army, not because it is just that they should 
 receive higher remuneration, but because they, having still the 
 alternative of private enterprise, will be able to demand their 
 ordinary terms, at which it will pay the community better to 
 engage them than to do without them — which would be indeed 
 impossible. But their remuneration will fall as education 
 spreads : their present value is a scarcity value, largely depend- 
 ent on their monopoly of the higher education; and as the 
 wider training is thrown open to all, an eveiMiicreasing number 
 will become qualified to act as organisers and directors. 
 
 The form in which the worker’s share is paid to him is not a 
 matter of primary importance. It would probably be conven- 
 ient to have Communal Banks, issuing cheques like those of the 
 
150 
 
 THE OKGANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 Che(iue Bank; and these banks could open credits to the 
 workers to the amount of their remuneration. The way in 
 which each worker expended his wealth would of course be his 
 own business. 
 
 The above method of dealing with the surplus remaining from 
 communal labor after rent and other charges had been paid to 
 tiie Municipality, would prove the most potent factor in the 
 supersession of private enterprises. The amounts produced by 
 the communal organisations would exceed those produced under 
 individualist control ; but even if this were not so, yet the shares 
 of the communal workers, as they would include the produce 
 now consumed by idlers, would be higher than any wage which 
 could be paid by the private employer. Hence competition to 
 enter the communal service, and a constant pressure on the 
 Communal Councils to enlarge their undertakings. 
 
 It should be added that children and workers incapacitated by 
 age or sickness should receive an equal share with the communal 
 employees. As all have been children, are at times sick, and 
 hope to live to old age, all in turn would share the advantage ; 
 and it is only just that those who have labored honestly in 
 health and through maturity should enjoy the reward of labor 
 in sickness and through old age. 
 
 The shares of individuals and of Municipalities being thus 
 apportioned, there remains only a word to say as to the 
 Central National Council — the ‘SState”^ar excellence. This 
 would derive the revenues necessary for the discharge of its 
 functions, from contributions levied on the Communal Councils. 
 It is evident that in the adjustment of these contributions could 
 be effected the “ nationalisation ” of any special natural re- 
 sources, such as mines, harbors, &c., enjoyed by exceptionally 
 well situated Communes. The levy would be, in fact, of the 
 nature of an income tax. 
 
 Such a plan of Distribution — especially that part of it which 
 equalises the shares in the product — is likely to provoke the 
 question : “ What will be the stimulus to labor under the 
 proposed system ? Will not the idle evade their fair share of 
 labor, and live in clover on the industry of their neighbors ? ” 
 
 The general stimulus to labor will be, in the first place, then 
 as now, the starvation which would follow the cessation of 
 labor. Until we discover tlie country in which jam-rolls grow 
 on bushes, and roasted sucking-pigs run about crying “ Come 
 
INDUSTRY UNDER SOCIALISM. 
 
 151 
 
 eat me ! ” we are under an imperious necessity to produce. 
 We shall work because, on the whole, we prefer work to starva- 
 tion. In the transition to Socialism, when the organisation of 
 labor by the Communal Councils begins, the performance of 
 work will be the condition of employment ; and as non-employ 
 ment will mean starvation — for when work is offered, no relief 
 of any kind need be given to the healthy adult who refuses to 
 perform it — the strongest possible stimulus will force men to 
 work. In fact, work or starve ’’ will be the alternative set 
 before each communal employee ; and as men now prefer long- 
 continued and ill-paid work to starvation, they will certainly, 
 unless human nature be entirely changed, prefer short and 
 well-paid work to starvation. The individual shirker will be 
 dealt with much as he is to-day : he will be warned, and, if he 
 prove incorrigibly idle, discharged from the communal employ. 
 The vast majority of men now seek to retain their employment 
 by a reasonable discharge of their duty : why should they not 
 do the same when the employment is on easier conditions ? At 
 first, discharge would mean being flung back into the whirlpool 
 of competition, a fate not lightly to be challenged. Later, as 
 the private enterprises succumbed to the competition of the 
 Commune, it would mean almost hopelessness of obtaining a 
 livelihood. When social reorganisation is complete, it would 
 mean absolute starvation. And as the starvation would be 
 deliberately incurred and voluntarily undergone, it would meet 
 with no sympathy and no relief. 
 
 The next stimulus would be the appetite of the worker for 
 the result of the communal toil, and the determination of his 
 fellow- workers to make him take his fair share of the work of 
 producing it. It is found at the present time that a very small 
 share of the profits arising from associated labor acts as a tre- 
 mendous stimulus to each individual producer. Firms which 
 allot a part of their profits for division among their employees, 
 find the plan profitable to themselves. The men work eagerly 
 to increase the common product, knowing that each will have a 
 larger bonus as the common product is larger : they become 
 vigilant as to waste in production ; they take care of the 
 machinery ; they save gas, etc. In a word, they lessen the cost 
 as much as they can, because each saving means gain to them. 
 We see from the experiments of Leclaire and Godin that in- 
 ventiveness also is stimulated by a share in the common pro- 
 
152 
 
 THE ORGANIZATION OP SOCIETY. 
 
 duce. The workers in these businesses are ever trying to dis- 
 cover better methods to improve their machinery, in a word to 
 progress, since each step forward brings improvement of their 
 lot. Inventions come from a desire to save trouble, as well as 
 from the impulse of inventive genius, the joy in accomplishing 
 an intellectual triumph, and the delight of serving the race. 
 Small inventions are continually being made by clever work- 
 men to facilitate their operations, even when they are not 
 themselves personally gainers by them ; and there is no reason 
 to fear that this spontaneous exercise of inventiveness will 
 cease when the added productivity of labor lightens the task or 
 increases the liarvest of the laborer. Is it to be argued that 
 men will be industrious, careful, and inventive when they get 
 only a fraction of the result of their associated labor, but will 
 plunge into sloth, recklessness and stagnation when they get 
 the whole ? that a little gain stimulates, but any gain short of 
 complete satisfaction would paralyse ? If there is one vice 
 more certain than another to be unpopular in a Socialistic com- 
 munity, it is laziness. The man who shirked would find his 
 mates making his position intolerable, even before he suffered 
 the doom of expulsion. 
 
 But while these compelling motives will be potent in their 
 action on man as he now is, there are others, already acting on 
 some men, which will one day act on all men. Human beings 
 are not the simple and onesided organisms they appear to the 
 superficial glance of the Individualist — moved only by a single 
 motive, the desire for pecuniary gain — by one longing, the 
 longing for wealth. Under our present social system, the strug- 
 gle for riches assumes an abnormal and artificial development : 
 riclies mean nearly all that makes life worth having, security 
 against starvation, gratification of taste, enjoyment of pleasant 
 and cultured society, superiority to many temptations, self-re- 
 spect, consideration, comfort, knowledge, freedom, as far as 
 these things are attainable under existing conditions. In a 
 society where poverty means social discredit, where misfortune 
 is treated as a crime, where the prison of the workhouse is a 
 guerdon of failure, and the bitter carking harassment of daily 
 wants unmet by daily supply is ever hanging over the head of 
 each worker, what wonder that money seems the one thing 
 needful, and that every other thought is lost in the frensied 
 rush to escape all that is summed up in the one word Poverty? 
 
INDUSTRY UNDER SOCIALISM. 
 
 153 
 
 But this abnormal development of tlie gold-hunger would 
 disappear upon the certainty for eacli of the means of subsis- 
 tence. Let each individual feel absolutely secure of subsistence, 
 let every anxiety as to the material wants of his future be swept 
 away ; and the longing for wealth will lose its leverage. The 
 daily bread being certain, the tyranny of pecuniary gain will be 
 broken ; and life will begin to be used in living and not in 
 struggling for the chance to live. Then will come to the 
 front all those multifarious motives which are at work in the 
 complex human organism even now, and which will assume 
 their proper importance when the basis of physical life is 
 assured. The desire to excel, the joy in creative work, the 
 longing to improve, the eagerness to win social approval, the 
 instinct of benevolence ; all these will start into full life, and 
 will serve at once as the stimulus to labor and the reward of 
 excellence. It is instructive to notice that these very forces 
 may already be seen at work in every case in which subsistence 
 is secured, and they alone supply the stimulus to action. The 
 soldier’s subsistence is certain, and does not depend on his exer- 
 tions. At once he becomes susceptible to appeals to his patri- 
 otism, to his esprit de corps, to the honor of his flag ; he will 
 dare anything for glory, and value a bit of bronze, which is the 
 “ reward of valor,” far more than a hundred times its weight in 
 gold. Yet many of the private soldiers come from the worst of 
 the population ; and military glory and success in murder are 
 but poor objects to aim at. If so much can be done under cir- 
 cumstances so unpromising, what may we not hope from nobler 
 aspirations ? Or take the eagerness, self-denial, and strenuous 
 effort, thrown by young men into their mere games ! The desire 
 to be captain of the Oxford eleven, stroke of the Cambridge 
 boat, victor in the foot-race or the leaping, in a word, the desire 
 to excel, is strong enough to impel to exertions which often 
 ruin physical health. Everywhere we see the multiform desires 
 of humanity assert themselves when once livelihood is secure. 
 It is on the devotion of these to the service of Society, as the 
 development of the social instincts teaches men to identify 
 their interests with those of the community, that Socialism 
 must ultimately rely for progress ; but in saying this we are 
 only saying that Socialism relies for progress on human nature 
 as a whole, instead of on that mere fragment of it known as 
 the desire for gain. If human nature should break down, then 
 
164 
 
 THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 Socialism will break down ; but at least we have a hundred 
 strings to our Socialist bow, while the Individualist has only 
 one. 
 
 But Humanity will not break down. The faith which is 
 built on it is faith founded on a rock. Under healthier and 
 happier conditions, Humanity will rise to heights undreamed of 
 now ; and the most exquisite Utopias, as sung by the poet and 
 idealist, shall, to our children, seem but dim and broken lights 
 compared with their perfect day. All that we need are cour- 
 age, prudence, and faith. Faith, above all, which dares to be- 
 lieve that justice and love are not impossible ; and that more 
 than the best that man can dream of shall one day be realised 
 by men. 
 
TRANSITION TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 
 
TRANSITION.! 
 
 BY G. BERNARD SHAW, 
 
 When the British Association honored me by an invitation to 
 take part in its proceedings, I proposed to do so by reading a 
 paper entitled Finishing the Transition to Social Democracy.” 
 The word “ finishing ” has been, on consideration, dropped. In 
 modern use it has gathered a certain sudden and sinister sense 
 which I desire carefully to dissociate from the process to be 
 described. I suggested it in the first instance only to convey 
 in the shortest way that we are in the middle of the transition 
 instead of shrinking from the beginning of it ; and that I pro- 
 pose to deal with the part of it that lies before us rather than 
 that which we have already accomplished. Therefore, though 
 I shall begin at the beginning, I shall make no apology for 
 traversing centuries by leaps and bounds at the risk of sacri- 
 ficing the dignity of history to the necessity for coming to the 
 point as soon as possible. 
 
 Briefly, then, let us commence by glancing at the Middle 
 Ages. There you find, theoretically, a much more orderly 
 England than the England of to-day. Agriculture is organised 
 on an intelligible and consistent system in the feudal manor or 
 commune ; handicraft is ordered by the guilds of the towns. 
 Every man has his class, and every class its duties. Payments 
 and privileges are fixed by law and custom, sanctioned by the 
 moral sense of the community, and revised by the light of that 
 moral sense whenever the operation of supply and demand dis- 
 turbs their adjustment. Liberty and Equality are unheard of ; 
 but so is Free Competition. The law does not suffer a laborer’s 
 wife to wear a silver girdle ; neither does it force her to work 
 sixteen hours a day for the value of a modern shilling. No- 
 
 1 An address delivered on the 7th September, 1888, to the Economic 
 Section of the British Association at Bath, 
 
158 
 
 TRANSITION TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 
 
 body entertains the idea that the individual has any right to 
 trade as he pleases without reference to the rest. When the 
 townsfolk, for instance, form a market, they quite understand 
 that they have not taken that trouble in order to enable specu- 
 lators to make money. If they catch a man buying goods 
 solely in order to sell them a few hours later at a higher price, 
 they treat that man as a rascal ; and he never, as far as I have 
 been able to ascertain, ventures to plead that it is socially 
 beneficent, and indeed a pious duty, to buy in the cheapest 
 market and sell in the dearest. If he did, they would probably 
 burn him alive, not altogether inexcusably. As to Protection, 
 it comes naturally to them. 
 
 This Social Order, relics of which are still to be found in all 
 directions, did not collapse because it was unjust or absurd. It 
 was burst by the growth of the social organism. Its machinery 
 was too primitive, and its administration too naive, too personal, 
 too meddlesome to cope with anything more complex than a 
 group of industrially independent communes, centralised very 
 loosely, if at all, for purely political purposes. Industrial rela- 
 tion with other countries were beyond its comprehension. Its 
 grasp of the obligations of interparochial morality was none of 
 the surest: of international morality it had no notion. A 
 Frenchman or a Scotchman was a natural enemy: a Muscovite 
 was a foreign devil : the relationship of a negro to the human 
 race was far more distant than that of a gorilla is now admitted 
 to be. Thus, when the discovery of the New World began 
 that economic revolution which changed every manufacturing 
 town into a mere booth in the world’s fair, and quite altered 
 the immediate objects and views of producers, English ad- 
 venturers took to the sea in a frame of mind peculiarly favorable 
 to commercial success. They were unaffectedly pious, and had 
 the force of character which is only possible to men who are 
 founded on convictions. At the same time, they regarded piracy 
 as a brave and patriotic pursuit, and the slave trade as a per- 
 fectly honest branch of commerce, adventurous enough to be 
 consistent with the honor of a gentleman, and lucrative enough 
 to make it well worth the risk. When they stole the cargo of a 
 foreign ship, or made a heavy profit on a batch of slaves, they 
 regarded their success as a direct proof of divine protection. 
 Tlie owners of accumulated wealth hastened to venture ” their 
 capital with these men. Persons of all the richer degrees, from 
 
TRANSITION’. 
 
 159 
 
 Queen Elizabeth downward, took shares in the voyages of the 
 merchant adventurers. The returns justified their boldness ; 
 and the foundation of the industrial greatness and the industrial 
 shame of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was laid ; 
 modern Capitalism thus arising in enterprises for which men are 
 now, by civilised nations, hung or shot as human vermin. And 
 it is curious to see still, in the commercial adventurers of our 
 own time, the same incongruous combination of piety and recti- 
 tude with the most unscrupulous and revolting villainy. We 
 all know the merchant princes whose enterprise, whose steady 
 perseverance, whose high personal honor, blameless family re- 
 lations, large charities, and liberal endowment of public institu- 
 tions mark them out as very pillars of society ; and who are 
 nevertheless grinding their wealth out of the labor of women 
 and children with such murderous rapacity that they have to 
 hand over the poorest of their victims to sweaters whose sole 
 special function is the evasion of the Factory Acts. They 
 have, in fact, no more sense of social solidarity with the wage- 
 workers than Drake had with the Spaniards or negroes. 
 
 With the rise of foreign trade and Capitalism, industry so far 
 outgrew the control, not merely of the individual, but of the 
 village, the guild, the municipality, and even the central govern- 
 ment, that it seemed as if all attempt at regulation must be 
 abandoned. Every law made for the better ordering of busi- 
 ness either did not work at all, or worked only as a monopoly 
 enforced by exasperating official meddling, directly injuring the 
 general interest, and reacting disastrously on the particular 
 interest it was intended to protect. The laws, too, had ceased 
 to be even honestly intended, owing to the seizure of political 
 power by the capitalist classes, which had been prodigiously 
 enriched by the operation of economic laws which were not then 
 understood.^ Matters reached a position in which legislation 
 and regulation were so mischievous and corrupt, that anarchy 
 became the ideal of all progressive thinkers and practical men. 
 The intellectual revolt formally inaugurated by the Reformation 
 was reinforced in the eighteenth century by the great industrial 
 revolution which began with the utilisation of steam and the 
 invention of the spinning jenny. ^ Then came chaos. The feudal 
 system became an absurdity when its basis of communism with 
 
 1 Explained in the first essay in this volume, 
 
 2 See page 57-61. 
 
160 
 
 TKANSITIOX TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 
 
 inequality of condition had changed into private property with 
 free contract and competition rents. The guild system had no 
 machinery for dealing with division of labor, the factory system, 
 or international trade : it recognized in competitive individualism 
 only something to be repressed as diabolical. But competitive 
 individualism simply took possession of the guilds, and turned 
 them into refectories for aldermen, and notable additions to the 
 grievances and laughing stocks of posterity. 
 
 The desperate effort of the human intellect to unravel this 
 tangle of industrial anarchy brought modern political economy 
 into existence. It took shape in France, where the confusion 
 was thrice confounded ; and proved itself a more practical 
 department of philosophy than the metaphysics of the school- 
 men, the Utopian socialism of More, or the sociology of Hobbes. 
 It could trace its ancestry to Aristotle; but just then the human 
 intellect was rather tired of Aristotle, whose economics, besides, 
 were those of slave holding republics. Political economy soon 
 declared for industrial anarchy ; for private property ; for in- 
 dividual recklessness of everything except individual accumula- 
 tion of riches ; and for the abolition of all the functions of the 
 State except those of putting down violent conduct and inva- 
 sions of private property. It might have echoed Jack Cade’s 
 exclamation, “ But then are we in order, when we are most out 
 of order.” 
 
 Although this was what jDolitical economy decreed, it must 
 not be inferred that the greater economists were any more 
 advocates of mere license than Prince Kropotkin, or Mr. Her- 
 bert Spencer, or Mr. Benjamin Tucker of Boston, or any other 
 modern Anarchist. They did not admit that the alternative to 
 State regulation was anarchy ; they held that Nature had pro- 
 vided an all-powerful automatic regulator in Competition ; and 
 that by its operation self-interest would evolve order out of 
 chaos if only it were allowed its own way. They loved to 
 believe that a right and just social order was not an artifi- 
 cial and painfully maintained legal edifice, but a spontaneous 
 outcome of the free j)lay of the forces of Nature. They 
 were reactionaries against feudal domineering and medieval 
 meddling and ecclesiastical intolerance; and they were able 
 to shew how all three had ended in disgraceful failure, cor- 
 ruption and self-stultificalion. Indignant at the spectacle of 
 the peasant struggling against the denial of those rights of 
 
thansition. 
 
 IGl 
 
 private property which his feudal lord liad successfully 
 usurped, they strenuously affirmed the right of private prop- 
 erty for all. And whilst they were dazzled by the prodi- 
 gious impulse given to production by the industrial revolution 
 under competitive private enterprise, they were at the same 
 time, for want of statistics, so optimistically ignorant of the 
 condition of the masses, that we find David Hume, in 17G6, 
 writing to Turgot that ‘Hio man is so industrious but he 
 may add some hours more in the week to his labor ; and 
 scarce anyone is so poor but he can retrench something of 
 his expense.” No student ever gathers from a study of the 
 individualist economists that the English proletariat was seeth- 
 ing in horror and degradation whilst the riches of the propie- 
 tors were increasing by leaps and bounds. 
 
 The historical ignorance of the economists did not, however, 
 disable them for the abstract work of scientific political econ- 
 omy. All their most cherished institutions and doctrines suc- 
 cumbed one by one to their analysis of the laws of production 
 and exchange. With one law alone — the law of rent — they 
 destroyed the whole series of assumptions upon which private 
 property is based. The apriorist notion that among free com- 
 petitors wealth must go to the industrious, and poverty be the 
 just and natural punishment of the lazy and improvident, 
 proved as illusory as the apparent flatness of the earth. Here 
 was a vast mass of wealth called economic rent, increasing 
 with the population, and consisting of the difference between 
 the product of the national industry as it actually was and as 
 it would have been if every acre of land in the country had 
 been no more fertile or favorably situated than the very worst 
 acre from which a bare living could be extracted : all quite in- 
 capable of being assigned to this or that individual or class as 
 the return to his or its separate exertions : all purely social or 
 common wealth, for the private appropriation of which no per- 
 manently valid and intellectually honest excuse could be made. 
 Ricardo was quite as explicit and far more thorough on the 
 subject than Mr. Henry George. He pointed out — I quote 
 liis own words — that the whole surplus produce of the soil, 
 after deducting from it only such moderate profits as are suffi- 
 cient to encourage accumulation, must finally rest with the 
 landlord.” ^ 
 
 1 ^'Principles of Political Economy/’ chap, xxiv, p. 202. 
 
162 
 
 TRANSITIOK TO SOCIAL DEMOCEACY. 
 
 It was only by adopting a preposterous theory of value that 
 Ivicardo was able to maintain that the laborer, selling himself 
 for wages to the proprietor, would always command his cost of 
 production, ^.e., his daily subsistence. Even that slender conso- 
 lation vanished later on before the renewed investigation of 
 value made by Jevons,^ who demonstrated that the value of a 
 commodity is a function of the quantity available, and may 
 fall to zero when the supply outruns the demand so far as to 
 make the final increment of the supply useless.^ A fact which 
 the unemployed had discovered, without the aid of the differen- 
 tial calculus, before Jevons was born. Private property, in 
 fact, left no room for new comers. Malthus pointed this out, 
 and urged that there should be no newcomers, that the popula- 
 tion should remain stationary. But the population took exactly 
 as much notice of this modest demand for stagnation, as the 
 incoming tide took of King Canute’s ankles. Indeed the de- 
 mand was the less reasonable since the power of production per 
 head was increasing faster than the population (as it still is), 
 the increase of poverty being produced simply by the increase 
 and private appropriation of rent. After Ricardo had com- 
 pleted the individualist synthesis of production and exchange, a 
 dialectrical war broke out. Proudhon had only to skim through 
 a Ricardian treatise to understand just enough of it to be able 
 to shew that political economy was a reductio ad ahsurdum of 
 private property instead of a justification of it. Ferdinand 
 Lassalle, with Ricardo in one hand and Hegel in the other, 
 turned all the heavy guns of the philosophers and economists on 
 private property with such effect, that no one dared to chal- 
 lenge his characteristic boasts of the irresistible equipment of 
 Social Democracy in point of culture. Karl Marx, without 
 even giving up the Ricardian value theory, seized on the blue 
 books which contained the true history of the leaps and bounds of 
 England’s prosperity, and convicted private property of whole- 
 sale spoliation, murder and compulsory prostitution ; of plague, 
 pestilence, and famine ; battle, murder, and sudden death. 
 This was hardly what had been expected from an institution so 
 highly spoken of. Many critics said that the attack was not 
 
 1 ^‘Tlicory of Political Economy.” By W. Stanley Jevons (London: 
 ^facmillan & Co.). See also “ The Alphabet of Economic Science.” 
 Part by Philip H. Wicksteed. (Same publishers.) 
 
 2 See pp. 7-9 ante. 
 
TRANSITION’. 
 
 163 
 
 fair : no one ventured to pretend that the charges were not true. 
 The facts were not only admitted ; they had been legislated 
 upon. Social Democracy was working itself out practically as 
 well as academically. Before I recite the steps of the transi- 
 tion, I will, as a matter of form, explain wliat Social D(3moc- 
 racy is, though doubtless nearly all my hearers are already 
 conversant with it. 
 
 What the achievement of Socialism involves economically, 
 is the transfer of rent from the class which now appropriates 
 it to the whole people. Rent being that part of the prodnice 
 which is individually unearned, this is the only equitable 
 method of disposing of it. There is no means of getting 
 rid of economic rent. So long as the fertility of land varies from 
 acre to acre, and the number of persons passing by a shop win- 
 dow per hour varies from street to street, with the result that 
 two farmers or two shopkeepers of exactly equal intelligence 
 and industry will reap unequal returns from their year’s work, 
 so long will it be equitable to take from the richer farmer or 
 shopkeeper the excess over his fellow’s gain which he owes to 
 the bounty of Nature or the advantage of situation, and divide 
 that excess of rent equally between the two. If the pair of 
 farms or shops be left in the hands of a private landlord, he 
 will take the excess, and, instead of dividing it between his 
 two tenants, live on it himself idly at their expense. The 
 economic object of Socialism is not, of course, to equalise far- 
 mers and shopkeepers in couples, but to carry out the principle 
 over the whole community by collecting all rents and throwing 
 them into the national treasury. As the private proprietor has 
 no reason for clinging to his property except the legal power 
 to take the rent and spend it on himself — this legal power 
 being in fact what really constitutes him a proj^rietor — its 
 abrogation would mean his expropriation. The socialisation of 
 rent would mean the socialisation of the sources of production 
 by the expropriation of the present private proprietors, and the 
 transfer of their property to the entire nation. This transfer, 
 then, is the subject matter of the transition to Socialism, which 
 began some forty-five years ago, as far as any phase of social 
 evolution can be said to begin at all. 
 
 It will be at once seen that the valid objections to Socialism 
 consist wholly of practical difficulties. On the ground of 
 abstract justice. Socialism is not only unobjectionable, but 
 
164 
 
 TKANSITIOK TO SOCIAL DEMOCKACY. 
 
 sacredly imperative. I am afraid that in the ordinary middle- 
 class opinion Socialism is flagrantly dishonest, hut could be 
 established off-hand to-morrow with the help of a guillotine, if 
 there were no police, and the people were wicked enough In 
 truth, it is as honest as it is inevitable ; but all the mobs and 
 guillotines in the world can no more establish it than police 
 coercion can avert it. The first practical difficulty is raised by 
 the idea of the entire people collectively owning land, capital, or 
 anything else. Here is the rent arising out of the people’s 
 industry : here are the pockets of the private proprietors. The 
 problem is to drop that rent, not into those private pockets, but 
 mto the people’s pocket. Yes ; but where is the people’s 
 pocket ? Who is the people ? what is the people ? Tom we 
 know, and Dick : also Harry ; but solely and separately as 
 individuals : as a trinity they have no existence. Who is their 
 trustee, their guardian, their man of business, their manager, 
 their secretary, even their stakeholder ? The Socialist is stopped 
 dead at the threshold of practical action by this difficulty until 
 he bethinks himself of the State as the representative and 
 trustee of the people. Now if you will just form a hasty 
 picture of the governments which called themselves States in 
 Ricardo’s day, consisting of rich proprietors legislating either by 
 divine right or by the exclusive suffrage of the poorer proprie- 
 tors, and filling the executives with the creatures of their 
 patronage and favoritism ; if you look beneath their oratorical 
 parliamentary discussions, conducted with all the splendor and 
 decorum of an expensive sham fight ; if you consider their class 
 interests, their shameless corruption, and the waste and mis- 
 management which disgraced all their bungling attempts at 
 practical business of any kind, you will understand why 
 Ricardo, clearly as he saw the economic consequences of 
 private appropriation of rent, never dreamt of State appropria- 
 tion as a possible alternative. The Socialist of that time did 
 not greatly care : he was only a benevolent Utopian who 
 planned model communities, and occasionally carried them out, 
 with negatively instructive and positively disastrous results. 
 When his successors learned economies from Ricardo, they 
 saw the difficulty quite as plainly as Ricardo’s vulgarisers, the 
 Whig doctrinaires who accepted the incompetence and corrup- 
 tion of States as permanent inherent State qualities, like the 
 acidity of lemons. Not that the Socialists were not doctrinaires 
 
TKAXSITIOX. 
 
 165 
 
 too ; but outside economics they were pupils of Hegel, whilst 
 the Whigs were pupils of Beiitham and Austin. Bentham’s was 
 not the school in which men learned to solve problems to which 
 history alone could give the key, or to form conceptions which 
 belonged to the evolutional order. Hegel, on the other hand, 
 expressly taught the conception of the perfect State ; and his 
 pupils saw that nothing in the nature of things made it impos- 
 sible, or even specially difficult, to make the existing State, if 
 not absolutely perfect, at least practically trustworthy. They 
 contemplated the insolent and inefficient government official of 
 their day without rushing to the conclusion that the State 
 uniform had a magic property of extinguishing all business 
 capacity, integrity, and common civility in the wearer. When 
 State oliicials obtained their posts by favoritism and j^atronage, 
 efficiency on their part was an accident, and politeness a conde- 
 scension. AThen they retained their posts without any effective 
 responsibility to the public, they naturally defrauded the public 
 by making their posts sinecures, and insulted the public when, 
 by personal inquiry, it made itself troublesome. But every 
 successfully conducted private business establishment in the 
 kingdom was an example of the ease with which public ones 
 could be reformed as soon as there was the effective will to find 
 out the way. Make the passing of a sufficient examination an 
 indispensable preliminary to entering the executive ; make the 
 executive responsible to the government and the goveimment 
 responsible to the people ; and kState departments will be pro- 
 vided with all the guarantees for integrity and efficiency that 
 private money-hunting pretends to. Thus the old bugbear of 
 State imbecility did not terrify the Socialist : it only made him 
 a Democrat. But to call himself so simply, would have had the 
 effect of classing him with the ordinary destructive politician 
 who is a Democrat without ulterior views for the sake of formal 
 Democracy — one whose notion of Radicalism is the pulling up 
 of aristocratic institutions by the roots — who is, briefly, a sort 
 of Universal Abolitionist. Consequently, we have the distinc- 
 tive term Social Democrat, indicating the man or woman who 
 desires through Democracy to gather the whole people into the 
 State, so that the State may be trusted with the rent of the 
 country, and finally with the land, the capital, and the organisa- 
 tion of the national industry — with all the sources of produc- 
 tion, in short, which are now abandoned to the cupidity of irre- 
 sponsible private individuals. 
 
166 
 
 TRANSITIOK TO SOCIAL DEMOCK AC Y, 
 
 The benefits of such a change as this are so obvious to all 
 except the existing private proprietors and their parasites, that 
 it is very necessary to insist on the impossibility of effecting it 
 suddenly. The young Socialist is apt to be catastrophic in his 
 views ■ — to plan the revolutionary programme as an affair of 
 twenty-four lively hours, with Individualism in full swing on 
 Monday morning, a tidal wave of the insurgent proletariat on 
 Monday afternoon, and Socialism in complete working order on 
 Tuesday. A man who believes that such a happy despatch is 
 possible, will naturally think it absurd and even inhuman to 
 stick at bloodshed in bringing it about. He can prove that the 
 continuance of the present system for a year costs more suffering 
 than could be crammed into any Monday afternoon, however 
 sanguinary. This is the phase of conviction hi which are 
 delivered those Socialist speeches which make what the news- 
 papers call “ good copy,’’ and which are the only ones they as 
 yet report. Such speeches are encouraged by the hasty opposi- 
 tion they evoke from thoughtless persons, who begin by tacitly 
 admitting that a sudden change is feasible, and go on to protest 
 that it would be wicked. The experienced Social Democrat 
 converts his too ardent follower by first admitting that if the 
 change could be made catastrophically it would be well worth 
 making, and then proceeding to point out that as it would 
 involve a readjustment of productive industry to meet the 
 demand created by an entirely new distribution of purchasing 
 power, it would also involve, in the application of labor and 
 industrial machinery, alterations which no afternoon’s work 
 could effect. You cannot convince any man that it is impossible 
 to tear down a government in a day ; but eveiybody is convinced 
 already that you cannot convert first and third class carriages 
 into second class; rookeries and palaces into comfortable 
 dwellings ; and jewellers and dressmakers into bakers and 
 builders, by merely singing the ‘^Marseillaise-” No judicious 
 person, however deeply persuaded that the work of the court 
 dressmaker has no true social utility, would greatly care to 
 quarter her idly on the genuinely productive workers pending 
 the preparation of a place for lier in their ranks. For though 
 she is to all intents and purposes quartered on them at present, 
 yet she at least esca])es tlie demoralisation of idleness. Until 
 her new place is ready, it is better tliat her patrons should find 
 dressmaking for her liands to do, than that Satan should find 
 
TRANSITION. 
 
 167 
 
 mischief. Demolisliiiig a Bastille with seven prisoners in it is 
 one thing : demolishing one with fourteen million prisoners is 
 quite another. 1 need not enlarge on the point : the necessity 
 for cautions and gradual change must be obvious to everyone 
 here, and could be made obvious to everyone elsewhere if only 
 the catastrophists were courageously and sensibly dealt nvith in 
 discussion. 
 
 AVhat then does a gradual transition to Social Democracy 
 mean specifically ? It means the gradual extension of the 
 franchise ; and the transfer of rent and interest to the State, not 
 in one lump sum, but by instalments. Looked at in this way, 
 it will at once be seen that we are already far on the road, and 
 are being urged further by many politicians who do not dream 
 that they are touched with Socialism — nay, who would earnestly 
 repudiate the touch as a taint. Let us see how far we have 
 gone. In 1832 the political power passed into the hands of the 
 middle class ; and in 1838 Lord John Russell announced finality. 
 Meanwhile, in 1834, the middle class had swept away the last 
 economic refuge of the workers, the old Poor Law, and delivered 
 them naked to the furies of competition.^ Ten years turmoil 
 and active emigration followed ; and then the thin end of the 
 wedge went in. The Income Tax was established ; and the 
 Factory Acts were made effective. The Income Tax (1842), 
 which is on individualist principles an intolerable spoliative 
 anomaly, is simply a forcible transfer of rent, interest, and even 
 rent of ability, from private holders to the State without com- 
 pensation. It excused itself to the Whigs on the ground that 
 those who had most property for the State to protect should 
 pay ad valorem for its protection. The Factory Acts swept the 
 anarchic theory of the irresponsibility of private enterprise out 
 of practical politics ; made employers accountable to the State 
 for the well-being of their employees ; and transferred a further 
 instalment of profits directly to the worker by raising wages. 
 Then came the gold discoveries in California (1847) and Aus- 
 tralia (1851), and the period of leaps and bounds, supported by 
 the economic rent of England’s mineral fertility, which kindled 
 Mr. Gladstone’s retrogressive instincts to a vain hope of abolish- 
 
 1 The general impression that the old Poor Law liad become an inde- 
 fensible nuisance is a correct one. All attempts to mitigate Individual- 
 ism by philanthropy instead of replacing it by Socialism are foredoomed 
 to confusion. 
 
168 TRANSITION TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 
 
 ing the Income Tax. These events relieved the pressure set up 
 by the New Poor Law. The workers rapidly organized them- 
 selves in Trades Unions, which were denounced then for their 
 tendency to sap the manly independence which had formerly 
 characterized the British workman,^ and which are to-day held 
 up to him as the self-helpful perfection of that manly indepen- 
 dence. Howbeit, self-help flourished, especially at Manchester and 
 Sheffield ; State help was voted grandmotlierly ; wages went 
 up ; and the Unions, like the fly on the wheel, thought that they 
 had raised them. They were mistaken ; but the value of Trade 
 Unionism in awakening the social conscience of the skilled 
 workers was immense, though to this there was a heavy set-off 
 in its tendency to destroy their artistic conscience by making 
 them aware that it was their duty to one another to discourage 
 rapid and efficient workmanship by every means in their power. 
 An extension of the franchise, which was really an instalment 
 of Democracy, and not, like the 1832 Reform Bill, only an 
 advance towards it, was gained in 1867 ; and immediately after- 
 wards came another instalment of Socialism in the shape of a 
 further transfer of rent and interest from private holders to the 
 State for the purpose of educating the people. In the meantime, 
 the extraordinary success of the post-office, which, according to 
 the teaching of the Manchester school, should have been a nest 
 of incompetence and jobbery, liad not only shewn the perfect 
 efficiency of State enterprise when the officials are made respon- 
 sible to the class interested in its success, but had also proved 
 the enormous convenience and cheapness of socialistic or col- 
 lectivist charges over those of private enterprise. For example, 
 the Postmaster General charges a penny for sending a letter 
 weighing an ounce from Kensington to Bayswater. Private en- 
 terprise would send half a pound the same distance for a farth- 
 ing, and make a handsome profit on it. But the Postmaster 
 General also sends an ounce letter from Land’s End to John 
 o’ Groat’s House for a penny. Private enterprise would prob- 
 ably demand at least a shilling, if not five, for such a service ; 
 and there are many places in which private enterprise could not 
 on any terms maintain a post-office. Therefore a citizen with 
 ten letters to post saves considerably by the uniform socialistic 
 charge, and quite recognises the necessity for rigidly protecting 
 the Postmaster’s monopoly. 
 
 1 Sec Finjil Report of Royal Commission on Trade Unions, 1869. 
 Vol. i, p. xvii, sec. 46. 
 
TKANSITIOK. 
 
 169 
 
 After 1875,^ leaping and bounding prosperity, after a final 
 spurt during which the Income Tax fell to twopence, got out of 
 breath, and has not yet recovered it. Russia and America, 
 among other competitors, began to raise the margin of cultiva- 
 tion at a surprising rate. Education began to intensify the sense 
 of suffering, and to throw light upon its causes in dark places. 
 The capital needed to keep English industry abreast of the 
 growing population began to be attracted by the leaping and 
 bounding of foreign loans and investments,^ and to bring to 
 England, in payment of interest, imports that were not paid for 
 by exports — a phenomenon inexpressibly disconcerting to the 
 Cobden Club. The old pressure of the eighteen-thirties came 
 back again ; and presently, as if Chartism and Fergus O’Connor 
 had risen from the dead, the Democratic Federation and Mr. 
 H. M. Hyndman appeared in the field, highly significant as signs 
 of the times, and looming hideously magnified in the guilty eye 
 of property, if not of great account as direct factors in the 
 course of events. Numbers of young men, pupils of Mill, 
 Spencer, Comte, and Darwin, roused by Mr. Henry George’s 
 
 Progress and Poverty,*” left aside evolution and freethought ; 
 took to insurrectionary economics ; studied Karl Marx ; and 
 were so convinced that Socialism had only to be put clearly 
 before the working-classes to concentrate the power of their 
 immense numbers in one irresistible organization, that the 
 Revolution was fixed for 1889 — the anniversary of the French 
 Revolution — at latest. I remember being asked satirically and 
 publicly at that time how long I thought it would take to get 
 Socialism into working order if I had my way. I replied, with 
 a spirited modesty, that a fortnight would be ample for the 
 purpose. When I add that I was frequentl}^ complimented on 
 being one of the more reasonable Socialists, you will be able to 
 appreciate the fervor of our conviction, and the extravagant 
 levity of our practical ideas. The opposition we got was unin- 
 s tractive : it was mainly founded on the assumption that our 
 projects were theoretically unsound but immediately possible, 
 whereas our weak point lay in the case being exactly the reverse. 
 
 1 See Mr. Robert Giffen^s address on The Recent Rate of Material 
 Progress in England/^ Proceedings of the British Association at Man- 
 chester in 1887, page 806. 
 
 2 See Mr. Robert Giffen on Import and Export Statistics, “ Essays on 
 Finance,” Second Series, p. 194. (London : G. Bell & Sons. 1886.) 
 
170 
 
 TEANSITIOK TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 
 
 However, the ensuing years sifted and sobered us. The So- 
 cialists,” as they were called, have fallen into line as a Social 
 Democratic party, no more insurrectionary in its policy than 
 any other party. But I shall not present the remainder of the 
 transition to Social Democracy as the work of fully conscious 
 Social Democrats. I prefer to ignore them altogether — to 
 suppose, if you will, that the Government will shortly follow the 
 advice of the Saturday Review, and, for the sake of peace and 
 quietness, hang them. 
 
 First, then, as to the consummation of Democracy. Since 
 1885 every man who pays four shillings a week rent can only 
 be hindered from voting by anomalous conditions of registration 
 which are likely to be swept away very shortly. This is all but 
 manhood suffrage ; and it will soon complete itself as adult 
 suffrage. However, I may leave adult su&age out of the ques- 
 tion, because the outlawry of women, monstrous as it is, is not 
 a question of class privilege, but of sex privilege. To complete 
 the foundation of the democratic State, then, we need manhood 
 suffrage, abolition of all poverty disqualifications, abolition of 
 the House of Lords, public payment of candidature expenses, 
 public payment of representatives, and annual elections. These 
 changes are now inevitable, however unacceptable they may 
 appear to those of us who are Conservatives. They have been 
 for half a century the commonplaces of Radicalism. We have 
 next to consider that the State is not merely an abstraction : it 
 is a machine to do certain work ; and if that work be increased 
 and altered in its character, the machinery must be multiplied 
 and altered too. Now, the extension of the franchise does in- 
 crease and alter the work very considerably ; but it has no direct 
 effect on the machinery. At present the State machine has 
 practically broken down under the strain of spreading democ- 
 racy, the work being mainly local, and the machinery mainly 
 central. Witliout efficient loc^l machinery the replacing of 
 private enterprise by State enterprise is out of the question ; and 
 we shall presently see tliat such replacement is one of the in- 
 evitable consequences of Democracy. A democratic State can- 
 not become a /SbcfaZ-Democratic State unless it has in every 
 centre of population a local governing body as thoroughly 
 democratic in its constitution as the central Parliament. This 
 matter is also well in train. In 1888 a Government avowedly 
 reactionary passed a Local Government Bill which effected a 
 
TRANSITION. 
 
 171 
 
 distinct advance towards the democratic municipality.^ It was 
 furthermore a Bill with no single aspect of finality anywhere 
 about it. Local Self-Government remains prominent within the 
 sphere of practical politics. When it is achieved, the democratic 
 State will have the machinery for Socialism. 
 
 And now, how is the raw material of Socialism — otherwise 
 the Proletarian man — to be brought to the Derxiocratic State 
 machinery ? Here again the path is easily found. Politicians 
 who have no suspicion that they are Socialists, are advocating 
 further instalments of Socialism with a recklessness of indirect 
 results which scandalizes the conscious Social Democrat. The 
 phenomenon of economic rent has assumed prodigious propor- 
 tions in our great cities. The injustice of its private appropria- 
 tion is glaring, flagrant, almost ridiculous. In the long suburban 
 roads about London, where rows of exactly similar houses 
 stretch for miles country wards, the rent changes at every few 
 thousand yards by exactly the amount saved or incurred 
 annually in travelling to and from the householder’s place of 
 business. The seeker after lodgings, hesitating between Blooms- 
 bury and Tottenham, finds every advantage of situation skimmed 
 off by the landlord with scientific precision. As lease after lease 
 falls in, houses, shops, goodwills of businesses which are the 
 fruits of the labor of lifetimes, fall into the maw of the ground 
 landlord. Confiscation of capital, spoliation of households, 
 annihilation of incentive, everything that the most ignorant and 
 credulous fundholder ever charged against the Socialist, rages 
 openly in London, which begins to ask itself whether it exists 
 and toils only for the typical duke and his celebrated jockey 
 and his famous racehorse. Lord Hobhouse and his unimpeach- 
 ably respectable committee for the taxation of ground values 
 are already in the field claiming the value of the site of London 
 for London collectively ; and their agitation receives additional 
 momentum from every lease that falls in. Their case is un- 
 assailable ; and the evil they attack is one that presses- on the 
 ratepaying and leaseholding classes as well as upon humbler 
 sufferers. This economic pressure is reinforced formidably by 
 political opinion in the workmen’s associations. Here the 
 
 1 This same Government, beginning to realise what it has uninten- 
 tionally done for Social Democracy, is already (1889) doing what it can 
 to render the new County Councils socialistically impotent by urgently 
 reminding them of the restrictions which liamper their action. 
 
172 TRANSITION TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 
 
 moderate members are content to demand a progressive Income 
 Tax, which is virtually Lord Hobhouse’s proposal; and the 
 extremists are all for Land Nationalisation, which is again 
 Lord Hobhouse’s principle. The cry for such taxation cannot 
 permanently be resisted. And it is very worthy of remark that 
 there is a new note in the cry. Formerly taxes were proposed 
 with a specific object — as to pay for a war, for education, or 
 the like. Now the proposal is to tax the landlords in order to 
 get some of our money back from them — take it from them 
 first and find a use for it afterwards. Ever since Mr. Henry 
 George’s book reached the English Radicals, there has been a 
 growing disposition to impose a tax of twenty shillings in the 
 pound on obviously unearned incomes ; that is, to dump four 
 hundred and fifty millions ^ a year down on the Exchequer 
 counter ; and then retire with three cheers for the restoration 
 of the land to the people. 
 
 The results of such a proceeding, if it actually came off, 
 would considerably take its advocates aback. The streets 
 would presently be filled with starving workers of all grades, 
 domestic servants, coach-builders, decorators, jewellers, lace- 
 makers, fashionable professional men, and numberless others 
 whose livelihood is at present gained by ministering to the 
 wants of these and of the proprietary class. This,” they 
 would cry, is what your theories have brought us to ! Back 
 with the good old times, when we received our wages, which 
 were at least better than nothing.” Evidently the Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer would have three courses open to him. (1) 
 He would give the money back again to the landlords and 
 capitalists with an apology. (2) He could attempt to start 
 State industries with it for the employment of the people. (3) 
 Or he could simply distribute it among the unemployed. The 
 last is not to be thought of : anything is better than panem et 
 circenses. The second (starting State industries) would be far 
 too vast an undertaking to get on foot soon enough to meet 
 the urgent difficulty. The first (the return with an apology) 
 would be a rediictio ad absurdum of the whole affair — a con- 
 fession that the private proprietor, for all his idleness and 
 his voracity, is indeed performing an indispensable economic 
 function — ^ the function of capitalising, however wastefully 
 
 1 The authority for this figure will be found in Fabian Tract, No 5, 
 ‘‘Facts for Socialists.” 
 
TRANSITION. 
 
 173 
 
 and viciously, the wealth which surpasses his necessarily 
 limited power of immediate personal consumption. And here 
 we have checkmate to mere Henry Georgism, or State appro- 
 priation of rent without Socialism. It is easy to shew that the 
 State is entitled to the whole income of the Duke of West- 
 minster, and to argue therefrom that he should straightway be 
 taxed twenty shillings in the pound. But in practical earnest 
 the State has no right to take five farthings of capital from the 
 Duke or anybody else until it is ready to invest them in pro- 
 ductive enterprise. The consequences of withdrawing capital 
 from private hands merely to lock it up unproductively in the 
 treasury would be so swift and ruinous, that no statesman, 
 however fortified with the destructive resources of abstract 
 economics, could persist in it. It will be found in the future as 
 in the past that governments will raise money only because they 
 want it for specific purposes, and not on a 'priori demonstrations 
 that they have a right to it. But it must be added that when 
 they do want it for a specific purpose, then, also in the future 
 as in the past, tliey will raise it without the slightest regard to 
 a priori demonstrations that they have no right to it. 
 
 Here then we have got to a dead lock. In spite of demo- 
 crats and land nationalisers, rent cannot be touched unless some 
 pressure from quite another quarter forces productive enterprise 
 on the State. Such pressure is already forthcoming. The quick 
 starvation of the unemployed, the slow starvation of the 
 employed who have no relatively scarce special skill, the un- 
 bearable anxiety or dangerous recklessness of those who are 
 employed to-day and unemployed to-morrow, the rise in urban 
 rents, the screwing down of wages by pauper immigration and 
 home multiplication, the hand-in-hand advance of education 
 and discontent, are all working up to explosion point. It is use- 
 less to prove by statistics that most of the people are better off 
 than before, true as that probably is, thanks to instalments of 
 Social Democracy. Yet even that is questionable ; for it is idle 
 to claim authority for statistics of things that have never been 
 recorded. Chaos has no statistics : it has only statisticians ; 
 and the ablest of them prefaces his remarks on the increased 
 consumption of rice by the admission that no one can 
 contemplate the present condition of the masses without 
 desiring something like a revolution for the better.” ^ The 
 
 1 Mr. R. Gifien, Essays in Finance,’^ Second Series, p. 393. 
 
174 
 
 TRANSITION TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 
 
 masses themselves are being converted so rapidly to that view 
 of the situation, that we have Pan- Anglican Synods, bewildered 
 by a revival of Christianity, pleading that though Socialism is 
 eminently Christian, yet the Church must act safely as well 
 as sublimely.’’ ^ During the agitation made by the unemployed 
 last winter (1887-8), the Chief Commissioner of Police in 
 London started at his own shadow, and mistook Mr. John 
 Burns for the French Revolution, to the great delight of that 
 genial and courageous champion of his class.^ The existence 
 of the pressure is further shewn by the number and variety of 
 safety valves proposed to relieve it — monetization of silver, 
 import duties, ^‘leaseholds enfranchisement,” extension of joint- 
 stock capitalism masquerading as co-operation,® and other 
 irrelevancies. My own sudden promotion from the street corner 
 to this platform is in its way a sign of the times. But whilst 
 we are pointing the moral and adorning the tale according to 
 our various opinions, an actual struggle is beginning between 
 the unemployed who demand work and the local authorities 
 appointed to deal with the poor. In the winter, the unemployed 
 collect round red flags, and listen to speeches for want of any- 
 thing else to do. They welcome Socialism, insurrectionism, 
 currency craze — anything that passes the time and seems to 
 express the fact that they are hungry. The local authorities, 
 equally innocent of studied economic views, deny that there is 
 any misery ; send leaders of deputations to the Local Govern- 
 ment Board, who promptly send them back to the guardians ; 
 try bullying ; try stoneyards ; try bludgeoning ; and finally sit 
 down helplessly and wish it were summer again or the un- 
 employed at the bottom of the sea. Meanwhile the charity fund, 
 which is much less elastic than the wages fund, overflows at 
 the Mansion House only to run dry at the permanent institu- 
 tions. So unstable a state of things cannot last. The 
 
 1 Proceedings of the Pan-Anglican Synod : Lambeth, 1888. Report 
 of Committee on Socialism. 
 
 2 Finally, the Commissioner was superseded ; and Mr. Burns was 
 elected a member of the first London County Council by a large ma- 
 jority. 
 
 3 It is due to the leaders of the Co-operative movement to say here 
 that they are no parties to the substitution of dividend-hunting by 
 petty capitalists for the pursuit of the ideal of Robert Owen, the 
 Socialist founder of Co-operation ; and that they are fully aware that 
 Co-operation must be a political as well as a commercial movement if 
 it is to achieve a final solution of the labor question. 
 
TKANSITION. 
 
 175 
 
 bludgeoning, and the ‘shocking clamor for bloodshed from the 
 anti-popular newspapers, will create a revulsion among the 
 humane section of the middle class. The section which is 
 blinded by class prejudice to all sense of social responsibility, 
 dreads personal violence from the working class with a super- 
 stitious terror that defies enlightenment or control.^ Municipal 
 employment must be offered at last. This cannot be done in 
 one place alone : the rush from other parts of the country would 
 swamp an isolated experiment. Wherever the pressure is, the 
 relief must be given on the spot. And since public decency, as 
 well as consideration for its higher officials, will prevent the 
 County Council from instituting a working day of sixteen 
 hours at a wage of a penny an hour or less, it will soon 
 have on its hands not only the unemployed, but also the white 
 slaves of the sweater, who will escape from their dens and ap- 
 peal to the municipality for work the moment they become 
 aware that municipal employment is better than private sweat- 
 ing. Nay, the sweater himself, a mere slave driver paid ‘‘ by 
 the piece,” will in many instances be as anxious as his victims 
 to escape from his hideous trade. But the municipal organisa- 
 tion of the industry of these people will require capital. Where 
 is the municipality to get it ? Raising the rates is out of the 
 question : the ordinary tradesmen and householders are already 
 rated and rented to the limit of endurance : further burdens 
 would almost brin^ them into the street with a red fla^. 
 Dreadful dilemma ! in which the County Council, between the 
 devil and the deep sea, will hear Lord Hobhouse singing a song 
 of deliverance, telling a golden tale of ground values to be 
 municipalised, by taxation. The land nationalisers will swell 
 the chorus : the Radical progressive income taxers singing 
 together, and the ratepaying tenants shouting for joy. The 
 capital difficulty thus solved — for we need not seriously antici- 
 pate that the landlords will actually fight, as our President^ 
 once threatened — the question of acquiring land will arise. The 
 nationalisers will declare for its annexation by the municipality 
 without compensation ; but that will be rejected as spoliation, 
 worthy only of revolutionary Socialists. The no-compensation 
 
 1 Ample material for a study of West End mob panic may be found 
 in the London newspapers of February, 1886, and November, 1887. 
 
 2 Lord Bramwell, President of the Economic Section of the British 
 Association in 1888. 
 
176 
 
 TRANSITION TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 
 
 cry is indeed a piece of unpractical catastrophic insurrectionism ; 
 for whilst compensation would be unnecessary and absurd if 
 every proprietor were expropriated simultaneously, and the 
 proprietary system at once replaced by full blown Socialism, 
 yet when it is necessary to proceed by degrees, the denial of 
 compensation would have the effect of singling out individual 
 proprietors for expropriation whilst the others remained unmo- 
 lested, and depriving them of their private means long before 
 there was suitable municipal employment ready for them. The 
 land, as it is required, will therefore be honestly purchased ; 
 and the purchase money, or the interest thereon, will be pro- 
 cured, like the capital, by taxing rent. Of course this will be 
 at bottom an act of expropriation just as much as the collection 
 of Income Tax to-day is an act of expropriation. As such, it 
 will be denounced by the landlords as merely a committing of 
 the newest sin the oldest kind of way. In effect, they will be 
 compelled at each purchase to buy out one of their body and 
 present his land to the municipality, thereby distributing the 
 loss fairly over their whole class, instead of placing it on one 
 man who is no more responsible than the rest. But they will 
 be compelled to do this in a manner that will satisfy the moral 
 sense of the ordinary citizen as effectively as that of the skilled 
 economist. 
 
 We now foresee our municipality equipped with land and 
 capital for industrial purposes. At first they will naturally 
 extend the industries they already carry on, road making, gas 
 works, tramways, building, and the like. It is probable that 
 they will for the most part regard their action as a mere device 
 to meet a passing emergency. The Manchester School will 
 urge its Protectionist theories as to the exemption of private 
 enterprise from the competition of public enterprise, in one 
 supreme effort to practise for the last time on popular ignorance 
 of tlie science which it has consistently striven to debase and 
 stultify. For a while the proprietary party will succeed in 
 hampering and restricting municipal enterprise ; ^ in attaching 
 tlie stigma of pauperism to its service ; in keeping the lot of its 
 laborers as nearly as possible down to private competition level 
 in point of hard work and low wages. But its power will be 
 broken by the disappearance of that general necessity for 
 keej^ing down the rates which now hardens local authority to 
 
 ^ See note, p. 171. 
 
TRANSITION. 
 
 177 
 
 humane appeals. The luxury of being generous at someone 
 else’s expense will be irresistible. The ground landlord will be 
 the municipal milch cow ; and the ordinary ratepayers will feel 
 the advantage of sleeping in peace, relieved at once from the 
 fear of increased burdens and of having their windows broken 
 and their premises looted by hungry mobs, nuclei of all the 
 socialism and scoundrelism of the city. They will have just as 
 much remorse in making the landlord pay as the landlord has 
 had in making them pay — just as much and no more. And as 
 the municipality becomes more democratic, it will find land- 
 lordism losing power, not only relatively to democracy, but 
 absolutely. 
 
 The ordinary ratepayer, however, will not remain unaffected 
 for long. At the very outset of the new extension of munici- 
 pal industries, the question of wage will arise. A minimum 
 wage must be fixed ; and though at first, to avoid an over- 
 whelming rush of applicants for employment, it must be made 
 too small to tempt any decently employed laborer to forsake 
 his place and run to the municipality, still, it will not be the 
 frankly infernal competition wage. It will be, like mediaeval 
 wages, fixed with at least some reference to public opinion as 
 to a becoming standard of comfort. Over and above this, the 
 municipality will have to pay to its organisers, managers, and 
 incidentally necessary skilled workers the full market price of 
 their ability, minus only what the superior prestige and perma- 
 nence of public employment may induce them to accept. But 
 whilst these high salaries will make no more disturbance in the 
 labor market than the establishment of a new joint-stock com- 
 pany would, the minimum wage for laborers will affect that 
 market perceptibly. The worst sort of sweaters will find that 
 if they are to keep their “ hands,’’ they must treat them at 
 least as well as the municipality. The consequent advance in 
 wage will swallow up the sweater’s narrow margin of profit. 
 Hence the sweater must raise the price per piece against the 
 shops and wholesale houses for which he sweats. This again 
 will dimmish the profits of the wholesale dealers and shopkeep- 
 ers, who will not be able to recover this loss by raising the 
 price of their wares against the public, since, had any such 
 step been possible, they would have taken it before. But for- 
 tunately for them, the market value of their ability as men of 
 business is fixed by the same laws that govern the prices of 
 
178 
 
 TRANSITION TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 
 
 commodities. Just as the sweater is worth his profit, so they 
 are worth their profit; and just as the sweater will be able to 
 exact from them his old remuneration in spite of the advance 
 in wages, so they will be able to exact their old remuneration 
 in spite of the advance in sweaters’ terms. But from whom, it 
 will be asked, if not from the public by raising the price of the 
 wares ? Evidently from the landlord upon whose land they 
 are organising production. In other words, they will demand 
 and obtain a reduction of rent. Thus the organiser of indus- 
 try, the employer pure and simple, the entrepreneur^ as he is 
 often called in economic treatises nowadays, will not suffer. 
 In the division of the product his share will remain constant ; 
 whilst the industrious wage-worker’s share will be increased, 
 and the idle proprietor’s share diminished. This will not adjust 
 itself without friction and clamor ; but such friction is con- 
 stantly going on under the present system in the opposite direc- 
 tion, ^.e., by the raising of the proprietor’s share at the expense 
 of the worker’s. 
 
 The contraction of landlords’ incomes will necessarily dimin- 
 ish the revenue from taxation on such incomes. Let us sup- 
 pose that the municipality, to maintain its revenue, puts on an 
 additional penny in the pound. The effect will be to burn the 
 landlord’s candle at both ends — obviously not a process that 
 can be continued to infinity. But long before taxation fails as 
 a source of municipal capital, the municipalities will have 
 begun to save capital out of the product of their own indus- 
 tries. In the market the competition of those industries witli 
 the private concerns will be irresistible. Unsaddled with a 
 single idle person, and having, therefore, nothing to provide 
 for after paying their employees except extension of capital, 
 they will be able to offer wages that no business burdened with 
 the unproductive consumption of an idle landlord or sharehol- 
 der could afford, unless it yielded a heavy rent in consequence 
 of some marked advantage of site. But even rents, when 
 they are town rents, are at the mercy of a municipality in the 
 long run. The masters of the streets and the traffic can nurse 
 one site and neglect another. The rent of a shop depends on 
 the number of persons passing its windows per hour. A skil- 
 fully timed series of experiments in paving, a new bridge, a 
 tramway service, a barracks, or a small-pox hospital are only a 
 few of the circumstances of which city rents are the creatures. 
 
TRANSITION. 
 
 179 
 
 The power of the municipality to control these circumstances 
 is as obvious as the impotence of competing private individuals. 
 Again, competing private individuals are compelled to sell 
 their produce at a price equivalent to the full cost of production 
 at the margin of cultivation.^ The municipality could com- 
 pete against them by reducing prices to the average cost of 
 production over the whole area of municipal cultivation. Tlie 
 more favorably situated private concerns could only meet this 
 by ceasing to pay rent ; the less favorably situated w^ould suc- 
 cumb witliout remedy. It would be either stalemate or check- 
 mate. Private property would either become barren, or it 
 would yield to the actual cultivator of average ability no better 
 an income than could be obtained more securely in municipal 
 employment. To the mere proprietor it would yield nothing. 
 Eventually the land and industry of the whole town would 
 pass by the spontaneous action of economic forces into the 
 hands of the municipality ; and, so far, the problem of social- 
 ising industry would be solved. 
 
 Private property, by cheapening the laborer to the utmost in 
 order to get the greater surplus out of him, lowers the margin 
 of human cultivation, and so raises the ‘‘ rent of ability.’’ The 
 most important form of that rent is the profit of industrial 
 management. The gains of a great portrait painter or fashion- 
 able physician are much less significant, since these depend 
 entirely on the existence of a very rich class of patrons sub- 
 ject to acute vanity and hypochondriasis. But the industrial 
 organiser is independent of patrons : instead of merely at- 
 tracting a larger share of the product of industry to himself, he 
 increases the product by his management. The market price 
 of such ability depends upon the relation of the supply to the 
 demand : the more there is of it the cheaper it is : the less, 
 the dearer. Any cause that increases the supply lowers the 
 price. Now it is evident that since a manager must be a man 
 of education and address, it is useless to look ordinarily to the 
 laboring class for a supply of managerial skill. Not one laborer 
 in a million succeeds in raising himself on the shoulders of his 
 fellows by extraordinary gifts, or extraordinary luck, or both. 
 The managers must be drawn from the classes which enjoy 
 education and social culture ; and their price, rapidly as it is 
 
 1 The meaning of these terms will be familiar to readers of the first 
 essay. 
 
180 
 
 TKANSITION TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 
 
 falling with the spread of education and the consequent growth 
 of the “ intellectual proletariat,’’ is still high. It is true that a 
 very able and highly-trained manager can now be obtained for 
 about £800 a year, provided his post does not compel him to 
 spend two-thirds of his income on what is called ‘‘ keeping up 
 his position,” instead of on his own gratification.^ Still, when 
 it is considered that laborers receive less than £50 a year, and 
 that the demand for laborers is necessarily vast in proportion 
 to the demand for able managers, nay, that there is an inverse 
 ratio between them, since the manager’s talent is valuable in 
 proportion to quantity of labor he can organise, it will be ad- 
 mitted that £800 a year represents an immense rent of ability. 
 But if the education and culture which are a practically indis- 
 pensable part of the equipment of competitors for such posts 
 were enjoyed by millions instead of thousands, that rent would 
 fall considerably. Now the tendency of private property is to 
 keep the masses mere beasts of burden. The tendency of 
 Social Democracy is to educate them, to make men of them. 
 Social Democracy would not long be saddled with the rents of 
 ability which liave during the last century made our born cap- 
 tains of industry our masters and tyrants instead of our ser- 
 vants and leaders. It is even conceivable that rent of mana- 
 gerial ability might in course of time become negative,^ 
 astonishing as that may seem to the many persons who are by 
 this time so hopelessly confused amid existing anomalies, that 
 the proposition that “ whosoever of you will be the chiefest, 
 shall be servant of all,” strikes them rather as a Utopian para- 
 dox than as the most obvious and inevitable of social arrange- 
 ments. The fall in the rent of ability will, however, benefit 
 not only the municipality, but also its remaining private com- 
 petitors. Nevertlieless, as the prestige of the municipality 
 grows, and as men see more and more clearly what the future 
 is to it, able organisers will take lower salaries for municipal 
 tlian for private employment ; whilst those who can beat even 
 tlie municipality at organising, or who, as professional men, 
 can deal personally with the public without the intervention of 
 
 1 See note, p. 16. 
 
 ^ That is, the manager would receive less for his work than the 
 artisan. Cases in which tlie profits of the employer are smaller than 
 the wages of the employee are by no means uncommon in certain 
 grades of industry where small traders have occasion to e mploy skilled 
 workmen. 
 
TKANSITlOIsr. 
 
 181 
 
 industrial organisation, will pay the rent of their places of busi- 
 ness either directly to the municipality, or to the private land- 
 lord whose income tlie municipality will absord by taxation. 
 Finally, when rents of ability had reached their irreducible 
 natural level, they could be dealt with by a progressive Income 
 Tax in the very improbable case of their proving a serious 
 social inconvenience. 
 
 It is not necessary to go further into the economic detail of 
 the process of the extinction of private property. Much of 
 that process as sketched here may be anticipated by sections of 
 the proprietary class successively capitulating, as the net closes 
 about their special interests, on such terms as they may be able 
 to stand out for before their power is entirely broken.^ 
 
 We may also safely neglect for the moment the question of 
 the development of the House of Commons into the central 
 government which will be the organ for federating the munici- 
 palities, and nationalising inter-municipal rents by an adjust- 
 ment of the municipal contributions to imperial taxation : in 
 short, for discharging national as distinct from local business. 
 One can see that the Local Government Board of the future will 
 be a tremendous affair ; that foreign States will be deeply affected 
 by the reaction of English progress ; that international trade, 
 always the really dominant factor in foreign policy, will have to 
 be reconsidered from a new point of view when profit comes to 
 be calculated in terms of net social welfare instead of individual 
 pecuniary gain ; that our present system of imperial aggression, 
 
 1 Such capitulations occur already when the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer takes advantage of the fall in the current rate of interest (ex- 
 plained on page 20) to reduce Consols. This he does by simply threat- 
 ening to pay off the stockholders with money freshly borrowed at the 
 current rate. They, knowing that they could not reinvest the money 
 on any better terms than the reduced ones offered by tlie Chancellor, 
 have to submit. There is no reason why the municipalities should not 
 secure the same advantages for their constituents. For example, the 
 inhabitants of London now pay the shareholders of the gas companies 
 a million and a half annually, or 11 per cent on the £13,650,000 which 
 the gas works cost. The London County Council could raise that sum 
 for about £400,000 a year. By threatening to do this and start muni- 
 cipal gas works, it could obviously compel the shareholders to hand 
 over their works for £400,000 a year, and sacrifice the extra 8 per cent 
 now enjoyed by them. The saving to the citizens of London would be 
 £1,000,000 a year, sufficient to defray the net cost of the London School 
 Board. Metropolitan readers will find a number of cognate instances 
 in Fabian Tract No. 8, Facts for Londoners.'' 
 
18.2 
 
 TEANSITIOK TO SOCIAL DEMOCEACY. 
 
 in which, under pretext of exploration and colonisation, the flag 
 follows the filibuster and trade follows the flag, with the mis- 
 sionary bringing up the rear, must collapse when the control of 
 our military forces passes from the capitalist class to the people ; 
 that the disapperance of a variety of classes with a variety of 
 what are now ridiculously called public opinions ” will be 
 accompanied by the welding of society into one class with a 
 public opinion of inconceivable weight ; that this public opinion 
 will make it for the first time possible effectively to control the 
 population ; that the economic independence of women, and the 
 supplanting of the head of the household by the individual as 
 the recognized unit of the State, will materially alter the status 
 of children and the utility of the institution of the family ; and 
 that the inevitable reconstitution of the State Church on a dem- 
 ocratic basis may, for example, open up the possibility of the 
 election of an avowed Freethinker like Mr. John Morley or 
 Mr. Bradlaugh to the deanery of Westminster. All these things 
 are mentioned only for the sake of a glimpse of the fertile fields 
 of thouo^ht and action which await us when the settlement of our 
 bread and butter question leaves us free to use and develop our 
 higher faculties. 
 
 This, then, is the humdrum programme of the practical Social 
 Democrat to-day. There is not one new item in it. All are 
 applications of principles already admitted, and extensions of 
 jiractices already in full activity. All have on them that stamp 
 of the vestry which is so congenial to the British mind. None 
 of them compel the use of the words Socialism or Revolution : 
 at no point do they involve guillotining, declaring the Rights of 
 Man, swearing on the altar of the country, or anything else that 
 is supposed to be essentially un-English. And they are all sure 
 to come — landmarks on our course already visible to far-sighted 
 politicians even of the party which dreads them. 
 
 Let me, in conclusion, disavow all admiration for this inevi- 
 table, but sordid, slow, reluctant, cowardly path to justice. I 
 venture to claim your respect for those enthusiasts who still 
 refuse to believe that millions of their fellow creatures must be 
 left to sweat and suffer in hopeless toil and degradation, whilst 
 parliaments and vestries grudgingly muddle and grope towards 
 paltry instalments of betterment. Tlie right is so clear, the 
 wrong so intolerable, the gos})el so convincing, that it seems to 
 them that it mmt be possible to enlist the whole body of workers 
 
TRANSITION. 
 
 183 
 
 — soldiers, jx)licemen, and all — under the banner of brotherhood 
 and equality ; and atone great stroke to set Justice on her right- 
 ful throne. Unfortunately, such an army of light is no more 
 to be gathered from the human product of nineteenth century 
 civilisation than grapes are to be gathered from thistles. But 
 if we feel glad of that impossibility ; if we feel relieved that the 
 change is to be slow enough to avert personal risk to ourselves ; 
 if we feel anything less than acute disappointment and bitter 
 humiliation at the discovery that there is yet between us and 
 the promised land a wilderness in which many must perish 
 miserably of want and despair : then I submit to you that our 
 institutions have corrupted us to the most dastardly degree of 
 selfishness. The Socialists need not be ashamed of beginning 
 as they did by proposing militant organisation of the working 
 classes and general insurrection. The proposal proved imprac- 
 ticable; and it has now been abandoned — not without some 
 outspoken regrets — by English Socialists. But it still remains 
 as the only finally possible alternative to the Social Democratic 
 programme which I have sketched to-day. 
 
THE OUTLOOK. 
 
 BY HUBERT BLAND. 
 
 Mr. Webb’s historical review brought us from the break 
 up of the old synthesis” (his own phrase), a social system 
 founded on a basis of religion, a common belief in a divine order, 
 to the point where perplexed politicians, recognising the futility 
 of the principle of Individualism to keep the industrial machine 
 in working order, with ‘‘ freedom of contract ” upon their lips 
 spent their nights in passing Factory Acts, and devoted their 
 fiscal ingenuity to cutting slice after slice off incomes derived 
 from rent and interest. His paper was an inductive demonstra- 
 tion of the failure of anarchy to meet the needs of real concrete 
 men and women — a proof from history that the world moves 
 from system, through disorder, back again to system. 
 
 Mr. Clarke showed us, also by the historic method, that given 
 a few more years of economic progress on present lines, and we 
 shall reach, via the Ring and the Trust, that period of ‘‘ well 
 defined confrontation of the rich and poor ” upon which German 
 thought has settled as the brief stage of sociological evolution 
 immediately preceding organic change. 
 
 The truth of this postulate of Teutonic philosophers and 
 economists no one who has given to it a moment’s serious 
 thought is likely to call in question. Nor does anyone who has 
 followed the argument developed in these lectures believe that 
 the transition from mitigated individualism to full collectivity 
 can be made until the capitalist system has worked itself out to 
 its last logical expression. Till then, no political or social up- 
 heaval, however violent, nay, even though the physical force 
 revolutionists ” should chase the Guards helter-skelter down 
 Parliament Street and the Executive Committee of the Fabian 
 Society hold its meetings in the Council Chamber of Windsor 
 Castle, will be anything more than one of those transient riots,” 
 
THE OUTLOOK. 
 
 185 
 
 spoken of by Mrs. Besant, which merdy upset thrones and 
 behead monarchs.”^ All sociologists I think, all Socialists I am 
 sure, are agreed that until the economic moment has arrived, 
 although the hungry or the ignorant may kick up a dust in 
 Whitechapel and make a bloody puddle in Trafalgar Square, 
 the Social Revolution is impossible. But I, for my part, do not 
 believe in the even temporary rout of the Household Brigade, 
 nor indeed in any popular outbreak not easily suppressible by 
 the Metropolitan police ; and I shall waste no time in discussing 
 that solution of the social problem of which more was heard in 
 the salad days of the English Socialist movement- — in its pre- 
 Fabian era — than now, viz,^ physical force employed by a vig- 
 orous few. The physical force man, like the privileged Tory, 
 has failed to take note of the flux of things, and to recognise the 
 change brought about by the ballot. Under a lodger franchise 
 the barricade is the last resort of a small and desperate minority, 
 a frank confession of despair, a reduction to absurdity of the 
 whole Socialist case. Revolutionary heroics, natural and un- 
 blameable enough in exuberant puerility, are imbecile babblement 
 in muscular adolescence, and in manhood would be criminal 
 folly. 
 
 Let us assume then that the present economic progress will 
 continue on its present lines. That machinery will go on re- 
 placing hand labor ; that the joint-stock company will absorb 
 the private firm, to be, in its turn, swallowed up in the Ring 
 and the Trust. That thus the smaller producers and distributors 
 will gradually, but at a constantly increasing pace, be squeezed 
 out and reduced to the condition of employees of great indus- 
 trial and trade corporations, managed by highly skilled captains 
 of industry, in the interests of idle shareholders. 
 
 In a parliamentarian State like ours, the economic cleavage, 
 which divides the proprietors from the propertyless, ever grow- 
 ing wider and more clearly defined, must have its analogue in 
 the world of politics. The revolution of the last century, 
 which ended in the installation of the Grand Industry, was the 
 last of the great unconscious world changes. It was helped by 
 legislation of course ; but the help was only of the negative 
 and destructive sort. ‘‘ Break our fetters and let us alone,” 
 
 1 It is to the half-conscious recognition of this generalisation that 
 the disappearance of militant Republicanism among the English work- 
 ing classes is owing. 
 
186 
 
 TRANSITION TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 
 
 was the cry of the revolutionists to Parliament. The law- 
 makers, not knowing quite what they were doing, responded, 
 and then blythely contracted debts, and voted money for com- 
 mercial wars. Such a sight will never be seen again. The 
 repeated extension of the suffrage has done more than make 
 the industrial masses articulate, it has given them conscious- 
 ness ; and for the future the echo of the voices of those who 
 suffer from economic changes will be heard clamoring for relief 
 within the walls of St. Stephen’s and the urban guildhalls. 
 
 Thus the coming struggle between haves ” and have 
 nots ” will be a conflict of parties, each perfectly conscious of 
 what it is fighting about and fully alive to the life and death 
 importance of the issues at stake. 
 
 I say will be ” ; for one has only to read a few speeches of 
 political leaders or attend a discussion at a workman’s club to 
 be convinced that at present it is only the keener and more 
 alert minds on either side which are more than semi-conscious 
 of the true nature of the campaign of which the first shots may 
 even now be heard at every bye-election. 
 
 But as nothing makes one so entirely aware of one’s own 
 existence as a sharp spasm of pain ; so it is to the suffering — 
 the hunger, the despair of to-morrow’s dinner, the anxiety about 
 the next new pair of trousers — wrought by the increasing 
 economic pressure upon the enfranchised and educated pro- 
 letariat that we must look to aw^aken that free self-conscious- 
 ness which will give the economic changes political expression 
 and enable the worker to make practical use of the political 
 weapons which are his. 
 
 The outlook then from the point of view of this paper is a 
 political one — one in which we should expect to see the world 
 political gradually becoming a reflex of the world economic. 
 That political should be slow in coming into line with eco- 
 nomic facts is only in accordance with all that the past history 
 of our country has to teach us. For years and decades the 
 squirearchy retained an influence in the House of Commons 
 out of all proportion to its potency as an economic force ; and 
 even at this moment the landed interest ” bears a much larger 
 part in law-making than that to which its real importance 
 entitles it. Therefore we must be neither surprised nor dis- 
 pirited if, in a cold-blooded envisagement of the condition of 
 English parties, the truth is borne in upon us that the pace of 
 
THE OUTLOOK. 
 
 187 
 
 political progress has no proper relation to the rate at which 
 we are travelling towards Socialism in the spheres of thought 
 and industry. 
 
 This fact is probably — nay almost certainly — very much 
 more patent to the Socialist and the political student than to 
 the man in the street, or even to him of the first class railway 
 carriage. The noisy jubilation of the Radical press over the 
 victory of a Home Ruler at a bye-election, at a brief and vague 
 reference to the “ homes of the people ’’ in a two hours’ speech 
 from a Liberal leader, or at the insertion of a social ” plank 
 in a new annual programme, is well and cleverly calculated to 
 beguile the ardent Democrat, and strike cold terror to the heart 
 of the timorous Tory. But a perfectly impartial analysis of 
 the present state of parties will convince the most sanguine 
 that the breath of the great economic changes dealt with in Mr. 
 Clarke’s paper has as yet scarcely ruffled the surface of the 
 House of Commons. 
 
 When the syllabus of this course of lectures was drawn up, 
 those who were responsible for it suggested as the first sub- 
 heading of this paper, the well worn phrase, “ The disappearance 
 of the Whig.” It is a happy expression, and one from the 
 contemplation of which much comfort may be derived by an 
 optimistic and un analytical temperament. Printed are at this 
 disadvantage compared with spoken words, they fail to convey 
 the nicer nuances of meaning bestowed by tone and emphasis ; 
 and thus the word disappearance ” meets the eye, carrying 
 with it no slightest suggestion of irony. Yet the phrase is 
 pointless, if not meant surcarstic ” ; for so far is the Whig from 
 
 disappearing,” that he is the greatest political fact of the day. 
 To persons deafened by the daily democratic shouting of the 
 Radical newspapers this assertion may require some confirma- 
 tion and support. Let us look at the facts then. The first 
 thing which strikes us in connexion with the present Parliament 
 is that it no longer consists of two distinct parties, ^. e., of two 
 bodies of men differentiated from each other by the holding of 
 fundamentally different principles. Home Rule left out,^ there 
 
 1 The difference of principle here is more apparent than real. The 
 Gladstonians repudiate any desire for separation, and affirm their in- 
 tention of maintaining the absolute veto of the imperial Parliament ; 
 while the Unionists avow their ultimate intention of giving to Ireland 
 the same powers of self-government now enjoyed, or to be enjoyed by 
 England and Scotland. 
 
188 
 
 TRAKSITION TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 
 
 remains no reason whatever, except the (jiiite minor (question 
 of Disestablishment, why even the simulacrum of party organi- 
 sation should be maintained, or why the structural arrange- 
 ments of the House of Commons should not be so altered as to 
 resemble those of a town hall, in which all the seats face the 
 chair. 
 
 But fifty years ago the floor of the House was a frontier of 
 genuine significance ; and the titles Whig ” and Tory ” were 
 word-symbols of real inward and spiritual facts. The Tory 
 party was mostly made up of men who were conscientiously 
 opposed to popular representation, and prepared to stand or fall 
 by their opposition. They held, as a living political creed, that 
 the government of men was the eternal heritage of the rich, and 
 especially of those whose riches spelt rent. The Whigs, on the 
 other hand, believed, or said they believed, in the aphorism 
 “ Vox populi^ vox Dei'' ; and they, on the whole, consistently 
 advocated measures designed to give that voice a distincter and 
 louder utterance. Here, then, was one of those fundamental 
 difterences in the absence of which party nomenclature is a 
 sham. But there was another. In the first half of this century 
 the Tories, hidebound in historic traditions and deaf to the knell 
 of the old regime tolling in the thud, thud, of the piston rods of 
 the new steam engines, clung pathetically to the old idea of the 
 functions of the State and to territorial rights. The Whigs 
 went for laisser faire and the consequent supremacy of the busi- 
 ness man. I am making a perfectly provable proposition when 
 I say that all the political disputes ^ which arose between the 
 Revolution of 1688 and the enfranchisement of the £10 house- 
 holder by Disraeli had their common cause in one of these two 
 root differences. But the battle has long ago been lost and 
 won. The Whigs have triumphed all along the line. The 
 Tories have not only been beaten, they have been absorbed. A 
 process has gone on like that described by Macaulay as follow- 
 ing on the Norman invasion, when men gradually ceased to call 
 themselves Saxon and Norman and proudly boasted of being 
 English. The difference in the case before us is that while the 
 Tories have accepted the whole of the Whig j)rmciples they still 
 abjure the Whig name. 
 
 1 The battles for Catholic Emancipation and the removal of the 
 religious disabilities were fought on sectarian rather than on political 
 grounds. 
 
THE OUTLOOK. 
 
 189 
 
 No so-called Conservative to-day will venture on opposing 
 an extension of tlie franchise on the plain ground of principle. 
 At most he will but temporise and plead for delay. No blush 
 of conscious inconsistency suffused Mr. Ritchie’s swarthy feat- 
 ures when introducing liis “ frankly democratic ” Local Gov- 
 ernment Bill. And rightly not ; for he was doing no violence 
 to party principles. 
 
 In the matter of the functions of the State, the absorption of 
 the Tory is not quite so obvious, because there never has been, 
 and, as long as society lasts, never can be, a j>arti serieux of 
 logical laisser fair e. Even in the thick of the Industrial Revo- 
 lution, the difference between the two great parties was mainly 
 one of tendency — of attitude of mind. The Tory had a cer- 
 tain affection for the State — a natural self-love : the Whig 
 distrusted it. This distrust is now the sentiment of the whole 
 of our public men. They see, some of them perhaps more 
 clearly than others, that there is much the State must do ; but 
 they all wish that much to be as little as possible. Even when, 
 driven by an irresistible force which they feel but do not under- 
 stand (which none but the Socialist does or can understand), 
 they bring forward measures for increasing the power of the 
 whole over the part, their arguments are always suffused in a 
 sickly halo of apology : their gestures are always those of tim- 
 orous deprecation and fretful diffidence. They are always ner- 
 vously anxious to explain that the proposal violates no 
 principle of political economy, and with them political 
 economy means, not Professor Sidgwick, but Adam Smith. 
 
 The reason why this unanimity of all prominent politicians 
 on great fundamental principles is not manifest to the mind of 
 the average man is that, although there is nothing left to get 
 hot or even moderately warm about, the political temperature 
 is as high as ever. It is not in the dust of the arena, but only 
 in the repose of the auditorium that one is able to realise tliat 
 men will ffght as fiercely and clapper-claw each other as spite- 
 fully over a dry bone as over a living principle. One has to 
 stand aside awhile to see that politicians are like the theologi- 
 cal controversialists of whom Professor Seeley somewhere says 
 that they never get so angry with each other as when their dif- 
 ferences are almost imperceptible, except perhaps when they 
 are quite so. 
 
 Both the efficient and the final cause of this unanimity is a 
 
190 
 
 TRANSITION TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 
 
 sort of unconscious or semi-conscious recognition of the fact 
 that the word State has taken to itself new and diverse con- 
 notations, that the State idea has changed its content. Whah 
 ever State control may have meant fifty years ago it never 
 meant hostility to private property as such. Now, for us, and 
 for as far ahead as we can see, it means that and little else. So 
 long as the State interfered with the private property and pow- 
 ers of one set of proprietors with a view only to increasing 
 those of another, the existence of parties for and against such 
 interference was a necessity of the case. A duty on foreign 
 corn meant the keeping up of incomes drawn from rent its 
 abolition meant a rise of manufacturers’ profits. “Free 
 Trade” swelled the purses of the new bourgeoisie : the Factory 
 Acts depleted them, and gave a sweet revenge to the rent- 
 docked squire. But of this manipulation of the legislative 
 machine for proprietors’ purposes we are at, or at least in sight 
 of, the end. The State has grown bigger by an immense aggre- 
 gation of units, who were once to all intents and purposes sep- 
 arate from it ; and now its action generally points not to a 
 readjustment of private property and privileges as between 
 class and class, but to their complete disappearance. So then 
 the instinct which is welding together the propertied politicians 
 is truly self-preservative. 
 
 But, it may be asked by the bewildered Radical, by the 
 tremulous Conservative, by the optimistic Socialist, if the 
 political leaders are really opposed to State augmentation, how 
 comes it that every new measure of reform introduced into the 
 House of Commons is more or less colored with Socialism, and 
 that no popular speaker will venture to address a public meet- 
 ing without making some reference of a socialistic sort to the 
 social problem ? Why, for instance, does that extremely well 
 oiled and accurately poised political weathercock. Sir William 
 Ilarcourt, pointing to the dawn, crow out that “ we are all So- 
 cialists now ” ? 
 
 To these questions (and I have not invented them) I answer : 
 in the first place because the opposition of the political leaders 
 is instinctive, and only, as yet, semi-conscious, even in the 
 most hypocritical ; in the second place, that a good deal of the 
 
 1 This is perhaps not, historically, quite true ; but the landlords be- 
 lieved that tlieir own prosperity depended upon the exclusion of foreign 
 corn, and that is sufficient for the purpose of my argument. 
 
THE OUTLOOK. 
 
 191 
 
 legislative Socialism appears more in words than in deeds ; in 
 the third place that the famous flourish of Sir William liar- 
 court was a rhetorical falsehood ; and fourthly, because, fortu- 
 nately for the progress of mankind, self-preservative instincts 
 are not peculiar to the pro})ertied classes. 
 
 For it is largely instinctive and wholly self preservative, 
 this change in the position of the working people towards tlie 
 State, this change by which, from fearing it as an actual 
 enemy, they have come to look to it as a potential savior. 1 
 know that this assertion will be violently denied by many of 
 my Socialist brethren. The fly on the wheel, not unnaturally, 
 feels wounded at being told that he is, after all, not the motive 
 power; and the igniferous orators of the Socialist party are 
 welcome, so far as 1 am concerned, to all the comfort they can 
 get from imagining that they, and not any great, blind, evolu- 
 tionary forces are the dynamic of the social revolution. 
 Besides, the metaphor of the fly really does not run on all 
 fours (I forget, for the moment, how many legs a fly has) ; for 
 the Socialist does at least know in what direction the car is 
 going, even though he is not the driving force. Yet it seems 
 to me the part being, and to be, played by the Socialist, is not- 
 able enough in all conscience ; for it is he who is turning 
 instinct into self-conscious reason ; voicing a dumb demand ; 
 and giving intelligent direction to a thought wave of terrific 
 potency. 
 
 There is a true cleavage being slowly driven through the 
 body politic ; but the wedge is still beneath the surface. The 
 signs of its workings are to be found in the reactionary meas- 
 ures of pseudo reform advocated by many prominent politi- 
 cians ; in the really Socialist proposals of some of the obscurer 
 men ; in the growing distaste of the political club man for a 
 purely political pabulum ; and in the receptive attitude of a 
 certain portion of the cultivated middle class towards the out- 
 pourings of the Fabian Society. 
 
 This conscious recognition of the meaning of modern ten- 
 dencies, this defining of the new line of cleavage, while it is 
 the well-spring of most of the Socialist hopes, is no less the 
 source of some lively fear. At present it is only the acuter 
 and more far seeing of the minds amongst the propertied 
 classes who are at all alive to the real nature of tlie attack. 
 One has but to listen to the chatter of the average Liberal can- 
 
192 
 
 TEANSITION TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 
 
 didate, to note how hopelessly blind the man is to the fact that 
 the existence of private property in the means of production, 
 forms any factor at all in the social problem ; and what is 
 true of the rank and file is true only in a less des^ree of the 
 chiefs themselves. Ignorance of economics and inability to 
 shake their minds free of eighteenth century political phil- 
 osophy,^ at present hinders the leaders of the ‘‘party of 
 progress ’’ from taking up a definite position either for or 
 against the advance of the new ideas. The number of Eng- 
 lish statesmen, who, like Prince Bismarck, see in Socialism a 
 swelling tide whose oceanic rush must be broken by timely 
 legislative breakwaters, is still only to be expressed by a minus 
 quantity. But this political myopia is not destined to endure. 
 Every additional vote cast for avowed Socialist candidates 
 at municipal and other elections, will help to bring home to 
 the minds of the Liberals, that the section of the new 
 democracy which regards the ballot merely as a war-engine 
 with which to attack capitalism, is a growing one. At last 
 our Liberal will be face to face with a logical but irritating 
 choice. Either to throw over private capital or to frankly 
 acknowledge that it is a distinction without a difference which 
 separates him from the Conservatives, against whom he has 
 for years been fulminating. 
 
 At first sight it looks as though this political moment in the 
 history of the Liberal party would be one eminently auspicious 
 for the Socialist cause. But although I have a lively faith in 
 the victory of logic in the long run, I have an equally vivid 
 knowledge, that to assure the triumph the run must be a very 
 long one ; and above all I have a profound respect for the stay- 
 ing powers of politicians, and their ability to play a waiting 
 game. It is one thing to offer a statesman the choice of one of 
 two logical courses : it is another to prevent his seeing a third, 
 and an illogical one, and going for it. Such prevention in the 
 present case will be so difficult as to be well nigh impossible ; 
 for the Liberal hand still holds a strong suit — the cards politi- 
 cal. 
 
 It is quite certain that the social programme of our party 
 will become a great fact long before all the purely political pro- 
 
 1 Cf. The speeches of Mr. John Morley on the eight hours’ proposal 
 and the taxation of ground rents. Also the recent writings of Mr. Brad- 
 laugli, passim. 
 
THE OUTLOOK. 
 
 193 
 
 posals of the Liberals have received the Royal assent ; and the 
 game of the politician will be to hinder the adoption of the 
 former by noisily hustling forward the latter. Unfortunately for 
 us it will be an easy enough game to play. The scent of the 
 non-Socialist politician for political red herrings is keen, and his 
 appetite for political Dead Sea fruit prodigious. The number 
 of ‘‘blessed words,” the mere sound of wiiich carries content to 
 his soul, would fill a whole page. In an age of self-seeking his 
 pathetic self-abnegation would be refreshing tvere it not so 
 desperately silly. The young artizan on five-and- twenty shill- 
 ings a week, who with his wife and children occupies two rooms 
 in “ a model,” and who is about as likely to become a Lama as 
 a leaseholder, will shout himself hoarse over Leaseliolds’ En- 
 franchisement, and sweat great drops of indignation at the 
 plunder of rich West End tradesmen by rich West End land- 
 lords. The “ out of work,” whose last shirt is in pawn, will 
 risk his skull’s integrity in Trafalgar Square in defence of Mr. 
 O’Brien’s claim to dress in gaol like a gentleman. 
 
 Of course all tliis is very touching : indeed, to be quite serious, 
 it indicates a nobility of character and breadth of human sym- 
 pathy in which lies our hope of social salvation. But its infinite 
 potentiality must not blind us to tJie fact that in its actuality 
 the dodgy Liberal will see his chance of the indefinite postpone- 
 ment of the socialising of politics. Manhood suffrage, female 
 suffrage, the woes of deceased wives’ sisters, the social ambition 
 of dissenting ministers, the legal obstacles to the “free” ac- 
 quirement of landed proj^erty, home rule for “ dear old Scot- 
 land” and “neglected little Wales,” extraordinary tithes, 
 reform of the House of Lords : all these and any number of 
 other obstacles may be successfully thrown in the way of the 
 forward march of the Socialist army. And the worst of it all 
 is that in a great part of his obstructive tactics the Liberal will 
 have us on tlie hip ; for to out-and-out democratisation we are 
 fully pledged, and must needs back up any attack on hereditary 
 or class privilege, come it from what quarter it may. 
 
 But, to get back to our metaphor of the card table (a meta- 
 phor much more applicable to the games of political men), the 
 political suit does not exhaust the Liberal hand. There still 
 remains a card to play — a veritable trump. Sham Socialhm 
 is the name of it, and Mr. John Morley the man to plank it 
 down. 
 
194 
 
 TRANSITION TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 
 
 I have said above that the trend of things to Socialism is best 
 shewn by the changed attitude of men towards State interference 
 and control; and this is true. Still it must not be forgotten that 
 although Socialism involves State control, State control does not 
 imply Socialism — at least in any modern meaning of the term. 
 It is not so much to the thing the State does, as to the end for 
 which it does it that we must look before we can decide whether 
 it is a Socialist State or not. Socialism is the common holding 
 of the means of production and exchange, and the holding of them 
 for the equal benefit of all. In view of the tone now being 
 adopted by some of us ^ I cannot too strongly insist upon the 
 importance of this distinction ; for the losing sight of it by friends, 
 and its intentional obscuration by enemies, constitute a big and 
 immediate danger. To bring forward sixpenny telegrams as an 
 instance of State Socialism may be a very good method of scor- 
 ing a point off an individualist opponent in a debate before a 
 middle-class audience ; but from the standpoint of the proletariat 
 a piece of State management which spares the pockets only of 
 the commercial and leisured classes is no more Socialism than 
 were the droits de Seigneur of the middle ages. Yet this is the 
 sort of sham Socialism which it is as certain as death will be 
 doled out by the popular party in the hope that mere State 
 action will be mistaken for really Socialist legislation. And 
 the object of these givers of Greek gifts will most infallibly be 
 attained if those Socialists who know what they want hesitate 
 (from fear of losing popularity, or from any more amiable weak- 
 ness) to clamor their loudest against any and every proposal 
 whose adoption would prolong the life of private capital a single 
 hour. 
 
 But leaving sham Socialism altogether out of account, there 
 are other planks in tlie Liberal “ and Radical ” programme 
 whicli would make stubborn barriers in the paths of the 
 destroyers of private ca})ital. Should, for instance. Church 
 disestablishment come upon us while the personnel of the 
 House of Commons is at all like what it is at present, few 
 things are more certain than that a good deal of what is now 
 essentially collective property will pass into private hands ; 
 that the number of individuals interested in upholding owner- 
 
 1 One of the most indefatigahle and prolific momhers of the Socialist 
 ])arty, in a widely circulated ti*act, has actually adduc(*d the existence 
 of hawkers^ licenses as an instance of the “ ITogress of Socialism’' ! 
 
THE OUTLOOK. 
 
 195 
 
 ship will be increased ; and that the only feelings gratified 
 will be the acquisitiveness of these persons and the envy of 
 Little Bethel. 
 
 Again, the general state of mind of the Radical on the land 
 question is hardly such as to make a Socialist hilarious. It is 
 true your “ progressive ’’ will cheer Henry George, and is sym- 
 pathetically inclined to nationalisation (itself a “ blessed word ”) ; 
 but he is not at all sure that nationalisation, free land, and 
 peasant proprietorship, are not three names for one and the 
 same proposal. And, so far as the effective members of the 
 Liberal party are concerned, there is no question at all that the 
 second and third of these ‘‘ solutions ” find much more favor 
 than the first. In fact, in this matter of the land, the method 
 of dealing with which is of the very propaedeutics of Socialism, 
 the Radical who goes for free sale ” or for peasant ownership, 
 is a less potent revolutionary force than the Tory himself ; for 
 this latter only seeks to maintain in land the state of things 
 which the Ring and Trust maker is working to bring about in 
 capital ^ — and on the part which he is playing in economic 
 evolution we are all agreed. 
 
 From such dangers as these the progress of Democracy is, by 
 itself, powerless to save us ; for although always and everywhere 
 Democracy holds Socialism in its womb, the birth may be 
 indefinitely delayed by stupidity on one side and acuteness on 
 the other. 
 
 I have gone at some length into an analysis of the possible 
 artificial hindrances to Socialism, because, owing to the amia- 
 bility and politeness shown us by the Radical left wing during 
 the last twelve months ; to the successes which Radical votes 
 have given to some of our candidates at School Board and other 
 elections ; and to the friendly patronage bestowed upon us by 
 certain “ advanced ” journals, some of our brightest, and other- 
 wise most clear-sighted, spirits have begun to base high hopes 
 upon what they call “ the permeation of the Liberal party. 
 These of our brothers have a way of telling us that the transi- 
 tion to Socialism will be so gradual as to be imperceptible, and 
 that there will never come a day when we shall be able to say 
 
 ^ It is worth noting that those organs of the press which are devoted 
 more particularly to the landed interest have been the first to hint at 
 the probable desirability of dealing with great industrial monopolies by 
 means of legislation. 
 
196 
 
 TKANSITION TO SOCIAL DEMOCKACY. 
 
 now we have a Socialist State.’’ They are fond of likening 
 the simpler among us who disagree with them as to the extreme 
 protraction of the process, to children who having been told that 
 when it rains a cloud falls, looks disappointedly out of the 
 window on a wet day, unconscious that the cloud is falling be- 
 fore their eyes in the shape of drops of water. To these 
 cautious souls I reply that although there is much truth in 
 tlieir contention that the process will be gradual, we shall be 
 able to say that we have a Socialist State on the day on which 
 no man or group of men holds, over the means of production, 
 property rights by which the labor of the producers can be sub- 
 jected to exploitation ; and that while their picturesque metaphor 
 is a happy as well as a poetic conceit, it depends upon the 
 political acumen of tlie present and next generation of Socialist 
 men whether the cloud ” shall fall in refreshing Socialist 
 showers or in a dreary drizzle of Radicalism, bringing with it 
 more smuts than water, fouling everything and cleansing no- 
 where. 
 
 This permeation of the Radical Left, undoubted fact though 
 it is of present day politics, is worth a little further attention ; 
 for there are two possible and tenable views as to its final out- 
 come. One is that it will end in the slow absorption of the 
 Socialist in the Liberal party, and that by the action of this 
 sponge-like organism, the whole of the Rent and Interest will 
 pass into collective control, without there ever having been a 
 party definitely and openly pledged to that end. According to 
 this theory there will come a time, and that shortly, when the 
 avowed Socialists and the much socialised Radicals will be 
 strong enough to hold the balance in many constituencies, ard 
 sufficiently powerful in all to drive the advanced candidate 
 many pegs further than his own inclination would take him. 
 Then, either by abstention or by actual support of the reaction- 
 ary champion at elections, they will be able to threaten the 
 Liberals with certain defeat. The Liberals, being traditionally 
 squeezable folk (like all absorbent bodies), will thus be forced 
 to make concessions and to offer compromises ; and will either 
 adopt a certain minimum number of the Socialistic proposals, 
 or allow to Socialists a share in the representation itself. Such 
 concessions and compromises will grow in number and importance 
 with each successive appeal to the electorate, until at last the 
 game is won. 
 
THE OUTLOOK. 
 
 197 
 
 Now it seems to me that these hopefuls allow their desires to 
 distort their reason. The personal equation plays too large a 
 part in the prophecy. They are generally either not yet 
 wholly socialised Radicals or Socialists who have quite recently 
 broken away from mere political Radicalism, and are still 
 largely under the influence of party ties and traditions. They 
 find it almost impossible to believe that the party with which 
 they acted so long, so conscientiously, and with so much satis- 
 faction to themselves, is, after all, not the party to whicli 
 belongs the future. They are in many cases on terms of inti- 
 mate private friendship with some of the lesser lights of Radi- 
 calism, and occasionally bask in the patronizing radiance shed 
 by the larger luminaries. A certain portion of the “ advanced ” 
 press is open to them for the expression of their views political. 
 Of course none of these considerations are at all to their dis- 
 credit, or reflect in the very least upon their motives or sincerity; 
 but they do color their judgment and cause them to reckon 
 without their host. They are a little apt to forget that a good 
 deal of the democratic programme has yet (as I have said 
 above) to be carried. Manhood suffrage, the abolition of the 
 Lords, disestablishment, the payment of members : all these 
 may be, and are, quite logically desired by men who cling as 
 pertinaciously to private capital as the doughtiest knight of the 
 Primrose League. Such men regard the vital articles of the 
 Socialist creed as lying altogether outside the concrete world — 
 “ the sphere of practical politics.’’ Meanwhile the Socialist 
 votes and voices are well within that sphere ; and it is every 
 day becoming more evident that without them the above-men- 
 tioned aspirations have a meagre chance of realisation. Now, 
 from the eminently business-like Liberal stand-point, there is no 
 reason whatever why concessions should not be made to the 
 Socialist at the polling booth so long as none are asked for in 
 the House of Commons. And even when they are demanded, 
 what easier than to make some burning political question play 
 the part which Home Rule is playing now ? Thus an endless 
 vista of office opens before the glowing eyes of the practical 
 politician, those short-sighted eyes which see so little beyond 
 the nose, and which, at that distance only, enable their owner 
 to hit the white. 
 
 The Radical is right as usual in counting on the Socialist 
 alliance up to a certain point. For us the complete democrat- 
 
198 
 
 TRANSITION TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 
 
 isation of institutions is a political necessity. But long before 
 that complete democratisation has been brought about, we shall 
 have lost our patience and the Radicals their temper. 
 
 For as Mr. Hyndman tells the world with damnable (but 
 most veracious) iteration, we are a growing party.” We re- 
 cruit by driblets ; but we do recruit ; and those who come to 
 us come, like all the new American newspapers, to stay.” 
 Our faith^ our reason, our knowledge, tell us that the great 
 evolutionary forces are with us ; and every addition to our 
 ranks causes us, in geometrical proportion, to be less and 
 less tolerant of political prevarication. Directly we feel our- 
 selves strong enough to have the slightest chance of winning 
 off our own bat, we shall be compelled both by principle 
 and inclination to send an eleven to the wickets. They will 
 have to face the opposition, united or disunited, of both the 
 orthodox parties, as did the defeated Socialist candidates at the 
 School Board election in November, 1888. And whether our 
 success be great or small, or even non-existent, we shall be 
 denounced by the Radical wire-pullers and the now so com- 
 plaisant and courteous Radical press. The alliance will be at 
 an end. 
 
 There is yet another way in which we may win the ill-will of 
 our temporary allies and, at present, very good friends. I have 
 spoken above of certain reactionary items of a possible Radi- 
 cal programme, which, although they have a grotesque resem- 
 blance to Socialism, are worlds away from being the thing 
 itself. These proposals we not only cannot support, but must 
 and shall actively and fiercely oppose. At the first signs of 
 such opposition to whoever may be the Liberal shepherd of the 
 moment, the whole flock of party sheep will be in full cry 
 upon our track. The ferocity of the mouton enrage is prover- 
 bial ; and we shall be treated to the same rancour, spleen, and 
 bile which is now so pienteously meted out to the Liberal 
 Unionists. 
 
 The immediate result of this inevitable split will be the for- 
 mation of a definitely Socialist party, ^.e., a party pledged to 
 the communalisation of all the means of production and 
 exchange, and prepared to subordinate every other considera- 
 tion to that one end. Tlien the House of Commons will begin 
 dimly to reflect the real condition of the nation outside ; and in 
 it we shall see as in a glass, darkly, or smudgedly, something 
 
THE OUTLOOK. 
 
 199 
 
 of that well defined confrontation of rich andpoor,’^ of which 
 all who attend Socialist lectures hear so much, and to which ex 
 hypothesis the world, day by day, draws nearer. Then, also, 
 will begin that process which, I submit, is more likely than 
 either the absorption of the Socialist or the prolonged permea- 
 tion of the Eadical : namely, the absorption' of the Radical 
 himself into the definitely pro-private capital party on the one 
 side, and the definitely anti-private capital party on the other. 
 
 A really homogeneous Socialist party once formed, the world 
 political reflects the world economic, and there is no longer any 
 room for the Radical, as we know the wonder. Each fresh 
 Socialist victory, each outpost driven in, each entrenchment 
 carried, will be followed by a warren-like scuttle of alarmed and 
 well-to-do Radicals across the floor of the House of Commons, 
 which will once more become a true frontier ; and, finally, the 
 political battle array will consist of a small opposition, fronting 
 a great and powerful majority, made up of all those whose real 
 or fancied interests would suffer from expropriation. 
 
 Thus far the outlook has been clear and focusable enough ; 
 and it has needed no extra-human illumination to see the details. 
 All that has been wanted has been normal vision and a mind 
 fairly free of the idols of the cave. But here the prospect 
 becomes dim and uncertain ; and little purpose would be served 
 by trying to pierce the mist which enshrouds the distant future. 
 
 Much, very much, will depend upon the courage, the mag- 
 nanimity, the steadfastness, the tact, the foresight, and above all 
 upon the incorruptibility of those whose high mission it will 
 be to frame the policy and direct the strategy of the Socialist 
 party in those early days of its parliamentary life. It will have 
 sore need of a leader as able as, and more conscientious than, 
 any of the great parliamentary figures of the past. The eye 
 expectant searches in vain for such a man now among the 
 younger broods of the new democracy. He is probably at this 
 moment in his cradle or equitably sharing out toys or lollipops 
 to his comrades of the nursery. And this is well ; for he must 
 be a man quit of all recollections of these days of Sturm und 
 Drang, of petty jealousies, constant errors, and failing faith. 
 He must bring to his task a record free from failure and with- 
 out suspicion of stain. 
 
 But whatever may be the difficulties in store for us who name 
 the name of Socialism, of one thing at least they who have 
 
200 
 
 TRANSITION TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY, 
 
 followed this course of lectures may make quite sure. That, 
 however long and wearisome the struggle, each day brings us 
 nearer victory. Those who resist Socialism fight against 
 principalities and powers in economic places. Every new 
 industrial development will add point to our arguments and 
 soldiers to our ranks. The continuous perfecting of the organi- 
 sation of labour will hourly quicken in the worker the conscious- 
 ness that his is a collective, not an individual life. The pro- 
 letariat is even now the only real class : its units are the only 
 human beings who have nothing to hope for save from the 
 levelling up of the aggregate of which they form a part. The 
 intensifying of the struggle for existence, while it sets bourgeois 
 at the throat of bourgeois^ is forcing union and solidarity upon 
 the workers. And the bourgeois ranks themselves are dwindling. 
 The keenness of competition, making it every year more obviously 
 impossible for those who are born without capital ever to 
 achieve it, will deprive the capitalist class of the support it now 
 receives from educated and cultivated but impecunious young 
 men whose material interest must finally triumph over their 
 class sympathies ; and from that section of workmen whose 
 sole aspiration is to struggle out of the crowd. The rising 
 generation of wage workers, instead of as now being befogged 
 and bedevilled by the dust and smoke of mere faction fight, will 
 be able at a glance to distinguish the uniforms of friend and foe. 
 Despair will take sides with Hope in doing battle for the Socialist 
 cause. 
 
 These lectures have made it plain enough to those who have 
 hearing ears and understanding brains that mere material self- 
 interest alone will furnish a motive strong enough to shatter 
 monopoly ; and after monopoly comes Socialism or — chaos. 
 But the interest of the smaller self is not the only force which 
 aids us in the present, or will guide us in the future. The angels 
 are on our side. The constant presence of a vast mass of human 
 misery is generating in the educated classes a deep discontent, a 
 spiritual unrest, which drives the lower types to pessimism, the 
 higher to enquiry. Pessimism paralyses the arms and unnerves 
 the hearts of those who would be against us. Enquiry proves 
 tliat Socialism is founded upon a triple rock, historical, ethical, 
 and economic. It gives, to those who make it, a great hope — a 
 hope which, once it finds entrance into the heart of man, stays 
 to soften life and sweeten death. By the light of the Socialist 
 
THE OUTLOOK. 
 
 201 
 
 Ideal he sees the evil — yet sees it pass. Then and now he 
 begins to live in the cleaner, braver, holier life of the future ; 
 and he marches forward, steeled and stimulated, with resolute 
 step, with steadfast eye, with equal pulse. 
 
 It is just when the storm winds blow and the clouds lour and 
 the horizon is at its blackest that the ideal of the Socialist shines 
 with divinest radiance, bidding him trust the inspiration of the 
 poet rather than heed the mutterings of the perplexed politician, 
 bidding him believe that 
 
 “ For a’ that, for a^ that, 
 
 Its coming yet for a^ that. 
 
 That man to man the world o'er 
 Shall brothers be for a' that." 
 
INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ABSENTEE Proprietors . 22 
 Abstinence, Reward of . .17 
 
 Abstract method in Econom- 
 ics 21 
 
 Administrative Errors . . 37 
 
 “Administrative Nihilism’^ . 38 
 
 Adulteration Acts . . .41 
 
 Aged, Treatment of the . . 150 
 
 Agriculture and Machinery . 62 
 Aladdin's uncle outdone . 9 
 
 Aliens, Necessity under So- 
 cialism for a law of . . 125 
 
 Althorp, Lord . . . 69 
 
 America (See United States). 
 American Independence, Dec- 
 laration of . . . .60 
 
 Anarchists, Modern . . 160 
 
 Anarchy preferred to corrupt 
 State regulation by progres- 
 sive thinkers . . . 160 
 
 Andrews, E. Benjamin, on 
 
 Trusts 85 
 
 Angele, Constitution and sta- 
 tus of 108 
 
 Angels, condition of their 
 imitation on earth . .110 
 
 Argyle, Duke of . . . 127 
 
 Aristotle .... 160 
 Arkwright’s inventions . 33, 59 
 
 Aristocratic employments . 109 
 Ashley, Lord (See Lord 
 Shaftesbury). 
 
 Associated Capitals, Competi- 
 tive force of . . . 142 
 
 Associations, Legal position 
 under Socialism of volun- 
 tary 126 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Austin, John . . 39, 120, 165 
 
 Autobiography of John Stuart 
 Mill . . . . 50, 52 
 
 A veling. Rev. F. W. . . 52 
 
 BALFOUR, Right Hon. A. 
 
 J 106 
 
 Barbarous Countries, Ex- 
 ploitation of ... 74 
 
 Bastille, Fall of the . 34, 60 
 
 Bebel, August . . . 119 
 
 Bedford, Duke of . . . 127 
 
 Bellamy, E. (author of “ Look- 
 ing Backward ”) . . . 145 
 
 Benefit Association, Sheep 
 and Lamb Butcher’s Mu- 
 tual 88 
 
 Benevolence and Omnipo- 
 tence, The dilemma between 23 
 Bentham, Jeremy . . 29, 39, 
 
 40, 53, 165 
 
 Bequest 122 
 
 Berkeley, Bishop . . . 30 
 
 Besant, Annie . . . 13vi, 
 
 “ Walter: His belated 
 chivalry .... 108 
 Bimetalism suggested as a 
 solution of the social prob- 
 lem 174 
 
 Birmingham .... 46 
 “ compared with 
 
 Warwick .... i23 
 Bismarck, Socialism and 
 Prince . . . . .102 
 
 Blanc, Louis, His Definition 
 of Communism . . .131 
 
 Bland, Hubert . . 50, 184 
 
204 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Bloodsked : How to argue 
 
 witli its advocates . 166-7 
 
 Bonanza farms . . 62, 142 
 
 Bourgeoisie, The Factory 
 
 Acts and the . . 190 
 
 Free Trade and the . . 190 
 
 Bradford . . . .46 
 
 Bradlaugh, Charles . . 182 
 
 Brain well. Lord . . 28, 175 
 
 Bright, John . . . 69, 79 
 
 Brittany, Standard of com- 
 fort in . . . . 123 
 
 Peasants of . . . 134 
 
 British Association . .157 
 
 ‘‘ Mind, The Vestry 
 stamp upon the . . .182 
 
 Bryce, James . . . .78 
 
 Brook Farm . . . .28 
 
 Browning, Robert . . .23 
 
 Burns, John .... 174 
 Bunyan, John . . . 135 
 
 CADE, Jack . . . .160 
 
 Cairnes, J. E., on the idle rich, 78 
 
 Canada, Conquest of . 60, 71 
 
 Canals, Socialization of . . 141 
 
 Cant: Its Source . . 4, 106 
 
 Capital : Is not machinery . 16 
 
 Is the result of saving . 17 
 
 Is spare subsistence . 17 
 Cannot be safely taken 
 by the State except for 
 immediate employment 
 as capital . . . 173 
 
 Source of municipal capi- 
 tal .... 175 
 Provision for municipal 
 accumulation . . 178 
 
 '' Capital'' (Karl Marx's 
 work) .... 23, 36 
 
 “Capital and Land" (Fabian 
 
 Tract) 43 
 
 Capitals, Competitive force 
 of associated . . . 142 
 
 Capitalism . . . .16 
 
 Unscrupulousness of . 69 
 
 Its idea self-destructive . 110 
 Morals of . 69, 106, 109 
 
 Characteristic effects of . Ill 
 Its origin in piracy and 
 
 slave-trading . . \58 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Capitalist: Separation of his 
 function from that of 
 the entrtpreneur . . 76 
 
 Regulation of the . . 43 
 
 Type of the . . . 105 
 
 Capitalist combinations and 
 State action . . .91 
 
 Capitulations by proprietary 
 classes .... 181 
 Career open to the talented . 7 
 
 Carlyle, rhomas . . 30, 41 
 
 Cartwright, Rev. Edmund, In- 
 ventions of . . . .59 
 
 Caste (see Class). 
 
 Castlereagh, Viscount . . 34 
 
 Catastrophic Socialism . . 136, 
 
 166, 183, 185 
 
 Catechism, Misquotation of 
 the Church . . . .110 
 
 Catholic Church, Socialism of 
 
 the 113 
 
 Catholic Emancipation . 34, 188 
 
 Centralization of State indus- 
 tries .... 142, 181 
 Chalmers, Rev. Thomas . 39 
 Charity ... 19, 169, 174 
 
 “ Charter, The People's " . 48 
 
 Chartism . . . ^48, 169 
 
 Cheque Bank: 
 
 Suggestion as to Commu- 
 
 nal currency . 
 
 . 150 
 
 Children : In Communes 
 
 . 150 
 
 Effect of Socialism 
 
 on 
 
 the status of 
 
 . 182 
 
 “ Christian Socialism " . 
 
 79, 80 
 
 Church Catechism, The . 
 
 . 110 
 
 Church, The Catholic 
 
 . 113 
 
 Church of England: A mere 
 
 appanage of the landed 
 
 gentry 
 
 . 31 
 
 Church of England : Effect 
 of property holding on 
 the .... 124 
 Democratization of the . 182 
 “ Church Reformer, The " . 39 
 
 Churches .... 2 
 
 Church-going, Hypocrisies of 5 
 Church, Declaration of the 
 l^an- Anglican Synod con- 
 cerning Socialism and the . 174 
 Civilizations and Societies . 20 
 
INDEX. 
 
 205 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Civil Servants : Their reputa- 
 tion for unconseientious- 
 iiess .... 107, 165 
 “ Claims of Labor, The . 66 
 Clanricarde, Lord . . .56 
 
 Clarke, William 28, 56, 166, 186 
 Class Feeling and Morality . 17, 
 106, 105, 106, 108-110 
 Classes, Separation of . . 17 
 
 Cleavage, Economic . , 185 
 
 Clive, Robert . . .60, 71 
 
 Coal mining, Application of 
 machinery to . . . 151 
 
 Coal monopoly in the United 
 
 States 78 
 
 Cobden Club disconcerted by 
 the appearance of Imports 
 
 not paid for by Exports 
 
 . 169 
 
 Cobden, Richard 
 
 74, 79 
 
 Colonization, Modern 
 
 21, 182 
 
 Coleridge, S. T. 
 
 . 40 
 
 Combination . 
 
 . 14 
 
 Benefits of 
 
 . 91 
 
 Commercial policy of Eng- 
 
 land under Capitalism 
 
 . 71 
 
 Commodities : Exchange of 9 
 Process by which their 
 value is reduced to the 
 cost of production of 
 the most costly unit of 
 
 the supply . . 12, 178 
 
 Common Sense . . 94, 116 
 
 Commune: Its establishment 
 in England already accom- 
 plished .... 143 
 Communes . . . * 2 
 
 Communism defined . . . 131 
 
 Communities, Savings of . 123 
 Debts of . . . . 128 
 
 Compensation for expropri- 
 ated proprietors . . .175 
 
 Competition : Theory of . 161 
 Decline of ... 81 
 Effect on wages . .171 
 
 Comte, Auguste . 27, 30, 169 
 
 Comte de Paris . . .28 
 
 “Condition of the Working 
 Classes '' (F. Engels’ work) 36 
 Conduct and Principle, In- 
 compatibility set up by Pri- 
 vate Property between . 4 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Conscience, Social . . . ];17 
 
 Conservatives, Present atti- 
 tude of .... 188 
 Consols: 
 
 Nature of the operation 
 called “ reducing” . 181 
 Consumption, Associated 121, 166 
 Contracts restricted in Eng- 
 land 160 
 
 Contradictions apparently be- 
 setting the investigation of 
 
 value 10 
 
 Conventions as to Morality . 100, 
 
 101 
 
 Cooking, Public and private . 140 
 Co-operative Movement. . 41, 
 81, 124, 144 
 Socialist origin of the, 79, 174 
 Aims of the leaders . 174 
 Co-operative Experiments . 129 
 Co-ordination, Social . . 54 
 
 Copyright . . 120, 132, 136 
 
 Copper, The “corner ” in . 84 
 
 Corners 14 
 
 Cost of Production : What it 
 
 means . . . .13 
 
 Reduction of value to . 13 
 
 On inferior soils . . 4 
 
 Cotton Manufacture, Prog- 
 ress of the . . . .66 
 
 Cotton-seed Oil Trust . . 88 
 
 County Councils, The new . 35, 
 
 123, 128, 138, 171, 181 
 County Council, The London 181 
 County Family, Origin of the 4 
 County Farms, Organization 
 
 of 139 
 
 County Government Act (See 
 County Councils). 
 
 Covert Garden Market and 
 
 the Duke of Bedford . 
 
 . 127 
 
 Crime : Its relativity 
 
 . 105 
 
 Criminal Class : Its forma- 
 
 tion .... 
 
 18, 112 
 
 Cromptom, Samuel, Inven- 
 
 tions of ... 
 
 . 33 
 
 Cultivation of the Earth 
 
 . 1 
 
 Its beginning . 
 
 . 2 
 
 Its “ margin ” . 
 
 . 3,5 
 
 Effect of exploration 
 
 on 
 
 the progress of 
 
 . 20 
 
206 
 
 Index, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Cultivation of the Earth : 
 
 Discrepancies betv/een its 
 actual progress and 
 that deduced from ab- 
 stract economics . . 20 
 
 Culture : 
 
 Effect on profits of indus- 
 trial management of 
 the spread of . . 179 
 
 Currency, Suggestion as to 
 communal .... 150 
 Cynicism of our time . . 5 
 
 “ Routed by Social- 
 ism 24 
 
 DANTE 8 
 
 Darwin, Charles . 41, 85, 169 
 
 Darwinism and Politics ” . 51 
 
 Darwinian theory appealed to 
 
 by monopolists . . 85 
 
 By Socialists . . .51 
 
 Day, The working . . .141 
 
 Debt, The National • . 129 
 
 Debts, Law as to . . . 125 
 
 Of Communities . . 128 
 
 Decentralization, Necessity 
 
 for 170 
 
 Definitions of economic rent . 4 
 
 Demand, Effective . . .19 
 
 Supply and ... 8 
 
 Democracy : Import of . . 29, 
 
 30, 35, 54, 55, 195 
 Instability of . . .55 
 
 Postulated by Socialism 166 
 Further steps necessary 
 to consummate . . 170 
 
 Democrat, Distinction be- 
 tween the Ordinary and the 
 
 Social 166 
 
 Democratic Federation (See . 
 
 S. D. F.) 
 
 De Quincey, Thomas . . 40 
 
 Desire as a social motor 96, 102 
 Detailed suggestions for so- 
 cial organization of unem- 
 ployed labor , . .. 140 
 
 De Tocqueville. A. C. H. C. 29 
 Devil worship . . .24 
 
 Diocesan Councils, Central 
 Conference of . . . 54 
 
 Dirty Work .... 145 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Discipline in socialized indus- 
 tries .... 143 
 
 Discovery of new countries . 21 
 
 Disestablishment of the 
 Church . . . .188 
 
 Dishonesty a product of Capi- 
 talism Ill 
 
 Disingenuousness of Class 
 Economics , . 14, 19, 21 
 
 Dismal Science now the Hope- 
 ful 25 
 
 Dismissal, Power of . . 143 
 
 Dissolution of the Old Syn- 
 thesis 31 
 
 Division of labor ... 3 
 
 Drainage Acts . . .41 
 
 Drinking Fountains, Com- 
 munism exemplified in . 131 
 
 Drone and Worker . . 4 
 
 EARNINGS distinguished 
 from the revenue of Private 
 Property . . . .20 
 
 Ecclesiastical intolerance. Re- 
 action against mediaeval . 161 
 Economics (See Political 
 Economy). 
 
 Economists (See Political 
 Economists). 
 
 Education : Reform of . .49 
 
 Moral .... 102 
 
 A necessity for morality 111 
 Socialist ideal of . 115, 134 
 Effect on profits of indus- 
 trial management . 179 
 Tendency of Social Dem- 
 ocracy to encourage . 180 
 Eight Hours, Working day 
 
 of 141 
 
 Electors, Number of . .35 
 
 Elizabethan merchant adven- 
 turers 159 
 
 Emigration .... 167 
 Employer : Differentia ted 
 
 from Capitalist . . 76 
 
 And laborer . . . 137 
 
 Not harmed by Socialism 177 
 
 Engels, F 36 
 
 England: Her social policy 
 
 to-day . . . .19 
 
 In 1750 .... 30 
 
INDEX. 
 
 207 
 
 PAGE 
 
 England : 
 
 Her foreign policy dic- 
 tated by Capitalism 73, 74 
 Her mineral fertility . 107 
 English Factory Legisla- 
 tion.” (See also Factory 
 Legislation) . . .36 
 
 Entrepreneur (See Employer). 
 Episcopal Conference . . 54 
 
 Equality of remuneration . 148, 
 149 
 
 Errors (See Mistakes ex- 
 
 posed hy Socialism). 
 
 Ethics : Metaphysic of . .94 
 
 Positive science of . .95 
 
 Evolution, Effect of Hypo- 
 thesis of . . . 24, 51 
 
 Exchange of Commodities . 12 
 Mechanism of . . . 10 
 
 Exchange Value (See Value). 9 
 Exploitation . . . .18 
 
 FACTORIES before the Fac- 
 tory Act . . .36, 67 
 
 Factory Legislation . 36, 41, 
 
 70, 125, 167, 190 
 Factory System, Introduc- 
 tion of the . . . 33, 59 
 
 “Facts for Londoners ” . . 181 
 
 “Fair Trade”. ... 92 
 Family : Effect of Socialism 
 
 on the .... 182 
 Origin of the County . 4 
 
 Isolation of the . 122, 133 
 Farms : Organization o f 
 
 County .... 139 
 Bonanza .... 142 
 Fawcett, Henry ... 4 
 
 Federation of Municipalities 181 
 Feudalism : Survival of . 31 
 Reaction against its domi- 
 neering . . . 160 
 
 Feudal clues . . .38 
 
 Fielden, John . . . 70 
 
 Filibuster, The Colonizing . 182 
 Final Utility, Theory of 11, 12 
 Flag, Trade following the . 182 
 Flats, Living in . . . 121 
 
 Fly-Shuttle, Invention of the 59 
 Foreign Investments, Interest 
 on ..... 169 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Foreign Markets, The fight 
 for .... 74, 181 
 Foreign Policy: Effect of 
 
 Capitalism upon . . 71 
 
 Effect of Socialism upon 181 
 Foreign Trade following the 
 
 Flag .... 
 
 . 182 
 
 Forestalling . 
 
 . 14 
 
 Fourier, F. C. M. . 
 
 . 121 
 
 Fox, Charles James 
 
 . 34 
 
 Foxwell, Professor H. S. 
 
 . 37 
 
 Free Ferry, The London 
 
 . 47 
 
 “Free Land” and the Radi- 
 cal party . . .50, 195 
 
 Free Trade Movement . . 73 
 
 Foreign investments left 
 out of account by the . 169 
 The bourgeoisie and the 190 
 Freethinker, Possible Elec- 
 tion to the Deanery of 
 Westminster of an avowed 182 
 French Revolution . 34, 60, 174 
 
 Friction caused by introduc- 
 tion of Municipal Socialism, 178 
 Furse, Canon . . . .54 
 
 GAMBLING ... .2 
 
 Gasworks, Socialization of . 45, 
 139, 181 
 
 George III . . . .72 
 
 George, Henry . . 95, 127, 
 
 161, 169, 172 
 Georgism, Checkmate to . 173 
 Giffen, Robert . . 169, 173 
 
 Gladstone, Right Hon. W. E. 47 
 Retrogressive instincts of 161 
 
 Glasgow 47 
 
 Growth of ... 33 
 Godin and Leclaire, Experi- 
 ments of . . . . 151 
 
 Godwin, William . . .39 
 
 Gold : As money . . .10 
 
 Effect of Discoveries in 
 California and Aus- 
 tralia .... 167 
 Goschen, Right Hon. G. J. . 181 
 Gould, Jay . . . .69 
 
 Government: In 1750 . . 32 
 
 Industries carried on by 42 
 “ Government Organiza- 
 tion of Labor ” 
 
 46 
 
208 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Gradual Socialization . , 31 
 
 Compensation a condi- 
 tion of . . . . 175 
 
 Greek Kepublics . 125, 148, 160 
 Greenock . . . .46 
 
 Gronlund, Laurence, 119, 121, 125 
 Grote, George . . .39 
 
 Ground values, Municipiliza- 
 
 tion of 175 
 
 Growth of Towns . . .32 
 
 Guild of St. Matthew . . 39 
 
 Guillotining .... 182 
 
 HABITS: Moral ... 97 
 Automatic . . .98 
 
 Harbors, Nationalization of . 149 
 Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Sir W. V. 106 
 On the teetotal stump ' . 106 
 “We are all Socialists 
 now” .... 190 
 Hargreaves, James, The In- 
 ventions of . . . 33, 59 
 
 Harrison, Frederic . . . 54 
 
 Hastings, Warren . . .71 
 
 Haves and Have-nots . . 186 
 
 Head Rents, Relative Insig- 
 nificance of ... 8 
 
 Hegel, G. W. F. . . 162, 165 
 
 High Church Party . . 39 
 
 Historical: Method in Econo- 
 mics . . . .20 
 
 Development of Private 
 Property . . .20 
 
 Basis of Socialism . . 26 
 
 “Historical Basis of So- 
 cialism” (Hyndman’s 
 work) . . . .27 
 
 “History”: “Of Agriculture 
 
 and Prices ” . . 32 
 
 “ Of the 18th Century ” . 34 
 “ Of Private Bill Legisla- 
 tion ” . . . .38 
 
 “Of the Reform Bill” . 31 
 Hobbes, Thomas . . . 160 
 
 Hobhouse, Lord . . 171, 175 
 
 Hobhouse, Sir John Cam . 68 
 Homestead Law . . . 126 
 
 Hospital, The . . .18 
 
 House of Commons . . 181 
 
 House of Lords, Abolition 
 of 170 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Household Suffrage , 
 
 . 34 
 
 Huddersfield . 
 
 . 46 
 
 Human Life, Disregard 
 
 of 
 
 Capital for . 
 
 . 146 
 
 Hume, David 
 
 38, 161 
 
 Huxley, Professor . 
 
 . 53 
 
 Hyndman, H. M. . 
 
 27, 169 
 
 Hypocrisy 
 
 5, 158 
 
 IBSEN, Henrik . 
 
 . 134 
 
 Icaria .... 
 
 . 28 
 
 Idleness, Association of pros- 
 
 perity with . 
 
 . 5 
 
 Idlers: their fate under 
 
 So- 
 
 cialism 
 
 . 151 
 
 Illth .... 
 
 . 18 
 
 Illusions, Economic 
 
 . 161 
 
 Immigration, Pauper . 125, 173 
 
 Improvement in Production . 6 
 
 Effect of unforeseen . 8 
 
 Incentive to Labor : Under 
 
 Socialism f . . 151 
 
 Under Leasehold system 171 
 Income Tax . . 130, 150, 167 
 
 An instrument of expro- 
 priation . . . 176 
 
 “ Rent of ability ” recov- 
 erable by . . . 181 
 
 Independent Weaver, Trans- 
 formation of the . . .59 
 
 India, Conquest of, under 
 Clive and Warren Hastings 
 
 60, 71 
 
 Indifference, Law of . .11 
 
 Individualism : Outbreak of . 37 
 Abandonment of . .54 
 
 The change to Socialism 
 from .... 137 
 Confusedly opposed to 
 Socialism . . .96 
 
 Its moralization . 97, 102 
 
 Anti-Social manifesta- 
 tion .... 104 
 Protestant form of . . 114 
 
 Abolished in production 116 
 Industrial Organization, Cen- 
 tralization of . . 147, 181 
 
 Industrial Remuneration Con- 
 ference . . . .54 
 
 Industrial Revolution . 33-35 
 
 41, 56, 136, 159 
 
INDEX. 
 
 209 
 
 , PAGE 
 
 Industrial Revolution : 
 
 Attitude of parties dur- 
 ing .... 189 
 Industrialism, Evil effects of G7 
 Industry : Under Socialism . L36 
 Nationalization of . . 43 
 
 As virtue or vice . 106, 108 
 Disgraceful for women . 108 
 La grande Industrie . . 185 
 
 Inequality . . . , 1 
 
 Mischief of . . .20 
 
 Sense of it lost in contem- 
 plation of equality be- 
 fore God . . .23 
 
 Inferior soils. Resort to . 3 
 
 Ingram, J. K 80 
 
 Injustices produced by pri- 
 vate appropriation of land 5 
 Insanity, Definition of . 97, 100 
 
 Inspection of Industry . . 43 
 
 Institutions, History of . . 103 
 
 Insurance : National . . 23 
 
 Municipal . . .47 
 
 Insurrectionism . . 165, 176 
 
 Intellectual Revolt, The . 185 
 
 Interest 16 
 
 Fall in the current rate 
 often mistaken for a 
 tendency in Interest to 
 disappear . . .17 
 
 Mr. Goschen’s operation 
 for securing to the com- 
 munity the advantage 
 of the fall in the cur- 
 rent rate . . .17 
 
 A tribute . . 105, 114 
 
 Interest, Class . . . 103 
 
 International Morality in the 
 Middle Ages . . . 157 
 
 International Trade the domi- 
 
 nant factor in foreign pol- 
 
 icy ... . 
 
 72, 181 
 
 Invention, Consequences 
 
 of . 146 
 
 Inventor, The first . 
 
 . 6 
 
 Iron Industry 
 
 . 60 
 
 JE VONS, W. Stanley . 
 
 . 162 
 
 Joint Stock Companies: 
 
 De- 
 
 velopment of 
 
 43, 78 
 
 Not objects of public 
 sympathy . . . 138 
 
 Joseph the Second 
 
 page 
 
 . 30 
 
 KAYE OF BURY 
 
 . 33 
 
 Kingsley, Charles 
 
 39,41, 79 
 
 Kitchens : Separate 
 
 . 122 
 
 Public 
 
 . 134 
 
 Kropotkin, Peter . 
 
 . 61, 160 
 
 LABOR : Mouth honor to . 5 
 
 In the market as a com- 
 modity .... 9 
 
 Displaced by machinery 63 
 Fruits of . . . 104 
 
 Municipal organization 
 of . . . . 140, 174 
 
 Labor colonies . . 147 
 
 Beginning of State or- 
 ganization of . . 175 
 
 Laborer and Employer . . 137 
 
 (See also Proletarian.) 
 Laisser-faire . . 36, 38, 39, 51, 
 
 70, 160 
 
 Lancashire, Old . . .57 
 
 Expansion of . . .65 
 
 Weavers’ grievances . 72 
 
 Land, Rent of ... 3-5 
 Point at which it becomes 
 a close monopoly . 7 
 
 Powers of the County 
 Councils to hold . . 139 
 
 Nationalization of 47, 172 
 Landlord, What he costs . 14 
 Landed Interest, Its policy . 187 
 Lassalle, Ferdinand . 57, 162 
 
 Law of Indifference . 11, 12 
 
 “ “ Rent (See also Rent). 
 
 4, 53, 161 
 
 “ Leaseholds Enfranchise- 
 ment” . . . 51,174 
 
 Leaseholds : Origin of . .8 
 
 Confiscation at expiry of 171 
 Lecky, W. J. . . 34,71,73 
 
 Leclaire and Godin, Experi- 
 ments of ... . 151 
 
 Leeds ... 33, 38, 47 
 
 Legislation : Breakdown of 
 
 mediaeval . . . 160 
 
 (See also Factory Leg- 
 islation.) 
 
 Leveling-down action of Pri- 
 vate Property . . .14 
 
210 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Levi, Leone . . . .54 
 
 Liberal and Radical Union in 
 favor of County Councils 
 holding land . . 47, 138 
 
 Libraries, Public . . . 134 
 
 Liberal Party, Its policy on 
 Socialism . . . 190-192 
 
 Liberty and Equality 53, 157 
 Liberty and Property De- 
 fence League . . .47 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham : The 
 moral of his assassination 74 
 Liverpool, Growth of . .33 
 
 Lloyd, Henry D., on “ Lords 
 of Industry ”... 83 
 Local: Improvement Acts . 41 
 Self-Government . . 171 
 
 Government Boards deal- 
 ings with the unem- 
 ployed .... 174 
 Government Board of the 
 future .... 181 
 Lodging Houses, Municipal . 47 
 London: Facts concerning . 181 
 The County Council . 181 
 Extraordinary propor- 
 tions reached by Eco- 
 nomic Rent in . . 171 
 
 Liberal and Radical 
 Union . . .47, 138 
 
 London and Southwest- 
 ern Railway share- 
 holders . . .78 
 
 Looking Backward ” . . 145 
 
 Louis XVI .... 56 
 
 Lying, As vice or virtue . 107 
 
 MACHINERY : Shoemaking 
 
 by .... 61 
 
 Agriculture by . . 62 
 
 Displacement of hand 
 labor by . . .63 
 
 Progress of . . 138, 146 
 
 Substitution for hand 
 labor in disagreeable 
 employments . . 145 
 
 Chimney Sweeping by . 146 
 
 Maine, Sir Henry . . 29, 54 
 
 Malthus, Rev. T. R. 32, 39, 162 
 Man as producer and ex- 
 changer . . . .12 
 
 PAGE 
 
 “ Man versus the State ” . 47 
 
 Management, Profits of indus- 
 trial 179 
 
 Managers, Qualifications and 
 present value of industrial 
 
 179-80 
 
 Manchester . . 33, 38, 46 
 
 Manchester School . . 74, 168 
 
 Its advocacy of Protec- 
 tion .... 176 
 Manners, Lady Janette on 
 “ Are Rich Landowners 
 Idle?” . . . .109 
 
 Manorial Rights . . 32, 38 
 
 Mills . . . .38 
 
 Manors . . .2, 32, 38 
 
 Marginal Utility (See Final 
 Utility). 
 
 Margin of Cultivation . . 2, 5 
 
 Obligation of private 
 competitors to charge 
 the full cost of produc- 
 tion at . . . 178 9 
 
 Markets : Effect on rent of 
 
 proximity to . . 3 
 
 The fight for foreign 74, 181 
 Marriage, Contract of . . 131 
 
 Marshall, Alfred, and Mary 
 Paley — Definition of rent 4 
 Marx, Karl . . 36, 162, 169 
 
 Matthew, Guild of St. . . 39 
 
 Maurice, F. Denison 39, 41, 79 
 Meliorism . . . .24 
 
 Men, Traffic in ... 9 
 
 Mercantile System . . 38 
 
 Method of Criticism on Moral 
 Basis . . . . .95 
 
 Metoeci in Athens .. . . 125 
 
 Middle Ages: 
 
 Social Organization in 
 
 the 157 
 
 Middle Class : Its callous- 
 ness 73 
 
 Its moral ideas . 108-110 
 Its misunderstandings of 
 Socialism . . . 164 
 
 Its dread of mob violence 175 
 Militant organization of the 
 working class for forcible 
 revoliPion . . . 182, 184 
 
 Militarism and immigration . 125 
 
INDEX. 
 
 211 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Military Service . . . 131 
 
 Empires of the Continent 125 
 Mill, James . . .29, 33 
 
 Mill, John Stuart . . 4, 31, 39 
 
 41, 50, 52, 168 
 Milk Exchange of New York, 88 
 Milton, John, Proposal as to 
 sciiools . . . o 134 
 
 Mines : Tljeir horrors before 
 the legislation initiated 
 by Lord Ashley . .61 
 
 Nationalization of . . 150 
 
 Mines Regulation Acts . 41 
 
 Minor poetry. Socialist pro- 
 vision for the publication 
 
 of 144 
 
 Mirabeau . . . .60 
 
 Missionaries .... 181 
 
 Mistakes exposed by Social- 
 ism : 
 
 That Society is no more 
 than the sum of its 
 units . . . 3, 50 
 
 That Private Property en- 
 courages industry . 6 
 
 That Private Property 
 establishes healthy in- 
 centive .... 6 
 
 That Private Property 
 distributes wealth ac- 
 cording to exertion . 6 
 
 That Rent does not enter 
 into price . . .14 
 
 That Exchange Value is 
 a measure of true 
 wealth . . . .19 
 
 That “the poor ye shall 
 have always witliyou^^ 24 
 
 That riots, regicide and 
 bloodshed make Revo- 
 lutions . . 56, 166 
 
 Mob Violence, Middle-class 
 
 dread of ... . 175 
 
 Molesworth, W. N. . . 31 
 
 Money, Function of . .10 
 
 Monopolies . . . .14 
 
 And Democracy . . 89 
 
 Necessity for protecting 
 the Postmaster’s . . 168 
 
 Moral Basis of Socialism . 93 
 
 Plabits and their origin , 98 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Moral Basis of Socialism : 
 Education of the Individ- 
 
 ual . . . .102 
 
 And of Society . .115 
 
 Moralists, Foolish ... 6 
 
 Morality 94 
 
 Relativity of . . . 96 
 
 Recognizable only in So- 
 ciety . . . .97 
 
 Conventional, 98, 100, 106, 108 
 Natural . . . 101, 109 
 
 Practical .... 103 
 
 Class, 5, 23, 108, 109, 110, 159 
 Elementary conditions of, 113 
 Developed conditions of 
 
 115, 116 
 
 Socialistic . . . 117 
 
 Medieval . . . 137, 158 
 
 Elizabethan . . . 159 
 
 “Morals and Health Act” 
 (1802) .... 41, 160 
 
 More, Sir Thomas . . . 160 
 
 Morley, Right Hon. J ohn . 47, 
 182, 192, 193 
 Motors, Influence of new . 33 
 Municipal : Corporations Act, 34 
 Action . . . .46 
 
 Socialism . . 46, 175 
 
 Debt .... 47 
 Development . . .49 
 
 Prestige of Municipal Em- 
 ployment . . . 177 
 
 Municipalities, Growth of . 33, 
 
 35, 45, 46,. 47 
 
 (See also County Councils.) 
 
 NABOB, The appearance in 
 English social life of the . 33 
 Napoleon : “ The career is 
 
 open to the talented ” . 7 
 
 “A nation of shopkeep- 
 ers” . . . . 71 
 
 Nasmyth, James, invents the 
 steam-hammer . . .60 
 
 National Insurance . . 23 
 
 National Liberal Federation . 48 
 
 “ National Review, The ” . 109 
 
 Nationalization of Rent 22, 47 
 It results if unaccompa- 
 nied by Socialistic or- 
 ganization of labor . 172 
 
212 
 
 INDEX, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Nationalization of Rent : 
 
 Inter-municipal rent . 181 
 Rent of ability . 179-80 
 
 (See also Progress and 
 Poverty.) 
 
 Nature : Caprices of . . 3, 7 
 
 ‘‘ Red in tooth and claw 23 
 Unmorality of . . .24 
 
 The cause of Society . 98 
 Newspapers under Socialism . 144 
 
 New Hampshire . . . 121 
 
 New Motors, Influence of . 33 
 
 New River Company . . 124 
 
 New Y ork Legislature — Com- 
 mittee on Trusts . . .86 
 
 Newcommen, Thomas . » 33 
 
 Nexus, The social . 30, 32, 60 
 
 OASTLER, Richard . . 68 
 
 O'Connor, Fergus . . . 169 
 
 OASTLER, Richard . . 68 
 O'Connor, Fergus . . . 169 
 Oldest Families — Tradition 
 
 of their superiority 
 
 . 5 
 
 Oldham .... 
 
 . 46 
 
 Olivier, Sydney 
 
 . 93 
 
 Omnipotence and Benevo- 
 
 lence, The Dilemma of 
 
 . 23 
 
 Optimism : rebuked by 
 
 Sci- 
 
 ence 
 
 . 24 
 
 The individual econo- 
 
 mists and their 
 
 . 161 
 
 Organism, The Social 
 
 . 50 
 
 Outlook, The political . 
 
 . 184 
 
 Over-population 
 
 . IV 
 
 Owen, Robert . 40, 79, 
 
 121, 174 
 
 PAINTERS, Gains of fashion- 
 
 able .... 
 
 . 179 
 
 Paley, Rev. William 
 
 39,40 
 
 Palmerston, Chinese policy 
 
 of Lord 
 
 . 74 
 
 Panem et Cir censes . 
 
 . 172 
 
 Parasitism, Economic 
 
 . 107 
 
 Parliaments, Annual 
 
 . 170 
 
 Parks, Public . 
 
 187-8 
 
 Parties, State and fundamcn- 
 
 tal differences of 
 
 120, 132 
 
 Patent rights . 
 
 . 155 
 
 Patronage in the public 
 
 ser- 
 
 vice 
 
 . 165 
 
 Effect of appointments 
 by .... 165 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Pauper Labor, How to deal 
 
 with 140 
 
 Payment of representatives . 170 
 Peasant Proprietorship . . 50 
 
 Period of Anarchy . . .35 
 
 Perpetual pension. Privately 
 appropriated Rent is of the 
 nature of a . . . .4 
 
 Pessimism . . .23, 200 
 
 Peterloo 34 
 
 Philanthropy, Futility of . 167 
 “Philosophic Radicalism," 40, 167 
 Physical force . 136, 166, 184 
 Advocated by Lord Bram- 
 well . . . .175 
 
 Physicians, Gains of fashion- 
 able 179 
 
 Piracy and the Slave Trade 
 
 in the 16th century . . 158 
 
 Pitt, William : His motives . 72 
 Piener, E. von . . .69 
 
 Plebeians in ancient Rome . 125 
 Plato Ill 
 
 Police : Conduct of Socialists 
 
 charged upon by the . 100 
 Recent action of the ex- 
 Chief Commissioner of, 174 
 Political : Tendencies . 48, 186 
 
 Reform . . . 51,192 
 
 “Political Science Quar- 
 terly" . . . 28,79 
 
 Economy (See Politi- 
 cal Economy). 
 
 Political Economy ... 2 
 
 Basis of Socialism in . 1 
 
 Definition of Rent in 
 treatises ... 4 
 
 Theory apparently con- 
 tradicted by history . 20 
 Untrustworthiness of ab- 
 stract . . . .20 
 
 Its guns turned against 
 Private Property . . 24 
 
 Old school and new . . 24 
 
 John Stuart Mill 31, 50, 52 
 Ricardo .... 162 
 Jevons .... 162 
 Rise of modern . 39, 160 
 
 Perceived to be a reductio 
 ad ahsurdum of Private 
 Property , . , 162 
 
INDEX. 
 
 213 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Political Economy : 
 
 Present political parties 
 and .... 190 
 Poor Law: A Socialistic in- 
 stitution degraded . 114 
 
 Reform . . . .49 
 
 The old and the new . 167 
 
 Post Office : A Socialistic in- 
 stitution . . . 131 
 
 Socialization of the postal 
 system .... 139 
 Economy of collectivist 
 charges exemplified by 168 
 Population: Increase and its 
 
 effects . . 5, 15, 161, 174 
 
 Its control by public opin- 
 ion .... 182 
 (See also Overpopula- 
 tion.) 
 
 Press: Its liberty after the 
 socialization of print- 
 ing .... 144 
 Clamor for bloodshed 
 from the newspapers of 
 the proprietary class . 175 
 
 Preston 46 
 
 Its public debt . , 127 
 
 Prices cannot be raised to 
 compensate dimini shed 
 
 profits 177 
 
 Printing, Socialization of . 144 
 Private Property : Beginning 
 
 of . . . . .2 
 
 Its levelling-down action 14 
 Injustice of . . .20 
 
 Not now practicable in its 
 integrity . . .21 
 
 Its abrogation conceived 
 as an attempt to em- 
 power everyone to rob 
 everyone else . . 22 
 
 Its revenue distinguished 
 from earnings . . 22 
 
 Composition of incomes 
 derived from . . 22 
 
 Institution of . . . 103 
 
 Conditions of its possi- 
 bility . . . .104 
 
 Effect on sex relations . 110 
 Idea of ... . Ill 
 
 Rights of . . . . 138 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Private Property : 
 
 Cheapens the laborer . 179 
 Tends to make the major- 
 ity mere beasts of bur- 
 den .... 180 
 Process of extinction of . 181 
 The State and . . . 190 
 
 (See also Property.) 
 
 Private Enterprise compared 
 with Public .... 168 
 Produce: Unjust division re- 
 sulting from private appro- 
 priation of land ... 5 
 
 Production : Improvements in, 6 
 Effect of unforeseen im- 
 provements in . .12 
 
 Conditions of production 
 and exchange . . 12 
 
 Associated . . 121, 133 
 
 Profit . . . . 6, 13 
 
 Sweater's .... 177 
 Most important form of 
 ‘‘Rent of Ability" . 179 
 Effect of calculating it in 
 net social welfare in- 
 stead of individual pe- 
 cuniary gain . . 181 
 
 “ Profit Sharing" . . . 151 
 
 Programme of Social Demo- 
 cracy 182 
 
 Progress : Conditions of . 94 
 Rate of in politics, indus- 
 try and thought . . 186 
 
 “ Progress and Poverty " . 23-5, 
 
 162, 169, 172 
 “ Progress of Socialism " . 41 
 
 Proletarian : The first . . 6 
 
 Predicament of landless . 8 
 
 End of his absorption by 
 the land as tenant . 9 
 
 Sold into bondage . . 10 
 
 Operation of the law of 
 value on his position as 
 a vendor of labor . 15 
 How the Democratic 
 State will deal with 
 him .... 173 
 (See also Proletariat.) 
 Proletariat : Origin of the . 6 
 
 Exploitation of . .17 
 
 Physical degradation of • 67 
 
214 
 
 INDEX, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Proletariat : 
 
 Type of . . . . 105 
 
 Morals of . . . 110-13 
 
 So-called “intellectual” . 180 
 (See also Proletarian.) 
 Property : Under Socialism . 119 
 Definition and economic 
 analysis of . . . 120 
 
 (See also Private Prop- 
 erty.) 
 
 Prosperity, Association of 
 idleness with ... 4 
 
 Prostitutes, their making . 112 
 Protection : Decay of . .73 
 
 In the Middle Ages . 158 
 Advocated by the Man- 
 chester School . .176 
 
 Proudhon, P. J. . . . 162 
 
 Public Health Acts . . 41 
 
 “ Opinion . . . 182 
 
 Purchasing Power — Perni- 
 
 cious effect of its unequal 
 distribution . . . .19 
 
 QUIT Kents .... 8 
 
 KADICALISM: Philosophic 40 
 The modern Radical Pro- 
 gramme . . .48 
 
 Ordinary destructive va- 
 riety .... 164 
 Permeation of by Social- 
 ism .... 196 
 Absorption of . . . 199 
 
 The land question and . 104 
 Railways : Requisites for 
 making them under 
 Capitalism . . .16 
 
 Development of . .75 
 
 Socialization of . . 139 
 
 Raphael’s pictures . . . 126 
 
 Ratepayer, How Socialism 
 will first affect the . . 177 
 
 Rates, Growth of . . .46 
 
 Reactionary Legislation, Dan- 
 ger of 92 
 
 Reform Bills . . . 34, 168 
 
 Regicide : Its victims . . 84 
 
 Its futility . . . 136 
 
 Registration, Anomalous con- 
 dition of voters’ . . . 170 
 
 page 
 
 Regulation of Industry: Me- 
 dieval . 37, 157-8 
 
 Modern (See Factory 
 Legislation). 
 
 Rent : Recognized and paid 
 
 by worker to drone . 3 
 
 Definitions of economic 
 rent by standard 
 economists . . . 3- 4 
 
 Point at which rent ceases 
 to be strictly “econo- 
 mic rent ” . » .8 
 
 Enters into price of all 
 commodities except 
 those produced at mar- 
 gin of cultivation . 13 
 
 Relation to cost of pro- 
 duction . . .13 
 
 Nationalization of, 21, 46, 182 
 Is common wealth, not 
 individually earned . 22 
 Moral Aspect of, 104, 110, 113 
 Case of Birmingham and 
 Warwick . . . 123 
 
 Law of ... . 161 
 
 Illustration of economic 
 rent .... 163 
 Urban . . . . 171 . 
 
 Effect of municipal So- 
 cialism on . , . 177 
 
 How County Councils 
 can manipulate . . 178 
 
 Nationalizing inter-muni- 
 cipal .... 181 
 Effect of Free Trade on 
 agricultural . . . 190 
 
 Rent of ability . 7,177 
 
 Industrial profit the 
 most important form 
 of . . . .179 
 
 Raised by Private Prop- 
 erty .... 179 
 May become negative . 180 
 Republicanism : Disappear- 
 
 ance of militant Republican- 
 ism in England . . . 185 
 
 Residuum: Geneois of the . 113 
 Its appreciation of public 
 hospitality . . .114 
 
 Respectability, Falsehood of 
 current 24 
 
INDEX, 
 
 215 
 
 Reward of Abstinence o . 16 
 “ of effort in the cause 
 of Socialism . . . 135 
 
 Revolt, The Intellectual . 40 
 Revolution : Middle class no- 
 tions of ... 56 
 Socialistic attempt to or- 
 ganize militant . .182 
 
 (See also Industrial 
 Revolution and Phys- 
 ical Force.) 
 
 Ricardo, David . 4, 39, 162 
 
 Riches are not Wealth . . 18 
 
 Rights of Man, Declaring the 182 
 Rings, Growth of capitalist 
 
 82, 127, 184 
 
 Ritchie, Right Hon. C. T. . 138 
 Ritchie, D. G. . . .50 
 
 Rochdale Pioneers . . . 124 
 
 Roebuck, J. A. . . .39 
 
 Rogers, Professor Thorold E. 32 
 Rousseau, J. J. . . .39 
 
 Rural economy in 1750 . . 32 
 
 Russell, Lord John, an- 
 nounces finality . . . 167 
 
 Ruskin, John . . . .41 
 
 Russia’s industrial competi- 
 tion in the world market . 169 
 Rutland, Duchess of, on the 
 hard work of country gen- 
 tlemen ..... 109 
 Ryot, Suppression of Indian . 113 
 
 S. D. F. (Social Democratic 
 Federation) .... 169 
 Sadler, Michael Thomas . 69 
 Salisbury, Rt. Hon., the Mar- 
 quess of ... . 129 
 
 Satan : His moral activity . 106 
 Rehabilitation of . .114 
 
 “ Saul : Optimism as ex- 
 pressed in Robert Brown- 
 ing’s poem . . . .23 
 
 Saving : Capital the result of 16 
 Savings of communities 
 and of individuals . 123 
 Schools as they should be . 133 
 Scott, Sir Walter, Political 
 types in “ Rob Roy ” . .71 
 
 Secretan, Eugene . . .84 
 
 Seeley, J. R 189 
 
 Self, Extension of . . . 101 
 
 Self-defence, Origin of the 
 
 Noble Art .... 100 
 “Self-help” . . . 19,168 
 
 Seligman, E. R. A. . . 79 
 
 Servants, Domestic . Ill, 172 
 
 Servantgalism an Effect of 
 Capitalism . . . .Ill 
 
 Services, Property in . . 130 
 
 Settlement, Law of . . 31 
 
 Seven Years’ War, The . . 60 
 
 Sewer Cleaning under Social- 
 ism 145 
 
 Shaftesbury, Lord . . .69 
 
 Shaftesbury Avenue, Land 
 
 near 127 
 
 Shakspere, Suggested Duke 
 
 of 132 
 
 Shaw, G. Bernard . . 1, 157 
 
 Shelley, P. B 100 
 
 Shoemaking by hand . . 58 
 
 By machinery . . .61 
 
 Shopkeeping, Joint-Stock . 80 
 Sidgwick, Henry . . 4, 52, 130 
 
 Sidmou^h, Lord . . .34 
 
 Six Acts, The . . . .34 
 
 “ Six Centuries of Work and 
 Wages” . . . .32 
 
 Slave Trade, The . . . 158 
 
 Slavery, The White . . 36 
 
 Slaves Released when not 
 worth keeping . . .15 
 
 Smiles, Samuel ... 7 
 
 Smith, Adam . . 32, 38 
 
 Societies : Failure of pre- 
 vious attempts to es- 
 tablish true . . .20 
 
 Societies and Civiliza- 
 tions . . . .21 
 
 (See also Society.) 
 
 Society : Hypothesis that it is 
 no more than the sum 
 of its Units . . 3, 50 
 
 The Matrix of Morality . 96 
 Evolution of Primitive 
 
 96, 98, 101, 103, 112 
 Industrial . . . 104 
 
 Parasitic . . . 106-7 
 
 Fashionable , . . 107 
 
 (See also Societies.) 
 
 Soils, Resort to Inferior . 3 
 
216 
 
 INDEX, 
 
 Somers, Robert . . .80 
 
 Social : Utility Divorced from 
 
 Exchange Value . . 18 
 
 Character of Social 
 Changes . . .30 
 
 Evolution . 30, 44, 53 
 
 “ Social Statics '' . 36, 54 
 
 Health , . . .51 
 
 Organization . . 51, 136 
 
 Instinct . . . 101, 109 
 
 Social Democratic Fede- 
 ration .... 169 
 Social Democracy and 
 Social Democrat. (See 
 Socialism and Social- 
 ist.) 
 
 Socialism 2, 22, 131, 163, 166, 182, 
 190, 194-95 
 Economic basis of . .1 
 
 Bearing of Economic An- 
 alysis of Individualism 
 
 on 22 
 
 Substitutes Meliorism for 
 Pessimism . . 24, 200 
 
 Historic Aspect . . 26 
 
 “ Socialism in England 27 
 Change in . . 27, 119 
 
 Early or Utopian 27, 30, 119, 
 136, 160, 164 
 Industrial Aspect . . 56 
 
 The Capitalist and . . 90 
 
 Moral Aspect . . ,93 
 
 Its Genesis . . .96 
 
 New Conception of . , 119 
 
 Property under . .119 
 
 Definition of pure . . 131 
 
 Industry under . . 136 
 
 Change from Individual- 
 ism to . . . 137,157 
 
 Local machinery of 139, 169 
 Dirty W ork under . . 145 
 
 Transition to . . . 157 
 
 Practical difficulties of . 163 
 Honesty of . . . 164 
 
 Must be introduced grad- 
 ually .... 166 
 Solution of the Compen- 
 sation difficulty . .175 
 
 Effect on Rent . . 177 
 
 Friction caused by intro- 
 duction of . • . 178 
 
 Socialism : Outlook toward . 184 
 Prince Bismarck's view of 192 
 The Liberal Party and . 192 
 True and False . 193-4 
 
 Two views of the future 
 
 of 195 
 
 Practical politicians and . 196 
 (See also the Index Gen 
 erally.) 
 
 Socialist Politics . . .47 
 
 Programme . . .48 
 
 Formation of party . . 198 
 
 Socialists and the police . 100 
 
 Early (See Utopian So- 
 cialism). 
 
 The mot d’ordre for . . 139 
 
 Social Democrats fall into 
 line as a political party 170 
 The Radical Press and . 195 
 Parliament and . . 197 
 
 Future leader for . . 199 
 
 Spencer, Herbert . . 36, 41, 
 
 47, 58, 95, 160, 169 
 St. Matthew, Guild of . ,39 
 
 Standard Oil Trust . . .85 
 
 ‘‘Star, The” .... 48 
 State : Social Democratic . 2 
 
 Functions under Social- 
 ism .... 149 
 Corruption of the . . 164 
 
 Whig conception of the . 165 
 
 Conception of the perfect 165 
 Decentralization in the 
 
 Social Democratic . 170 
 
 Private Property and the 190 
 Attitude of parties to- 
 wards the . . . 190 
 
 Idea and content of the . 191 
 The working-class a*nd 
 the .... 191 
 Statistics and Statisticians . 173 
 Steam applied to cotton spin- 
 ning 59 
 
 Stuart, Professor James . 48 
 Subletting of Tenant Right . 5 
 
 Subsistence Wages, Rationale 
 
 of 16 
 
 Sunday: Hypocrisies of 
 
 church going . . 5 
 
 Tlie English . . .133 
 
 Sunderland . , . .46 
 
INDKX. 
 
 217 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Supply and Demand : Action 
 
 of . . . .8, 179 
 
 Value decreases with Sup- 
 ply .... 10 
 
 Final effect on wage- 
 labor . . . 16, 17 
 
 Sweating, How to defeat . 175 
 Sweeping Chimneys: Replace- 
 ment of boy labor by ma- 
 chinery in . . . . 146 
 
 Syndicate of Copper Corner- 
 
 ers 84 
 
 Synthesis : The old . 31, 157 
 
 The new . . . .50 
 
 TALENT, Career open to . 7 
 
 Taxation : Reform . . .48 
 
 Of ground values . .171 
 
 Novel character of recent 
 demands for . . . 172 
 
 Telegraphs, Socialization of . 139 
 Ten Hours^ Bill, The . . 69 
 
 Tenant Rights : Perpetual 4, 5, 6 
 Replaced by finite leases 8 
 Tennyson, Alfred . . .68 
 
 Test and Corporation Acts re- 
 pealed 34 
 
 Tlieatres, Communal . . 135 
 
 Tocqueville, A. C. H. C. de . 29 
 Tory of fifty years ago . 188-9 
 
 Absorption of the party . 189 
 Tonquin, French policy in .75 
 “Total Utility ... 11 
 Toynbee, Arnold . . .33 
 
 Trade : Secrets of . . .14 
 
 Discredit and rehabilita- 
 tion of as a pursuit for 
 the nobility and gentry 108 
 Trade Unions . . 48, 132, 168 
 
 Wages in . . . . 141 
 
 Royal Commission (1869) 169 
 Trafalgar Square : The police 
 
 in . . . . 100, 174 
 
 The Fountains in . . 107 
 
 Traffic in Men ... 9 
 
 Tramways, Socialization of 
 
 46, 139 
 
 Transition to Social Democ- 
 racy 157 
 
 Truck Acts . . . .41 
 
 Trusts . . 14, 138, 143, 185 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Tucker, Benjamin R. . . 160 
 
 Turgot, A. R. J. . . . 161 
 
 Two-man power more than 
 double One-man power . 3 
 
 UNEMPLOYED: Their ex- 
 istence a proof that 
 the labor they could re- 
 place has no exchange 
 value .... 139 
 Social pressure created 
 by the .... 172 
 United States : Results of In- 
 dividualism plus political 
 liberty in the . . .21 
 
 Declaration of Independ- 
 ence . . . .60 
 
 Growth of Monopoly in 
 the . . . .78 
 
 Extent to which monop- 
 oly has gone in the . 82 
 Unskilled Labor, Fate of . 112 
 Unsocialism .... 2 
 
 Utilitarian questioning and 
 scientific answering . . 23 
 
 Utilitarians, The . . .38 
 
 Utility: Its relation to Value 10 
 “ Total Utility “ Margi- 
 nal,"’ or “ Final Util- 
 ity . . . 11,12 
 
 Divorce from Exchange 
 Value .... 19 
 Utopian Socialism . 27, 30, 119, 
 
 136, 160, 164 
 
 VALJEAN, JEAN . . 100 
 
 Value in Exchange . . 9 
 
 Not explained by the 
 money mechanism . 10 
 
 Man^s control over it con- 
 sists in his power of 
 regulating supply . 14 
 Divorced from social util- 
 ity 19 
 
 Theory of . . . 162 
 
 V oluntary Associations : 
 Their legal position under 
 Socialism . • • . 124 
 
 VonPlener, E. ... 36 
 Vestrydom congenial to Brit- 
 ish mind • • • • 182 
 
218 
 
 INDEX, 
 
 Villiers, C. P 39 
 
 Virtues conditioned by social 
 evolution . . . 99, 100-6 
 
 WAGES 15 
 
 Subsistence level . . 16 
 
 Adjustment . . . 148 
 
 Rise after 1840 . . 167 
 
 Apparently raised by 
 Trade Unions . . 168 
 
 Competition wages . .176 
 
 Socialistic wages 147, 177-8 
 
 Walford's Insurance Cyclopae- 
 dia 46 
 
 Walker, E. A 4 
 
 Wallas, Graham . . . 119 
 
 Walpole, Sir Robert . . 72 
 
 Warren, Sir Charles . . 174 
 
 Wars for foreign markets 
 
 75, 181, 182 
 
 Warwick compared with Bir- 
 mingham .... 123 
 Watt, James . . . .33 
 
 Watts, Isaac, on the cotton 
 manufacture . . .66 
 
 Waterloo Bridge, Socializa- 
 tion of 133 
 
 Waterworks, Socialization of 
 
 46, 139 
 
 Wealth: Divorced from Ex- 
 change Value . .19 
 
 Wealth : Distinguished from 
 
 ‘‘Illth’\ ... 19 
 
 “ Wealth of Nations . 32 
 Weaver, Extirpation' of the 
 hand-loom . . . 60, 72 
 
 Webb, Sidney . . 26, 27, 99, 184 
 
 Westminster, Duke of . . 173 
 
 Whig Philosophy . . . 164 
 
 Economics . . . 164 
 
 Disappearance of the . 188 
 
 The Whig of fifty years 
 ago . . . 188-9 
 
 White Slavery . . 36, 40 
 
 White Terror, The . . 34 
 
 Whitman, Walt . . .92 
 
 Wicksteed, P. H. . . . 162 
 
 William the Silent, Assassina- 
 tion of 76 
 
 Women: Effect of Property 
 
 System on . . 108-10 
 
 Outlawry of . . . 176 
 
 Economic independence 
 
 of 182 
 
 Worker and Drone . . 3 
 
 Working class: Militant or- 
 ganization of . • 183 
 
 The State and the . . 190 
 
 Political superstitions of 
 the .... 192 
 
 ZEITGEIST, Effect of the . 44