Chapter XII

The Lessons of Thirty Years

Breaking the spell of Marxism--A French verdict--Origin of

Revisionism in Germany--The British School of Socialism--Mr. Ernest

Barker's summary--Mill _versus_ Marx--The Fabian Method--Making

Socialists or making Socialism--The life of propagandist

societies--The prospects of Socialist Unity--The future of Fabian

ideas--The test of Fabian success.

The Fabian Society was founded for the purpose of reconstructing Society

in accordance with the highest moral possibilities. This is still the

most accurate and compendious description of its object and the nature

of its work. But the stage of idealism at which more than a very modest

instalment of this cosmic process seemed possible within the lifetime of

a single institution had passed before the chief Essayists became

members, and indeed I cannot recollect that the founders themselves ever

imagined that it lay within their own power to reconstruct Society; none

of them was really so sanguine or so self-confident as to anticipate so

great a result from their efforts, and it will be remembered that the

original phrase was altered by the insertion of the words "to help on"

when the constitution was actually formulated. Society has not yet been

reconstructed, but the Fabians have done something towards its

reconstruction, and my history will be incomplete without an attempt to

indicate what the Society has already accomplished and what may be the

future of its work.

Its first achievement, as already mentioned, was to break the spell of

Marxism in England. Public opinion altogether failed to recognise the

greatness of Marx during his lifetime, but every year that passes adds

strength to the conviction that the broad principles he promulgated will

guide the evolution of society during the present century. Marx

demonstrated the moral bankruptcy of commercialism and formulated the

demand for the communal ownership and organisation of industry; and it

is hardly possible to exaggerate the value of this service to humanity.

But no man is great enough to be made into a god; no man, however wise,

can see far into the future. Neither Marx himself nor his immediate

followers recognised the real basis of his future fame; they thought he

was a brilliant and original economist, and a profound student of

history. His Theory of Value, his Economic Interpretation of History,

seemed to them the incontestible premises which necessarily led to his

political conclusions. This misapprehension would not have much mattered

had they allowed themselves freedom of thought. Socialism, as first

preached to the English people by the Social Democrats, was as narrow,

as bigoted, as exclusive as the strictest of Scotch religious sects.

"Das Kapital," Vol. I, was its bible; and the thoughts and schemes of

English Socialists were to be approved or condemned according as they

could or could not be justified by a quoted text.

The Fabian Society freed English Socialism from this intellectual

bondage, and freed it sooner and more completely than "Revisionists"

have succeeded in doing anywhere else.

Accepting the great principle that the reconstruction of society to be

worked for is the ownership and control of industry by the community,

the Fabians refused to regard as articles of faith either the economic

and historic analyses which Marx made use of or the political evolution

which he predicted.

Socialism in England remained the fantastic creed of a group of fanatics

until "Fabian Essays" and the Lancashire Campaign taught the working

classes of England, or at any rate their leaders, that Socialism was a

living principle which could be applied to existing social and political

conditions without a cataclysm either insurrectionary or even political.

Revolutionary phraseology, the language of violence, survived, and still

survives, just as in ordinary politics we use the metaphors of warfare

and pretend that the peaceful polling booth is a battlefield and that

our political opponents are hostile armies. But we only wave the red

flag in our songs, and we recognise nowadays that the real battles of

Socialism are fought in committee rooms at Westminster and in the

council chambers of Town Halls.

It was perhaps fortunate that none of the Fabian leaders came within the

influence of the extraordinary personality of Karl Marx. Had he lived a

few years longer he might have dominated them as he dominated his German

followers, and one or two of his English adherents. Then years would

have been wasted in the struggle to escape. It was fortunate also that

the Fabian Society has never possessed one single outstanding leader,

and has always refrained from electing a president or permanent

chairman. There never has been a Fabian orthodoxy, because no one was in

a position to assert what the true faith was.

Freedom of thought was without doubt obtained for English Socialists by

the Fabians. How far the world-wide revolt against Marxian orthodoxy had

its origin in England is another and more difficult question. In his

study of the Fabian Society[43] M. Édouard Pfeiffer states in the

preface that the Society makes this claim, quotes Bernard Shaw as saying

to him, "The world has been thoroughly Fabianised in the last

twenty-five years," and adds that he is going to examine the accuracy of

it. Later he says:--

"Les premiers de tous les Socialistes, les Fabiens out inauguré le

mouvement de critique antimarxiste: à une époque oû les dogmes du maître

étaient considérés comme intangibles, les Fabiens out prétendu que l'on

pouvait se dire socialiste sans jamais avoir lu le Capital ou en en

désapprouvant la teneur; par opposition à Marx ils out ressuscité

l'esprit de Stuart Mill et sur tous les points ils se sont attaqués à

Marx, guerre des classes et materialisme historique, catastrophisme et

avant tout la question de la valeur-travail."[44]

This is a French view. Germany is naturally the stronghold of Marxism,

and the country where it has proved, up to a point, an unqualified

success. Although the Social Democratic Party was founded as an alliance

between the followers of Marx and of Lassalle, on terms to which Marx

himself violently objected, none the less the leadership of the party

fell to those who accepted the teaching of Marx, and on that basis by

far the greatest Socialist Party of the world has been built up.

Nowhere else did the ideas of Marx hold such unquestioned supremacy:

nowhere else had they such a body of loyal adherents, such a host of

teachers and interpreters. Only on the question of agricultural land in

the freer political atmosphere of South Germany was there even a breath

of dissent. The revolt came from England in the person of Edward

Bernstein, who, exiled by Bismarck, took refuge in London, and was for

years intimately acquainted with the Fabian Society and its leaders.

Soon after his return to Germany he published in 1899 a volume

criticising Marxism,[45] and thence grew up the Revisionist movement for

free thought in Socialism which has attracted all the younger men, and

before the war had virtually, if not actually, obtained control over the

Social Democratic Party.

In England, and in Germany through Bernstein, I think the Fabian Society

may claim to have led the revolt. Elsewhere the revolt has come rather

in deeds than in words. In France, in Italy, and in Belgium and in other

European countries, a Socialist Party has grown up which amid greater

political opportunities has had to face the actual problems of modern

politics. These could not be solved by quotations from a German

philosopher, and liberty has been gained by force of circumstances.

Nevertheless in many countries, such as Russia and the United States,

even now, or at any rate until very recent years, the freedom of action

of Socialist parties has been impeded by excessive respect for the

opinions of the Founder, and Socialist thought has been sterilised,

because it was assumed that Marx had completed the philosophy of

Socialism, and the business of Socialists was not to think for

themselves, but merely to work for the realisation of his ideas.

* * * * *

But mere freedom was not enough. Something must be put in the place of

Marx. His English followers did not notice that he had indicated no

method, and devised no political machinery for the transition; or if

they noticed it they passed over the omission as a negligible detail. If

German Socialism would not suit, English Socialism had to be formulated

to take its place. This has been the life-work of the Fabian Society,

the working out of the application of the broad principles of Socialism

to the industrial and political environment of England. I say England

advisedly, because the industrial and political conditions of Scotland

are in some degree different, and the application of the principles of

Socialism to Ireland has not yet been seriously attempted. But for

England "Fabian Essays" and the Fabian Tracts are by general consent the

best expositions of the meaning and working of Socialism in the English

language.

Marxian Socialism regarded itself as a thing apart. Marx had discovered

a panacea for the ills of society: the old was to be cleared away and

all things were to become new. In Marx's own thought evolution and

revolution were tangled and alternated. The evolutionary side was

essential to it; the idea of revolutionary catastrophe is almost an

excrescence. But to the Marxians (of whom Marx once observed that he was

not one) this excrescence became the whole thing. People were divided

into those who advocated the revolution and those who did not. The

business of propaganda was to increase the number of adherents of the

new at the expense of the supporters of the old.

The Fabians regarded Socialism as a principle already in part embodied

in the constitution of society, gradually extending its influence

because it harmonised with the needs and desires of men in countries

where the large industry prevails.

Fabian Socialism is in fact an interpretation of the spirit of the

times. I have pointed out already that the municipalisation of

monopolies, a typically Fabian process, had its origin decades before

the Society was founded, and all that the Fabian Society did was to

explain its social implications and advocate its wider extension. The

same is true of the whole Fabian political policy. Socialism in English

politics grew up because of the necessity for State intervention in the

complex industrial and social organisation of a Great State. Almost

before the evil results of Laissez Faire had culminated Robert Owen was

pointing the way to factory legislation, popular education, and the

communal care of children. The Ten Hours Act of 1847 was described by

Marx himself as "the victory of a principle," that is, of "the political

economy of the working class."[46] That victory was frequently repeated

in the next thirty years, and collective protection of Labour in the

form of Factory Acts, Sanitary Acts, Truck Acts, Employers' Liability

Acts, and Trade Board Acts became a recognised part of the policy of

both political parties.

Fabian teaching has had more direct influence in promoting the

administrative protection of Labour. The Fair Wages policy, now

everywhere prevalent in State and Municipal employment, was, as has been

already described, if not actually invented, at any rate largely

popularised by the Society. It was a working-class demand, and it has

been everywhere put forward by organised labour, but its success would

have been slower had the manual workers been left to fight their own

battle.

I have said that the work of the Society was the interpretation of an

existing movement, the explanation and justification of tendencies which

originated in Society at large, and not in societies, Fabian or other.

That work is only less valuable than the formulation of new ideas. None

of the Fabians would claim to rank beside the great promulgators of new

ideas, such as Owen and Marx. But the interpretation of tendencies is

necessary if progress is to be sustained and if it is to be unbroken by

casual reaction. In an old country like ours, with vast forces of

inertia built up by ages of precedents, by a class system which forms a

part of the life of the nation, by a distribution of wealth which even

yet scarcely yields to the pressure of graduated taxation, legislation

is always in arrear of the needs of the times; the social structure is

always old-fashioned and out of date, and reform always tends to be

late, and even too late, unless there are agitators with the ability to

attract public attention calling on the men in power to take action.

* * * * *

But this victory of a principle is not a complete victory of the

principles of Socialism. It is a limitation of the power of the

capitalist to use his capital as he pleases, and Socialism is much more

than a series of social safeguards to the private ownership of capital.

Municipal ownership is a further step, but even this will not carry us

far because the capital suitable for municipal management on existing

lines is but a small fraction of the whole, and because municipal

control does not directly affect the amount of capital in the hands of

the capitalists who are always expropriated with ample compensation.

We have made some progress along another line. Supertax, death duties,

and taxes on unearned increment do a little to diminish the wealth of

the few: old age pensions, national insurance, and workmen's

compensation do something towards mitigating the poverty of the poor.

But it must be confessed that we have made but little progress along the

main road of Socialism. Private ownership of capital and land flourishes

almost as vigorously as it did thirty years ago. Its grosser cruelties

have been checked, but the thing itself has barely been touched. Time

alone will show whether progress is to be along existing lines, whether

the power of the owners of capital over the wealth it helps to create

and over the lives of the workers whom it enslaves will gradually fade

away, as the power of our kings over the Government of our country has

faded, the form remaining when the substance has vanished, or whether

the community will at last consciously accept the teaching of Socialism,

setting itself definitely to put an end to large-scale private

capitalism, and undertaking itself the direct control of industry. The

intellectual outlook is bright; the principles of Socialism are already

accepted by a sensible proportion of the men and women in all classes

who take the trouble to think, and if we must admit that but little has

yet been done, we may well believe that in the fullness of time our

ideas will prevail. The present war is giving the old world a great

shake, and an era of precipitated reconstruction may ensue if the

opportunity be wisely handled.

* * * * *

The influence of the Fabian Society on political thought is already the

theme of doctoral theses by graduates, especially in American

universities, but it has not yet found much place in weightier

compilation. Indeed so far as I know the only serious attempts in this

country to describe its character and estimate its proportions is to be

found in an admirable little book by Mr. Ernest Barker of New College,

Oxford, entitled "Political Thought in England from Herbert Spencer to

the Present Day."[47] The author, dealing with the early Fabians, points

out that "Mill rather than Marx was their starting point," but he infers

from this that "they start along the line suggested by Mill with an

attack on rent as the 'unearned increment' of land," a curious

inaccuracy since our earliest contribution to the theory of Socialism,

Tract No. 7, "Capital and Land," was expressly directed to emphasising

the comparative unimportance of Land Nationalisation, and nothing in the

later work of the Society has been inconsistent with this attitude. Then

Mr. Barker goes on: "Fabianism began after 1884 to supply a new

philosophy in place of Benthamite Individualism. Of the new gospel of

collectivism a German writer[48] has said Webb was the Bentham and Shaw

the Mill.[49] Without assigning rôles we may fairly say there is some

resemblance between the influence of Benthamism on legislation after

1830 and the influence of Fabianism on legislation since, at any rate,

1906.[50] In either case we have a small circle of thinkers and

investigators in quiet touch with politicians: in either case we have a

'permeation' of general opinion by the ideas of these thinkers and

investigators.... It is probable that the historian of the future will

emphasise Fabianism in much the same way as the historian of to-day

emphasises Benthamism."[51]

Mr. Barker next explains that "Fabianism has its own political creed, if

it is a political creed consequential upon an economic doctrine. That

economic doctrine advocates the socialisation of rent. But the rents

which the Fabians would socialise are not only rents from land. Rent in

the sense of unearned increments may be drawn, and is drawn, from other

sources. The successful entrepreneur for instance draws a rent of

ability from his superior equipment and education. The socialisation of

every kind of rent will necessarily arm the State with great funds which

it must use.... Shaw can define the two interconnected aims of Fabianism

as 'the gradual extension of the franchise and the transfer of rent and

interest to the State.'"

As Mr. Barker may not be alone in a slight misinterpretation of Fabian

doctrine it may be well to take this opportunity of refuting the error.

He says that Fabianism advocates the socialisation of rent, and in

confirmation quotes Shaw's words "rent _and interest_"! That makes all

the difference. If the term rent is widened to include all differential

unearned incomes, from land, from ability, from opportunity (i.e.

special profits), interest includes all non-differential unearned

incomes, and thus the State is to be endowed, not with rents alone, but

with all unearned incomes.[52] It is true that the Fabians, throwing

over Marx's inaccurate term "surplus value," base their Socialism on the

Law of Rent, because, as they allege, this law negatives both equality

of income and earnings in proportion to labour, so long as private

ownership of land prevails. It is also true that they have directed

special attention to the unearned incomes of the "idle" landlord and

shareholder, because these are the typical feature of the modern system

of distribution, which indeed has come to the front since the time of

Marx, and because they furnish the answer to those who contend that

wealth is at present distributed approximately in accordance with

personal capacity or merit, and tacitly assume that "the rich" are all

of them great captains of industry who by enterprise and ability have

actually created their vast fortunes.[53] Indeed we might say that we do

not mind conceding to our opponents all the wealth "created" by superior

brains, if they will let us deal with the unearned incomes which are

received independent of the possession of any brains, or any services at

all!

But although we regard the case of the capitalist employer as relatively

negligible, and although we prefer to concentrate our attack on the

least defensible side of the capitalist system--and already the State

recognises that unearned incomes should pay a larger proportion in

income-tax, that property which passes at death, necessarily to those

who have not earned it, should contribute a large quota to the public

purse, and that unearned increment on land should in part belong to the

public--that does not mean that we have any tenderness for the

entrepreneur. Him we propose to deal with by the favourite Fabian method

of municipalisation and nationalisation. We take over his "enterprise,"

his gasworks and waterworks, his docks and trams, his railways and

mines. We secure for the State the profits of management and the future

unearned increment, and we compensate him for his capital with

interest-bearing securities. We force him in fact to become the idle

recipient of unearned income, and then we turn round and upbraid him and

tax him heavily precisely because his income is unearned! If there is

any special tenderness in this treatment, I should prefer harshness. To

me it seems to resemble the policy of the wolf towards the lamb.[54]

I will proceed with quotations from Mr. Barker, because the view of a

historian of thought is weightier than anything I could say.

"But collectivism also demands in the second place expert government. It

demands the 'aristocracy of talent' of which Carlyle wrote. The control

of a State with powers so vast will obviously need an exceptional and

exceptionally large aristocracy. Those opponents of Fabianism who desire

something more revolutionary than its political 'meliorism' and

'palliatives' accuse it of alliance with bureaucracy. They urge that it

relies on bureaucracy to administer social reforms from above; and they

conclude that, since any governing _class_ is anti-democratic, the

Fabians who believe in such a class are really anti-democratic. The

charge seems, as a matter of fact, difficult to sustain. Fabians from

the first felt and urged that the decentralisation of the State was a

necessary condition of the realisation of their aim. The municipality

and other local units were the natural bodies for administering the new

funds and discharging the new duties which the realisation of that aim

would create. 'A democratic State,' Shaw wrote, 'cannot become a Social

Democratic State unless it has in every centre of population a local

governing body as thoroughly democratic in its constitution as the

central Parliament.' The House of Commons he felt must develop 'into the

central government which will be the organ of federating the

municipalities.' Fabianism thus implied no central bureaucracy; what it

demanded was partly, indeed, a more efficient and expert central

government (and there is plenty of room for that), but primarily an

expert local civil service in close touch with and under the control of

a really democratic municipal government. It is difficult to say that

this is bureaucracy or that it is not desirable. Many men who are not

Fabians or Socialists of any kind feel strongly that the breathing of

more vigour and interest into local politics, and the creation of a

proper local civil service, are the great problems of the future.

"The policy of Fabianism has thus been somewhat as follows. An

intellectual circle has sought to permeate all classes, from the top to

the bottom, with a common opinion in favour of social control of

socially created values. Resolved to permeate all classes, it has not

preached class-consciousness; it has worked as much with and through

Liberal 'capitalists' as with and through Labour representatives.

Resolved gradually to permeate, it has not been revolutionary: it has

relied on the slow growth of opinion. Reformist rather than

revolutionary, it has explained the impossibility of the sudden

'revolution' of the working classes against capital: it has urged the

necessity of a gradual amelioration of social conditions by a gradual

assertion of social control over unearned increment.[55] Hence Fabianism

has not adopted the somewhat cold attitude of the pure Socialist Party

to Trade Unions, but has rather found in their gradual conquest of

better wages and better conditions for the workers the line of social

advance congenial with its own principles. Again, it has preached that

the society which is to exert control must be democratic, if the control

is to be, as it must be, self-control: it has taught that such

democratic self-control must primarily be exerted in democratic local

self-government: it has emphasised the need of reconciling democratic

control with expert guidance. While it has never advocated 'direct

action' or the avoidance of political activity, while on the contrary,

it has advocated the conquest of social reforms on the fields of

parliamentary and municipal government, it has not defended the State as

it is, but has rather urged the need for a State which is based on

democracy tempered by respect for the 'expert.' In this way Socialism of

the Fabian type has made representative democracy its creed. It has

adopted the sound position that democracy flourishes in that form of

state in which people freely produce, thanks to an equality of

educational opportunity, and freely choose, thanks to a wide and active

suffrage, their own members for their guidance, and, since they have

freely produced and chosen them, give them freely and fully the honour

of their trust. And thus Socialists like Mr. Sidney Webb and Mr. Ramsay

Macdonald have not coquetted with primary democracy, which has always

had a magnetic attraction for Socialists. The doctrine that the people

itself governs directly through obedient agents--the doctrine of mandate

and plebiscite, of referendum and initiative--is not the doctrine of

the best English Socialism." Mr. Barker next explains that behind these

ideas lies "an organic theory of society," that society is regarded as

"an organic unity with a real 'general will' of its own," and after

stating that "the development of Liberalism, during the last few years,

shows considerable traces of Fabian influence," concludes the subject

with the words "Collectivism of the Fabian order was the dominant form

of Socialism in England till within the last three of four years." Of

the movement of Guild Socialists and others which he deems to have

replaced it I shall speak later.

I have ventured to quote from Mr. Barker at some length because his

summary of Fabian doctrine seems to me (with the exception noted) to be

both correct and excellent, and it is safer to borrow from a writer

quite unconnected with the Society an estimate of its place in the

history of English political thought, rather than to offer my own

necessarily prejudiced opinion of its achievements.

* * * * *

But I must revert again to the Fabian "method." "Make Socialists," said

Mr. Wells in "Faults of the Fabian," "and you will achieve Socialism.

There is no other way"; and Mr. Wells in his enthusiasm anticipated a

society of ten thousand Fabians as the result of a year's propaganda.

Will Socialism come through the making of Socialists?

If so, Socialism has made but little progress in England, since the

number who profess and call themselves Socialist is still insignificant.

The foregoing pages have shown in the words of a student of political

thought how Socialism has been made in England in quite another way.

We did not at the time repudiate Mr. Wells' dictum: indeed we adopted

his policy, and attempted the making of Socialism on a large scale. No

doubt there is a certain ambiguity in the word "Socialists." It may mean

members of Socialist societies, or at any rate "unattached Socialists,"

all those in fact who use the name to describe their political opinions.

Or it may merely be another way of stating that the existing form of

society can only be altered by the wills of living people, and change

will only be in the direction of Socialism, when the wills which are

effective for the purpose choose that direction in preference to

another.

Mr. Wells himself described as a "fantastic idea" the notion that "the

world may be manoeuvred into Socialism without knowing it": that

"society is to keep like it is ... and yet Socialism will be soaking

through it all, changing without a sign,"[56] and he at any rate meant

by his phrase, "make members of Socialist societies."

The older and better Fabian doctrine is set out in the opening

paragraphs of Tract 70, the "Report on Fabian Policy" (1896).

"THE MISSION OF THE FABIANS

The object of the Fabian Society is to persuade the English people to

make their political constitution thoroughly democratic and so to

socialise their industries as to make the livelihood of the people

entirely independent of private capitalism.

The Fabian Society endeavours to pursue its Socialist and Democratic

objects with complete singleness of aim. For example:--

It has no distinctive opinions on the Marriage Question, Religion, Art,

abstract Economics, historic Evolution, Currency, or any other subject

than its own special business of practical Democracy and Socialism.

It brings all the pressure and persuasion in its power to bear on

existing forces, caring nothing by what name any party calls itself or

what principles, Socialist or other, it professes, but having regard

solely to the tendency of its actions, supporting those which make for

Socialism and Democracy and opposing those which are reactionary.

It does not propose that the practical steps towards Social Democracy

should be carried out by itself or by any other specially organised

society or party.

It does not ask the English people to join the Fabian Society."

In old days acting on this view of our "mission" we deliberately allowed

the Society to remain small. Latterly we tried to expand, and in the

main our attempt was an expensive failure. The other Socialist bodies

have always used their propaganda primarily for recruiting; and they

have sought to enlist the rank and file of the British people. In this

they too have substantially failed, and the forty or fifty thousand

members of the I.L.P. and B.S.P. are roughly no larger a proportion of

the working class than the three thousand Fabians are of the middle

class. If the advance of Socialism in England is to be measured by the

"making of Socialists," if we are to count membership, to enumerate

meetings, to sum up subscriptions, the outlook is gloomy. Thirty-four

years ago a group of strong men led by Mr. H.M. Hyndman founded the

Democratic Federation, which survives as the British Socialist Party,

with Mr. Hyndman still to the fore; the rest have more or less dropped

out, and no one has arisen to take their places. Twenty-two years ago

Keir Hardie founded the Independent Labour Party: he has died since the

first draft of this passage was written, and no one is left who commands

such universal affection and respect amongst the members of the Society

he created. Of the seven Essayists who virtually founded the Fabian

Society only one is still fully in harness, and his working life must

necessarily be nearing its term. It may be doubted whether a society for

the propagation of ideas has the power to long outlive the inspiration

of its founder, unless indeed he is a man of such outstanding

personality that his followers treat him as a god. The religions of the

world have been maintained by worshippers, and even in our own day the

followers of Marx have held together partly because they regard his

teachings with the uncritical reverence usually accorded to the prophets

of new faiths. But Marxism has survived in Germany chiefly because it

has created and inspired a political party, and political parties are of

a different order from propagandist societies. Socialism in England has

not yet created a political party; for the Labour Party, though entirely

Socialist in policy, is not so in name or in creed, and in this matter

the form counts rather than the fact.

Europe, as I write in the early days of 1916, is in the melting-pot, and

it would be foolish to prophesy either the fate of the nations now at

war or, in particular, the future of political parties in Great Britain,

and especially of the Labour Party.

But so far as concerns the Fabian Society and the two other Socialist

Societies, this much may be said: three factors in the past have kept

them apart: differences of temperament; differences of policy;

differences of leadership. In fact perhaps the last was the strongest.

I do not mean that the founders of the three societies entertained

mutual antipathies or personal jealousies to the detriment of the

movement. I do mean that each group preferred to go its own way, and saw

no sufficient advantage in a common path to compensate for the

difficulties of selecting it.

In a former chapter I have explained how a movement for a form of

Socialist Unity had at last almost achieved success, when a new factor,

the European War, interposed. After the war these negotiations will

doubtless be resumed, and the three Socialist Societies will find

themselves more closely allied than ever before. The differences of

policy which have divided them will then be a matter of past history.

The differences of temperament matter less and less as the general

policy becomes fixed, and in a few years the old leaders from whose

disputes the general policy emerged must all have left the stage. The

younger men inherit an established platform and know nothing of the

old-time quarrels and distrusts. They will come together more easily. If

the organised propaganda of Socialism continues--and that perhaps is not

a matter of certainty--it seems to me improbable that it will be carried

on for long by three separate societies. In some way or other, in

England as in so many other countries, a United Socialist organisation

will be constituted.

* * * * *

But what of the future of Fabian ideas? In a passage already quoted Mr.

Barker indicates that the dominance of "Collectivism of the Fabian

order" ceased three or four years ago, and he goes on to indicate that

it has been replaced by an anti-state propaganda, taking various forms,

Syndicalism, Guild Socialism, and the Distributivism of Mr. Belloc. It

is true that Fabianism of the old type is not the last event in the

history of political thought, but it is still, I venture to think, the

dominant principle in political progress. Guild Socialism, whatever its

worth, is a later stage. If our railways are to be managed by the

Railwaymen's Union, they must first be acquired for the community by

Collectivism.

This is not the place to discuss the possibilities of Guild Socialism.

After all it is but a form of Socialism, and a first principle of

Fabianism has always been free thought. The leading Guild Socialists

resigned from the Society: they were not expelled: they attempted to

coerce the rest, but no attempt was made to coerce them. Guild Socialism

as a scheme for placing production under the management of the producers

seems to me to be on the wrong lines. The consumer as a citizen must

necessarily decide what is to be produced for his needs. But I do not

belong to the generation which will have to settle the matter. The

elderly are incompetent judges of new ideas. Fabian doctrine is not

stereotyped: the Society consists in the main of young people. The

Essayists and their contemporaries have said their say: it remains for

the younger people to accept what they choose, and to add whatever is

necessary. Those who repudiated the infallibility of Marx will be the

last to claim infallibility for themselves. I can only express the hope

that as long as the Fabian Society lasts it will be ever open to new

ideas, ever conscious that nothing is final, ever aware that the world

is enormously complex, and that no single formula will summarise or

circumscribe its infinite variety.[57]

* * * * *

The work of the Fabian Society has been not to make Socialists, but to

make Socialism. I think it may be said that the dominant opinion in the

Society--at any rate it is my opinion--is that great social changes can

only come by consent. The Capitalist system cannot be overthrown by a

revolution or by a parliamentary majority. Wage slavery will disappear,

as serfdom disappeared, not indeed imperceptibly, for the world is now

self-conscious, not even so gradually, for the pace of progress is

faster than it was in the Middle Ages, but by a change of heart of the

community, by a general recognition, already half realised, that

whatever makes for the more equitable distribution of wealth is good;

that whatever benefits the working class benefits the nation; that the

rich exist only on sufferance, and deserve no more than painless

extinction; that the capitalist is a servant of the public, and too

often over-paid for the services that he renders.

Again, Socialism succeeds because it is common sense. The anarchy of

individual production is already an anachronism. The control of the

community over itself extends every day. We demand order, method,

regularity, design; the accidents of sickness and misfortune, of old age

and bereavement, must be prevented if possible, and if not, mitigated.

Of this principle the public is already convinced: it is merely a

question of working out the details. But order and forethought is wanted

for industry as well as for human life. Competition is bad, and in most

respects private monopoly is worse. No one now seriously defends the

system of rival traders with their crowds of commercial travellers: of

rival tradesmen with their innumerable deliveries in each street; and

yet no one advocates the capitalist alternative, the great trust, often

concealed and insidious, which monopolises oil or tobacco or diamonds,

and makes huge profits for a fortunate; few out of the helplessness of

the unorganised consumers.

But neither the idle rich class nor the anarchy of competition is so

outstanding an evil as the poverty of the poor. We aim at making the

rich poorer chiefly in order to make the poor richer. Our first tract,

"Why are the Many Poor?" struck the keynote. In a century of abounding

wealth England still has in its midst a hideous mass of poverty which is

too appalling to think of. That poverty, we say, is preventible. That

poverty was the background of our thoughts when the Society was founded.

Perhaps we have done a little to mitigate it: we believe we have done

something to make clear the way by which it may ultimately be abolished.

We do not constantly talk of it. We write of the advantages of Municipal

Electricity, of the powers of Parish Councils, of the objections to the

Referendum; but all the while it is that great evil which chiefly moves

us, and by our success or our failure in helping on the reconstruction

of society for the purpose of abolishing poverty, the work of the Fabian

Society must ultimately be judged.

FOOTNOTES:

[43] "La Société Fabienne et le Mouvement socialiste anglais

contemporain." By Édouard Pfeiffer, Paris, F. Giard and E. Brière, 1911;

an excellent volume but full of errors.

[44] "The Fabians were the first amongst Socialists to start the

movement of anti-Marxist criticism. At a period when the dogmas of the

Master were regarded as sacred, the Fabians ventured to assert that it

was possible to call oneself a Socialist without ever having read 'Das

Kapital,' or without accepting its doctrine. In opposition to Marx, they

have revived the spirit of J.S. Mill, and they have attacked Marx all

along the line--the class war, the economic interpretation of history,

the catastrophic method, and above all the theory of value."

[45] Published in English by the Independent Labour Party in 1909 as

"Evolutionary Socialism."

[46] Address to the International, 1862, quoted from Spargo's "Karl

Marx," p. 266.

[47] Home University Library, Williams and Norgate, 1915, 1s.

[48] M. Beer, "Geschichte des Socialismus in England" (Stuttgart, 1913),

p. 462. Mr. Beer devotes seven pages to the Society, which he describes

with accuracy, and interprets much as Mr. Barker has done. The book was

written at the request of the German Social Democratic Party.

[49] I quote, but do not endorse the opinion that G.B.S. markedly

resembles James Mill (Mr. Barker confuses the two Mills). Beer adds

"Webb was the thinker, Shaw the fighter." This antithesis is scarcely

happy. The collaboration of the two is much too complicated to be summed

up in a phrase.

[50] But see chapter VIII for its influence before 1906; and see

Appendix 1. A. for a much fuller discussion of this subject.

[51] The same idea is expressed by a Canadian Professor:--

"It is necessary to go back to the Philosophical Radicals to find a

small group of men who have exercised such a profound influence over

English political thought as the little band of social investigators who

organised the Fabian Society."

"Socialism: a critical analysis." By O.D. Skelton, Ph.D., Professor of

Economic Science, Kingston, Canada. (Constable, 1911.) p. 288.

[52] Mr. Barker erroneously uses the word "increment" for "income" in

several places. Unearned increment is quite another thing.

[53] See "Socialism and Superior Brains: a reply to Mr. Mallock," by

G.B. Shaw. Fabian Tract 146.

[54] Mr. Barker emphasises the "discrimination advocated by the Fabians"

in favour of profits in a later passage (p. 224) not here quoted.

[55] This should read "incomes."

[56] "Faults of the Fabian," p. 9.

[57] See Appendix I. B.

Appendix I

Memoranda by Bernard Shaw

Bernard Shaw has been good enough to write the following memoranda on

Chapter XII. For various reasons I prefer to leave that chapter as it

stands; but the memoranda have an interest of their own and I therefore

print them here.

A

ON THE HISTORY OF FABIAN ECONOMICS

Mr. Barker's guesses greatly underrate the number of tributaries which

enlarged the trickle of Socialist thought into a mighty river. They also

shew how quickly waves of thought are forgotten. Far from being the

economic apostle of Socialism, Mill, in the days when the Fabian Society

took the field, was regarded as the standard authority for solving the

social problem by a combination of peasant proprietorship with

neo-Malthusianism. The Dialectical Society, which was a centre of the

most advanced thought in London until the Fabian Society supplanted it,

was founded to advocate the principles of Mill's Essay on Liberty, which

was much more the Bible of English Individualism than Das Kapital ever

was of English Socialism. As late as 1888 Henry Sidgwick, a follower of

Mill, rose indignantly at the meeting of the British Association in

Bath, to which I had just read the paper on The Transition to

Social-Democracy, which was subsequently published; as one of the

Fabian Essays, and declared that I had advocated nationalisation of

land; that nationalisation of land was a crime; and that he would not

take part in a discussion of a criminal proposal. With that he left the

platform, all the more impressively as his apparently mild and judicial

temperament made the incident so unexpected that his friends who had not

actually witnessed it were with difficulty persuaded that it had really

happened. It illustrates the entire failure of Mill up to that date to

undo the individualistic teaching of the earlier volumes of his

Political Economy by the Socialist conclusions to which his work on the

treatise led him at the end. Sidney Webb astonished and confounded our

Individualist opponents by citing Mill against them; and it is probably

due to Webb more than to any other disciple that it is now generally

known that Mill died a Socialist. Webb read Mill and mastered Mill as he

seemed to have read and mastered everybody else; but the only other

prominent Socialist who can be claimed by Mill as a convert was, rather

unexpectedly, William Morris, who said that when he read the passage in

which Mill, after admitting that the worst evils of Communism are,

compared to the evils of our Commercialism, as dust in the balance,

nevertheless condemned Communism, he immediately became a Communist, as

Mill had clearly given his verdict against the evidence. Except in these

instances we heard nothing of Mill in the Fabian Society. Cairnes's

denunciation of the idle consumers of rent and interest was frequently

quoted; and Marshall's Economics of Industry was put into our book boxes

as a textbook; but the taste for abstract economics was no more general

in the Fabian Society than elsewhere. I had in my boyhood read some of

Mill's detached essays, including those on constitutional government

and on the Irish land question, as well as the inevitable one on

Liberty; but none of these pointed to Socialism; and my attention was

first drawn to political economy as the science of social salvation by

Henry George's eloquence, and by his Progress and Poverty, which had an

enormous circulation in the early eighties, and beyond all question had

more to do with the Socialist revival of that period in England than any

other book. Before the Fabian Society existed I pressed George's

propaganda of Land Nationalisation on a meeting of the Democratic

Federation, but was told to read Karl Marx. I was so complete a novice

in economics at that time that when I wrote a letter to Justice pointing

out a flaw in Marx's reasoning, I regarded my letter merely as a joke,

and fully expected that some more expert Socialist economist would

refute me easily. Even when the refutation did not arrive I remained so

impressed with the literary power and overwhelming documentation of

Marx's indictment of nineteenth-century Commercialism and the capitalist

system, that I defended him against all comers in and out of season

until Philip Wicksteed, the well-known Dante commentator, then a popular

Unitarian minister, brought me to a standstill by a criticism of Marx

which I did not understand. This was the first appearance in Socialist

controversy of the value theory of Jevons, published in 1871. Professor

Edgeworth and Mr. Wicksteed, to whom Jevons appealed as a mathematician,

were at that time trying to convince the academic world of the

importance of Jevons's theory; but I, not being a mathematician, was not

easily accessible to their methods of demonstration. I consented to

reply to Mr. Wicksteed on the express condition that the editor of

To-day, in which my reply appeared, should find space for a rejoinder

by Mr. Wicksteed. My reply, which was not bad for a fake, and contained

the germ of the economic argument for equality of income which I put

forward twenty-five years later, elicited only a brief rejoinder; but

the upshot was that I put myself into Mr. Wicksteed's hands and became a

convinced Jevonian, fascinated by the subtlety of Jevons's theory and

the exquisiteness with which it adapted itself to all the cases which

had driven previous economists, including Marx, to take refuge in clumsy

distinctions between use value, exchange value, labour value, supply and

demand value, and the rest of the muddlements of that time.

Accordingly, the abstract economics of the Fabian Essays are, as regards

value, the economics of Jevons. As regards rent they are the economics

of Ricardo, which I, having thrown myself into the study of abstract

economics, had learnt from Ricardo's own works and from De Quincey's

Logic of Political Economy. I maintained, as I still do, that the older

economists, writing before Socialism had arisen as a possible

alternative to Commercialism and a menace to its vested interests, were

far more candid in their statements and thorough in their reasoning than

their successors, and was fond of citing the references in De Quincey

and Austin's Lectures on Jurisprudence to the country gentleman system

and the evils of capitalism, as instances of frankness upon which no

modern professor dare venture.

The economical and moral identity of capital and interest with land and

rent was popularly demonstrated by Olivier in Tract 7 on Capital and

Land, and put into strict academic form by Sidney Webb. The point was of

importance at a time when the distinction was still so strongly

maintained that the Fabian Society was compelled to exclude Land

Nationalizers, both before and after their development into Single

Taxers, because they held that though land and rent should be

socialized, capital and interest must remain private property.

This really exhausts the history of the Fabian Society as far as

abstract economic theory is concerned. Activity in that department was

confined to Webb and myself. Later on, Pease's interest in banking and

currency led him to contribute some criticism of the schemes of the

currency cranks who infest all advanced movements, flourishing the paper

money of the Guernsey Market, and to give the Society some positive

guidance as to the rapid integration of modern banking. But this was an

essay in applied economics. It may be impossible to draw a line between

the old abstract deductive economics and the modern historical concrete

economics; but the fact remains that though the water may be the same,

the tide has turned. A comparison of my exposition of the law of rent in

my first Fabian Essay and in my Impossibilities of Anarchism with the

Webbs' great Histories of Trade Unionism and of Industrial Democracy

will illustrate the difference between the two schools.

The departure was made by Graham Wallas, who, abandoning the deductive

construction of intellectual theorems, made an exhaustive study of the

Chartist movement. It is greatly to be regretted that these lectures

were not effectively published. Their delivery wrought a tremendous

disillusion as to the novelty of our ideas and methods of propaganda;

much new gospel suddenly appeared to us as stale failure; and we

recognized that there had been weak men before Agamemnon, even as far

back as in Cromwell's army. The necessity for mastering the history of

our own movement and falling into our ordered place in it became

apparent; and it was in this new frame of mind that the monumental

series of works by the Webbs came into existence. Wallas's Life of

Francis Place shows his power of reconstructing a popular agitation with

a realism which leaves the conventional imaginary version of it

punctured and flaccid; and it was by doing the same for the Chartist

movement that he left his mark on us.

Of the other Essayists, Olivier had wrestled with the huge Positive

Philosophy of Comte, who thus comes in as a Fabian influence. William

Clarke was a disciple of Mazzini, and found Emerson, Thoreau, and the

Brook Farm enthusiasts congenial to him. Bland, who at last became a

professed Catholic, was something of a Coleridgian transcendentalist,

though he treated a copy of Bakunin's God and the State to a handsome

binding. Mrs. Besant's spiritual history has been written by herself.

Wallas brought to bear a wide scholastic culture of the classic type, in

which modern writers, though interesting, were not fundamental. The

general effect, it will be perceived, is very much wider and more

various than that suggested by Mr. Ernest Barker's remark that Mill was

our starting point.

It is a curious fact that of the three great propagandist amateurs of

political economy, Henry George, Marx, and Ruskin, Ruskin alone seems to

have had no effect on the Fabians. Here and there in the Socialist

movement workmen turned up who had read Fors Clavigera or Unto This

Last; and some of the more well-to-do no doubt had read the first

chapter of Munera Pulveris. But Ruskin's name was hardly mentioned in

the Fabian Society. My explanation is that, barring Olivier, the Fabians

were inveterate Philistines. My efforts to induce them to publish

Richard Wagner's Art and Revolution, and, later on, Oscar Wilde's The

Soul of Man under Socialism, or even to do justice to Morris's News From

Nowhere, fell so flat that I doubt whether my colleagues were even

conscious of them. Our best excuse must be that as a matter of practical

experience English political societies do good work and present a

dignified appearance whilst they attend seriously to their proper

political business; but, to put it bluntly, they make themselves

ridiculous and attract undesirables when they affect art and philosophy.

The Arts and Crafts exhibitions, the Anti-Scrape (Society for the

Protection of Ancient Buildings), and the Art Workers' Guild, under

Morris and Crane, kept up a very intimate connection between Art and

Socialism; but the maintenance of Fabian friendly relations with them

was left mostly to me and Stewart Headlam. The rest kept aloof and

consoled themselves with the reflection--if they thought about it at

all--that the Utilitarians, though even more Philistine than the

Fabians, were astonishingly effective for their numbers.

It must be added that though the tradition that Socialism excludes the

established creeds was overthrown by the Fabians, and the claim of the

Christian Socialists to rank with the best of us was insisted on

faithfully by them, the Fabian leaders did not break the tradition in

their own practice. The contention of the Anti-Socialist Union that all

Socialists are atheists is no doubt ridiculous in the face of the fact

that the intellectual opposition to Socialism has been led exclusively

by avowed atheists like Charles Bradlaugh or agnostics like Herbert

Spencer, whilst Communism claims Jesus as an exponent; still, if the

question be raised as to whether any of the Fabian Essayists attended an

established place of worship regularly, the reply must be in the

negative. Indeed, they were generally preaching themselves on Sundays.

To describe them as irreligious in view of their work would be silly;

but until Hubert Bland towards the end of his life took refuge in the

Catholic Church, and Mrs. Besant devoted herself to Theosophy, no

leading Fabian found a refuge for his soul in the temples of any

established denomination. I may go further and admit that the first

problems the Fabians had to solve were so completely on the materialist

plane that the atmosphere inevitably became uncongenial to those whose

capacity was wasted and whose sympathies were starved on that plane.

Even psychical research, with which Pease and Podmore varied their

Fabian activities, tended fatally towards the exposure of alleged

psychical phenomena as physical tricks. The work that came to our hands

in our first two decades was materialistic work; and it was not until

the turn of the century brought us the Suffrage movement and the Wells

raid, that the materialistic atmosphere gave way, and the Society began

to retain recruits of a kind that it always lost in the earlier years as

it lost Mrs. Besant and (virtually) William Clarke. It is certainly

perceptibly less hard-headed than it was in its first period.

B

ON GUILD SOCIALISM

Here I venture to say, with some confidence, that Mr. Barker is

mistaken. That storm has burst on the Fabian Society and has left it

just where it was. Guild Socialism, championed by the ablest and most

industrious insurgents of the rising generation in the Society, raised

its issue with Collectivism only to discover, when the matter, after a

long agitation, was finally thrashed out at a conference at Barrow

House, that the issue was an imaginary one, and that Collectivism lost

nothing by the fullest tenable concessions to the Guild Socialists. A

very brief consideration will shew that this was inevitable.

Guild Socialism, in spite of its engaging medieval name, means nothing

more picturesque than a claim that under Socialism each industry shall

be controlled by its own operators, as the professions are to-day. This

by itself would not imply Socialism at all: it would be merely a revival

of the medieval guild, or a fresh attempt at the now exploded

self-governing workshop of the primitive co-operators. Guild Socialism,

with the emphasis on the Socialism, implies that the industries, however

completely they may be controlled by their separate staffs, must pool

their products. All the Guild Socialists admit this. The Socialist State

must therefore include an organ for receiving and distributing the

pooled products; and such an organ, representing the citizen not as

producer but as consumer, reintroduces the whole machinery of

Collectivism. Thus the alleged antithesis between Guild Socialism and

Collectivism, under cover of which the one was presented as an

alternative to the other, vanished at the first touch of the skilled

criticism the Fabians brought to bear on it; and now Mrs. Sidney Webb,

who was singled out for attack by the Guild Socialists as the arch

Collectivist, is herself conducting an investigation into the existing

control of industry by professional organizations, whilst the quondam

Guild Socialists are struggling with the difficult question of the

proper spheres of the old form of Trade Union now called the craft

union, and the new form called the industrial union, in which workers of

all crafts and occupations, from clerks and railway porters to

locomotive drivers and fitters, are organized in a single union of the

entire industry. There is work enough for many years to some of the old

Fabian kind in these directions; and this work will irresistibly reunite

the disputants instead of perpetuating a quarrel in which, like most of

the quarrels which the Society has survived, there was nothing

fundamental at issue.

There is work, too, to be done in the old abstract deductive department.

It can be seen, throughout the history of the Society, how any attempt

to discard the old economic basis of the law of rent immediately

produced a recrudescence of Anarchism in one form or another, the latest

being Syndicalism and that form of Guild Socialism which was all Guild

and no Socialism. But there is still much to be settled by the deductive

method. The fundamental question of the proportions in which the

national income, when socialized, shall be distributed, was not grappled

with until 1914, when I, lecturing on behalf of the Society, delivered

my final conclusion that equal distribution is the only solution that

will realize the ideals of Socialism, and that it is in fact the

economic goal of Socialism. This is not fully accepted as yet in the

movement, in which there is still a strong leaven of the old craving for

an easy-going system which, beginning with "the socialization of the

means of production, distribution, and exchange," will then work out

automatically without interference with the citizen's private affairs.

Another subject which has hardly yet been touched, and which also must

begin with deductive treatment, is what may be called the

democratization of democracy, and its extension from a mere negative and

very uncertain check on tyranny to a positive organizing force. No

experienced Fabian believes that society can be reconstructed (or rather

constructed; for the difficulty is that society is as yet only half

rescued from chaos) by men of the type produced by popular election

under existing circumstances, or indeed under any circumstances likely

to be achieved before the reconstruction. The fact that a hawker cannot

ply his trade without a licence whilst a man may sit in Parliament

without any relevant qualifications is a typical and significant anomaly

which will certainly not be removed by allowing everybody to be a hawker

at will. Sooner or later, unless democracy is to be discarded in a

reaction of disgust such as killed it in ancient Athens, democracy

itself will demand that only such men should be presented to its choice

as have proved themselves qualified for more serious and disinterested

work than "stoking up" election meetings to momentary and foolish

excitement. Without qualified rulers a Socialist State is impossible;

and it must not be forgotten (though the reminder is as old as Plato)

that the qualified men may be very reluctant men instead of very

ambitious ones.

Here, then, are two very large jobs already in sight to occupy future

Fabians. Whether they will call themselves Fabians and begin by joining

the Fabian Society is a question which will not be settled by the

generation to which I belong.

G.B.S.

Appendix II

The Basis of the Fabian Society

The Fabian Society consists of Socialists.

It therefore aims at the reorganisation 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 by the whole people.

The Society accordingly works for the extinction of private property in

Land and of the consequent individual 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 industrial Capital as can conveniently be managed

socially. For, owing to the 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 worker

being now dependent on that class for leave to earn a living.

If these measures be carried out, without compensation (though not

without such relief to expropriated individuals as may seem fit to the

community), Rent and Interest will be added to the reward of labour, the

idle class now living on the labour of others will necessarily

disappear, and practical equality of opportunity will be maintained by

the spontaneous action of economic forces with much less interference

with personal liberty than the present system entails.

For the attainment of these ends the Fabian Society looks to the spread

of Socialist opinions, and the social and political changes consequent

thereon, _including the establishment of equal citizenship for men and

women._[58] It seeks to achieve these ends by the general dissemination

of knowledge as to the relation between the individual and Society in

its economic, ethical, and political aspects.

FOOTNOTES:

[58] The words in italics were added in 1907. See page 177.

Appendix III

List of the names and the years of office of the ninety-six members of

the Executive Committee, 1884-1915

The full term of office is from April to March, and such an entry as

1901-2 usually means one year's office. Membership has been terminated

in many cases by resignation, in the great majority by refusal to stand

for re-election, in perhaps a dozen cases by defeat, and never by death.

Alden, Percy, M.P., 1903-7.

Allen, Clifford, 1912 to date.

Anderson, R. Wherry, 1898-1903.

Atkinson, Miss Mabel, 1909 to date.

Ball, Sidney, 1907-8.

Banner, Robert, 1892.

Barker, Granville, 1907-12.

Bentham, Dr. Ethel, 1909-14.

Bentinck, Mrs. R. Cavendish, 1911-13.

Besant, Mrs. Annie, 1886-90.

Bland, Hubert, 1884-1911. Honorary Treasurer 1884-1911.

Blatch, Mrs. Stanton, 1894-5.

Bray, Reginald A., 1911-12.

Brooke, Miss Emma, 1893-6.

Cameron, Miss Mary, 1893-4.

Campbell, Rev. R.J., 1908-9.

Charrington, Charles, 1899-1904.

Chesterton, Cecil E., 1904-7.

Clarke, William, 1888-91.

Cole, G.D.H., 1914-15.

Davies, Emil, 1911 to date.

Dearmer, Rev. Percy, 1895-8.

Dell, Robert E., 1890-3; 1898-9.

De Mattos, W.S., 1890-4.

Dodd, F. Lawson, 1900 to date. Honorary Treasurer 1911 to date.

Ensor, R.C.K., 1907-11; 1912 to date.

Ervine, St. John G., 1913 to date.

Fairfield, Dr. Letitia, 1915 to date.

Galton, F.W., 1901-7.

Garnett, Mrs. Constance, 1894-5.

Gillespie, H.J., 1914.

Green, J.F. 1899-1900.

Griffith, N.L., 1892-3.

Grover, Miss Mary, 1890-2.

Guest, L. Haden, 1907-11

Hammill, Fred, 1892-5.

Harben, Henry D., 1911 to date

Harris, Mrs. O'Brien (Miss Mary O'Brien), 1898-1901.

Headlam, Rev. Stewart D., 1890-1; 1901-11.

Hoatson, Miss Alice, 1890-2. Assistant Hon. Secretary 1885-6.

Hobson, Samuel G., 1900-9.

Holding, H. Bond, 1894-6.

Hutchins, Miss B.L., 1907-12.

Keddell, Frederick, 1884-5. Honorary Secretary 1884-5.

Lawrence F.W. Pethick, 1907-8.

Lawrence, Miss Susan (L.C.C.), 1912 to date.

Lloyd, C.M., 1912-15.

Lowerison, Harry (Bellerby), 1891-2.

Macdonald, J. Ramsay (M.P.), 1894-1900.

Macpherson, Mrs. Fenton, 1900-1.

Macrosty, Henry W., 1895-1907.

Mallet, Mrs. L.T., 1890-2.

Mann, Tom, 1896.

Martin, John W., 1894-9.

Massingham, H.W., 1891-3.

Matthews, John E. (L.C.C.), 1901-2.

Maude, Aylmer, 1907-12.

Money, (Sir) Leo Chiozza (M.P.), 1908-11.

Morley, Professor Edith, 1914 to date.

Morris, Miss May, 1896-8.

Morten, Miss Honor, 1895-8.

Muggeridge, H.T., 1903-5.

Murby, Miss M.B., 1907-13.

Oakeshott, Joseph F., 1890-1902.

Olivier (Sir), Sydney (K.C.M.G.), 1887-1899. Honorary Secretary 1886-9.

Pease, Edward R., 1885-6; 1890 to date. Honorary Secretary

1886, and 1914 to date. Secretary 1890-1913.

Phillips, Dr. Marion, 1913-14.

Phillips, W.L., 1887-8.

Podmore, Frank, 1884; 1886-8.

Priestley, Miss (Mrs. Bart Kennedy), 1896-8. Assistant Secretary, 1892-5.

Reeves, Mrs. Pember, 1907 to date.

Sanders, W. Stephen, 1904 to date. Organising Secretary

1907-13. General Secretary 1914 to date.

Sandham, Mrs., 1891-3.

Sharp, Clifford D., 1909-14.

Shaw, G. Bernard, 1885-1911.

Shaw, Mrs. Bernard (Miss Payne Townshend), 1898-1915.

Slesser, Henry H., 1910-14.

Smith, Miss Ellen, 1915 to date.

Snell, Harry, 1912 to date.

Snowden, Mrs. Philip, 1908-9.

Sparling, H. Halliday, 1892-4.

Squire, J.C., 1914 to date.

Standring, George, 1893-1908; 1909-11.

Taylor, G.R.S., 1905-8.

Townshend, Mrs. Emily C., 1915.

Utley, W.H., 1892-4.

Wallas, Graham, 1888-1895.

Webb, Sidney, 1886 to date.

Webb, Mrs. Sidney, 1912 to date.

Wells, H.G., 1907-8.

Wells, Mrs. H.G., 1908-10.

West, Julius, 1915 to date. Secretary of Research Department, etc., 1908-12.

Whelen, Frederick, 1896-1901; 1902-4.

Williams, Ernest E., 1893-4.

Wilson, Mrs. C.M., 1885-7; 1911-15.

Wood, Mrs. Esther, 1902-3.

Appendix IV

Complete List of Fabian Publications, 1884-1915, with names of authors

FABIAN TRACTS

The printing of the author's name in italics signifies that the tract

was adopted and probably amended by the Society and that it was issued

without the author's name. In the other cases the author's name is given

in the tract, and as a rule the tract was approved for publication as a

whole: a star to the author's name signifies "not a member of the

Society."

No.

1884.

1. Why are the Many Poor? 4 pp. _W.L. Phillips_.

2. A Manifesto. 4 pp. _G. Bernard Shaw_.

1885.

3. To Provident Landlords and Capitalists: A Suggestion and a Warning.

4 pp. _G. Bernard Shaw_.

1886.

4. What Socialism Is. 12 pp. Mrs. C.M. Wilson and others.

1887.

5. Facts for Socialists. 16 pp. _Sidney Webb_.

6. The True Radical Programme (Fabian Parliamentary League). 12 pp.

_G. Bernard Shaw_.

1888.

7. Capital and Land. 16 pp. _(Sir) Sydney Olivier_.

1889.

8. Facts for Londoners. 56 pp. _Sidney Webb_.

9. An Eight Hours Bill. 16 pp. _Do._

10. Figures for Londoners. 4 pp. _Do_.

1890.

11. The Workers' Political Programme. 20 pp. _Sidney Webb_.

12. Practical Land Nationalisation. 4 pp. _Do_.

13. What Socialism Is. 4 pp. _Bernard Shaw_.

14. The New Reform Bill. 20 pp. _J.F. Oakeshott and others_.

15. English Progress towards Social Democracy. 16 pp. Sidney Webb.

16. A Plea for an Eight Hours Bill. 4 pp. _Sidney Webb_.

17. Reform of the Poor Law. 20 pp. Sidney Webb.

18. Facts for Bristol. 20 pp. _(Sir) Hartmann W. Just_.

19. What the Farm Labourer Wants. 4 pp. _Sidney Webb_.

20. Questions for Poor Law Guardians. 4 pp. _S.W. Group_.

21. Questions for London Vestrymen. 4 pp. _C. Foulger_.

22. The Truth about Leasehold Enfranchisement. 4 pp. _Sidney Webb_.

1891.

23. The Case for an Eight Hours Bill. 16 pp. _Sidney Webb_.

24. Questions for Parliamentary Candidates. 4 pp. _Do_.

25. Questions for School Board Candidates. 4 pp. _Do_.

26. Questions for London County Councillors. 4 pp. _Do_.

27. Questions for Town Councillors. 4 pp. _Rev. C. Peach_.

28. Questions for County Council Candidates (Rural). 4 pp. _F. Hudson_.

29. What to Read. 48 pp. _Graham Wallas_ (1st edition). (Fifth edition,

1910, not included in the series.)

30. The Unearned Increment. 4 pp. _Sidney Webb_.

31. London's Heritage in the City Guilds. 4 pp. _Sidney Webb_.

32. The Municipalisation of the Gas Supply. 4 pp. _Do_.

33. Municipal Tramways. 4 pp. _Do_.

34. London's Water Tribute. 4 pp. _Do_.

35. The Municipalisation of the London Docks. 4 pp. _Do_.

36. The Scandal of London's Markets. 4 pp. _Do_.

37. A Labour Policy for Public Authorities. 4 pp. _Do_.

38. Welsh Translation of No. 1.

1892.

39. A Democratic Budget. 16 pp. _J.F. Oakeshott_.

40. Fabian Election Manifesto. 16 pp. _Bernard Shaw_.

41. The Fabian Society: What it has done and how it has done it. 32 pp.

G. Bernard Shaw.

42. Christian Socialism. 16 pp. Rev. Stewart D. Headlam.

43. Vote! Vote! Vote! 2 pp. _Bernard Shaw_.

1893.

44. A Plea for Poor Law Reform. 4 pp. _Frederick Whelen_.

45. Impossibilities of Anarchism. 28 pp. G. Bernard Shaw.

46. Socialism and Sailors. 16 pp. B.T. Hall.

47. The Unemployed. (Rt. Hon.) John Burns.

48. Eight Hours by Law. _Henry W. Macrosty_.

1894.

49. A Plan of Campaign for Labour. 28 pp. _G. Bernard Shaw_.

50. Sweating: Its Cause and Remedy. 16 pp. _H.W. Macrosty_.

51. Socialism: True and False. 20 pp. Sidney Webb.

52. State Education at Home and Abroad. 16 pp. J.W. Martin.

53. The Parish Councils Act: What it is and how to work it. 20 pp.

_(Rt. Hon.) Herbert Samuel_.*

54. Humanising of the Poor Law. 24 pp. J.F. Oakeshott.

55. The Workers' School Board Programme. 20 pp. _J.W. Martin_.

56. Questions for Parish Council Candidates. 4 pp. _(Rt. Hon.) Herbert

Samuel_.*

57. Questions for Rural District Council Candidates. 4 pp.

_(Rt. Hon.) Herbert Samuel_.*

58. Allotments and How to Get Them. 4 pp. _(Rt. Hon.) Herbert Samuel_.*

59. Questions for Candidates for Urban District Councils. 4 pp.

60. The London Vestries: What they are and what they do. 20 pp. Sidney Webb.

1895.

61. The London County Council: What it is and what it does. 16 pp.

_J.F. Oakeshott_.

62. Parish and District Councils: What they are and what they can do.

16 pp. (No. 53 re-written.)

63. Parish Council Cottages and how to get them. 4 pp. _Edw. R. Pease_.

64. How to Lose and how to Win an Election. 2 pp. _Ramsay Macdonald_.

65. Trade Unionists and Politics. 2 pp. _F.W. Galton_.

66. A Program for Workers. 2 pp. _Edw. R. Pease_.

1896.

67. Women and the Factory Acts. 16 pp. Mrs. Sidney Webb.

68. The Tenant's Sanitary Catechism. 4 pp. _Arthur Hickmott_.

69. The Difficulties of Individualism. 20 pp. Sidney Webb.

70. Report on Fabian Policy. 16 pp. _Bernard Shaw_.

71. The (London) Tenant's Sanitary Catechism. 4 pp. _Miss Grove_.

72. The Moral Aspects of Socialism. 24 pp. Sidney Ball.

73. The Case for State Pensions in Old Age. 16 pp. _George Turner_.

74. The State and Its Functions in New Zealand. 16 pp. The Hon. W.P.

Reeves.*

1897.

75. Labour in the Longest Reign. 20 pp. Sidney Webb.

76. Houses for the People. 20 pp. _Arthur Hickmott_.

77. The Municipalisation of Tramways. 16 pp. F.T.H. Henlé.

78. Socialism and the Teaching of Christ. 16 pp. Rev. John Clifford, D.D.

79. A Word of Remembrance and Caution to the Rich. 16 pp. John Woolman.*

80. Shop Life and its Reform. 16 pp. _William Johnson_.

81. Municipal Water. 4 pp. _C.M. Knowles_.*

82. The Workmen's Compensation Act. 20 pp. _C.R. Allen, junr_.

83. State Arbitration and the Living Wage. 16 pp. _H.W. Macrosty_.

84. The Economics of Direct Employment. 16 pp. Sidney Webb.

85. Liquor Licensing at Home and Abroad. 16 pp. Edw. R. Pease.

86. Municipal Drink Traffic. 20 pp. _Edw. R. Pease_.

1899.

87. A Welsh Translation of No. 78. 16 pp.

88. The Growth of Monopoly in English Industry. 16 pp. Henry W. Macrosty.

89. Old Age Pensions at Work. 4 pp. _Bullock_.

90. The Municipalisation of the Milk Supply. 4 pp. _Dr. G.F. McCleary_.

91. Municipal Pawnshops. 4 pp. _Charles Charrington_.

92. Municipal Slaughterhouses. 4 pp. _George Standring_.

1900.

93. Women as Councillors. 4 pp. _Bernard Shaw_.

94. Municipal Bakeries. 4 pp. _Dr. G.F. McCleary._

95. Municipal Hospitals. 4 pp. _Do_.

96. Municipal Fire Insurance. 4 pp. (1901). _Mrs. Fenton Macpherson_.

97. Municipal Steamboats. 4 pp. (1901). _S.D. Shallard_.

98. State Railways for Ireland. 16 pp. _Clement Edwards (M.P.)._

99. Local Government in Ireland. _C.R. Allen, junr_.

100. Metropolitan Borough Councils: Their Powers and Duties. 20 pp.

_Henry W. Macrosty_.

101. The House Famine and How to Relieve it. 52 pp. Various.

102. Questions for Candidates: Metropolitan Borough Councils. 4 pp.

_H.W. Macrosty_.

103. Overcrowding in London and its Remedy. 16 pp. W.C. Steadman, M.P.

104. How Trade Unions Benefit Workmen. 4 pp. _Edw. R. Pease_.

1901.

105. Five Years' Fruit of the Parish Councils Act. 24 pp _Sidney Webb_.

106. The Education Muddle and the Way Out. 20 pp. _Sidney Webb_.

107. Socialism for Millionaires. 16 pp. Bernard Shaw.

108. Twentieth Century Politics: A Policy of National Efficiency.

16 pp. Sidney Webb.

1902.

109. Cottage Plans and Common Sense. 16 pp. Raymond Unwin.

110. Problems of Indian Poverty. 16 pp. S.S. Thorburn.*

111. Reform of Reformatories and Industrial Schools. 16 pp. H.T. Holmes.

112. Life in the Laundry. 16 pp. Dr. G.F. McCleary.

1903.

113. Communism. 16 pp. William Morris.* Preface by Bernard Shaw.

114. The Education Act, 1902. How to make the best of it. 20 pp.

_Sidney Webb_.

115. State Aid to Agriculture. 16 pp. T.S. Dymond.*

1904.

116. Fabianism and the Fiscal Question: An Alternative Policy. 28 pp.

_Bernard Shaw_.

117. The London Education Act, 1903: How to make the best of it. 20 pp.

_Sidney Webb_.

118. The Secret of Rural Depopulation. 20 pp. Lieut.-Col. D.C. Pedder.*

1905.

119. Public Control of Electric Power and Transit. 16 pp. S.G. Hobson.

120. After Bread, Education. 16 pp. Hubert Bland.

121. Public Service versus Private Expenditure. 12 pp. Sir Oliver Lodge.*

122. Municipal Milk and Public Health. 20 pp. F. Lawson. Dodd.

123. The Revival of Agriculture: A National Policy for Great Britain.

24 pp. Henry W. Macrosty.

124. State Control of Trusts. 16 pp. Henry W. Macrosty.

125. Municipalisation by Provinces. 16 pp. W. Stephen Sanders.

1906.

126. The Abolition of Poor Law Guardians. 24 pp. Edw. R. Pease.

127. Socialism and Labour Policy. 16 pp. _Hubert Bland (Editor)._

128. The Case for a Legal Minimum Wage. 20 pp. _W. Stephen Sanders_.

129. More Books to Read. 20 pp. _Edw. R. Pease_.

1907.

130. Home Work and Sweating: The Causes and Remedies. 20 pp. Miss B.L.

Hutchins.

131. The Decline in the Birth-rate. 20 pp. Sidney Webb.

132. A Guide to Books for Socialists. 12 pp. "The Nursery."

133. Socialism and Christianity. 24 pp. Rev. Percy Dearmer, D.D.

134. Small Holdings, Allotments, and Common Pastures. 4 pp. Revised

edition of No. 58.

135. Paupers and Old Age Pensions. 16 pp. Sidney Webb.

136. The Village and the Landlord. 12 pp. Edward Carpenter.

1908.

137. Parish Councils and Village Life. 28pp. Revised version of No. 105.

138. Municipal Trading. 20 pp. _Aylmer Maude_.

139. Socialism and the Churches. 16 pp. Rev. John Clifford, D.D.

140. Child Labour Under Capitalism. 20 pp. Mrs. Hylton Dale.

1909.

141. (Welsh Translation of No. 139).

142. Rent and Value. 12 pp. Adapted by Mrs. Bernard Shaw from Fabian

Essays, The Economic Basis.

143. Sosialaeth Yng Ngoleuni'R Beibl (Welsh). J.R. Jones.

144. Machinery: Its Masters and its Servants. 20 pp. H.H. Schloesser

(Slesser) and Clement Game.

145. The Case for School Nurseries. 20 pp. Mrs. Townshend.

146. Socialism and Superior Brains. A Reply to Mr. Mallock. 24 pp.

Bernard Shaw.

147. Capital and Compensation. 16 pp. Edward R. Pease.

148. What a Health Committee can do. 16 pp. _Miss B.L. Hutchins_.

1910.

149. The Endowment of Motherhood. 24 pp. Henry D. Harben.

150. State Purchase of Railways: A Practicable Scheme. 24 pp. Emil Davies.

151. The Point of Honour. A Correspondence on Aristocracy and Socialism.

16 pp. Mrs. Ruth Cavendish Bentinck.

1911.

152. Our Taxes as they are and as they ought to be. 20 pp. Robert Jones.

153. The Twentieth Century Reform Bill. 20 pp. Henry H. Schloesser

(Slesser).

154. The Case for School Clinics. 16 pp. L. Haden Guest.

155. The Case against the Referendum. 20 pp. Clifford D. Sharp.

156. What an Education Committee can do (Elementary Schools). 36 pp.

The Education Group.

157. The Working Life of Women. 16 pp. Miss B.L. Hutchins.

158. The Case Against the Charity Organisation Society. 20 pp. Mrs.

Townshend.

159. The Necessary Basis of Society. 12 pp. Sidney Webb.

160. A National Medical Service. 20 pp. F. Lawson Dodd.

1912.

161. Afforestation and Unemployment. 16 pp. Arthur P. Grenfell.

162. Family Life on a Pound a Week. 24 pp. Mrs. Pember Reeves.

163. Women and Prisons. 28 pp. Helen Blagg and Charlotte Wilson.

164. Gold and State Banking. A Study in the Economics of Monopoly. 20 pp.

Edward R. Pease.

165. Francis Place: The Tailor of Charing Cross. 28 pp. St. John G.

Ervine.

166. Robert Owen: Social Reformer. 24 pp. Miss B.L. Hutchins.

167. William Morris and the Communist Ideal. 24 pp. Mrs. Townshend.

1913.

168. John Stuart Mill. 24 pp. Julius West.

169. The Socialist Movement in Germany. 28 pp. W. Stephen Sanders.

170. Profit-Sharing and Co-partnership: A fraud and a failure? 16 pp.

Edward R. Pease.

171. The Nationalisation of Mines and Minerals Bill. 16 pp. Henry H.

Schloesser (Slesser).

172. What about the Rates, or Municipal Finance and Municipal Autonomy.

12 pp. Sidney Webb.

173. Public versus Private Electricity Supply. 20 pp. C. Ashmore Baker.*

1914.

174. Charles Kingsley and Christian Socialism. 28 pp. Colwyn E. Vulliamy.

175. The Economic Foundations of the Women's Movement. 24 pp. M.A.

_(Mabel Atkinson_).

176. War and the Workers. Handbook of some immediate measures to prevent

Unemployment and relieve distress. 24 pp. Sidney Webb.

1915.

177. Socialism and the Arts of Use. 16 pp. A. Clutton Brock.

178. The War; Women; and Unemployment. 28 pp. The Women's Group Executive.

BOOKS AND SPECIAL PAMPHLETS.

Those without any publisher's name were published by the Society.

The Government Organisation of Unemployed Labour. Report made by a

Committee to the Fabian Society and ordered to be printed for the

information of members. 1886. pp. 24. N.P. _Sidney Webb_ and _Frank

Podmore._

Fabian Essays in Socialism. Edited by Bernard Shaw. 1889. 1st edition,

6s. Subsequent editions published by Walter Scott.

Report on Municipal Tramways, presented to the Richmond (Surrey) Town

Council by Aid. Thompson.* Reprinted for the Society by special

permission. 4to. pp. 20. 1898. 6d.

Labour in the Longest Reign: 1837-1897. By Sidney Webb. A reprint of

Tract No. 75. Grant Richards, pp. 62. 1897. 1s.

Fabianism and the Empire. A Manifesto by the Fabian Society. Edited by

Bernard Shaw. pp. 101. Grant Richards. 1900. 1s.

Fabianism and the Fiscal Question: An Alternative Policy. Special

edition of Tract 116; with a preface by Bernard Shaw. pp. 39. 1904. 1s.

This Misery of Boots. By H.G. Wells. Cover designed by A.G. Watts, pp.

48. 1907. 3d.

Tract Index and Catalogue Raisonné of Tracts Nos. 1 to 139. Pp. 35.

1908. 3d.

Those Wretched Rates, a dialogue. By F.W. Hayes, pp. 16. 1908. 1d.

Ballads and Lyrics of Socialism, 1883-1908. By E. Nesbit (Mrs. Hubert

Bland), pp. 80. A.C. Fifield. 1908. 6d. and 1s.

Break Up the Poor Law and Abolish the Workhouse. Being Part I of the

Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission 1909. pp. 601. 2s. By

_Sidney_ and _Beatrice Webb._

The Remedy for Unemployment. Being Part II. 1909. pp. 345. 1s. By

_Sidney_ and _Beatrice Webb_.

A Summary of Six Papers and Discussions upon the Disabilities of Women

as Workers.

The writers of the papers: Miss Emma Brooke, Dr. Constance Long,* Mrs.

Ernestine Mills, Mrs. Gallichan (G. Gasquoine Hartley), Miss Millicent

Murby, Dr. Ethel Bentham.

Issued for private circulation only by the Fabian Women's Group, pp. 24.

1909.

Summary of Eight Papers and Discussions upon the Disabilities of

Mothers as Workers.

The writers of the papers: Mrs. Pember Reeves, Dr. Ethel Vaughan

Sawyer,* Mrs. Spence Weiss,* Mrs. Bartrick Baker, Mrs. Stanbury, Mrs.

S.K. Ratcliffe, Miss B.L. Hutchins, Mrs. O'Brien Harris.

Issued for private circulation only by the Fabian Women's Group, pp. 32.

1910.

What to Read on

Social and Economic Subjects. 5th edition. Earlier editions published as

Tract No. 29. pp. 52. P.S. King and Son. 1910. 1s.

Songs for Socialists, compiled by the Fabian Society. A.C. Fifield.

1912. 3d.

The Rural Problem. By Henry D. Harben. pp. 169. Constable and Co. 1913.

2s. 6d. net.

Women Workers in Seven Professions. A survey of their economic

conditions and prospects. Edited for the Studies Committee of the Fabian

Women's Group. By Edith J. Morley. pp. xxii+318. G. Routledge and Sons.

1914. 6s.

Wage-Earning Women and their Dependents. By Ellen Smith on behalf of the

Executive Committee of the Women's Group, pp. 36. 1915. 1s. net.

BOUND TRACTS.

The whole of the numbered tracts at any time in print are sold as a

bound volume with a title-page. As the complete set is in demand and as

every few months a new tract is published, or an old one is sold out,

the sets are usually bound a dozen at a time, and each dozen differs as

a rule from all the rest. Price now 5s. net.

FABIAN SOCIALIST SERIES.

Published for the Society by A.C. Fifield at 6d. and is net each.

I. Socialism and Religion. Reprint of Tracts, Nos. 42, 78, 133, and 79.

pp. 87. 1908.

II. Socialism and Agriculture. Reprint of Tracts, Nos. 136, 118, 115,

and 123. pp. 94. 1908.

III. Socialism and Individualism. Reprint of Tracts, Nos. 69, 45, 72,

and 121. pp. 102. 1908.

IV. The Basis and Policy of Socialism. Reprint of Tracts, Nos. 5, 7, 51,

and 108. pp. 95. 1908.

V. The Common Sense of Municipal Trading. By Bernard Shaw. Reprint with

a new preface, pp. 120. 1908.

VI. Socialism and National Minimum. Papers by Mrs. Sidney Webb and Miss

B.L. Hutchins, and reprint of Tract No. 128. pp. 91. 1909.

VII. Wastage of Child Life, as exemplified by Conditions in Lancashire.

By J. Johnston, M.D.* A reprint, pp. 95. 1909.

VIII. Socialism and Superior Brains. Reprint of Tract, No. 146. pp. 59.

1910.

IX. The Theory and Practice of Trade Unionism. By J.H. Greenwood.

Preface by Sidney Webb. pp. 70. 1911.

RESEARCH DEPARTMENT PUBLICATIONS.

New Statesman Supplements:

Industrial Organisation in Germany, Report. By W.S. Sanders. 1913. 8

pp. folio.

National Insurance Act. First Draft Report of the Insurance

Committee. March 14, 1914. 32 pp. folio, 1s.

Co-operative Production and Profit-Sharing. February 14, 1914. 32 pp.

folio. 2s. 6d.

Co-operative Movement. Drafts of the first two parts of the Report on

the Control of Industry. By Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb. May 30, 1914.

36 pp. folio, 1s.

Industrial Insurance. March 13, 1915. 32 pp. folio, 1s.

State and Municipal Enterprise. Draft Report. By Mr. and Mrs. Sidney

Webb. May 8, 1915. 32 pp. folio, 1s.

Suggestions for the Prevention of War.

Part I. By L.S. Woolf. July 10, 1915. 24 pp. folio, 1s.

Part II. By the International Agreements Committee July 17, 1915. 8

pp. folio, 1s.

English Teachers and their Professional Organisation. Monograph by

Mrs. Sidney Webb.

Part I. September 25, 1915. 24 pp. folio. 6d.

Part II. October 2, 1915. 24 pp. folio. 6d.

Labour Year Book, 1915-16, issued under the auspices of the

Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Union Congress, the Executive

Committee of the Labour Party, and the Fabian Research Department. 1915.

704 pp. 1s., and 2s. 6d.

Index

Of the principal references to people and subjects

A

Agriculture, 15, 47, 157, 228

Alden, Percy, 153, 172, 231

Allen, Clifford, 195, 225, 234

Anarchism, 49, 53, 66

Arts Group, The, 188

B

Balfour, Rt. Hon. Arthur J., 45, 142

Ball, Sidney, 103, 180, 183

Barker, Ernest, 244, 258

Barker, Granville, 180, 186

Barnett, Canon, 16

Basis, The Fabian, 71, 169, 177, 178, 231, 269

Bax, Belfort, 66

Beale, Mr., 112

Bentham, Jeremy, 244

Bernstein, Edward, 239

Besant, Mrs. Annie, joins, 47;

her position, 64;

Fabian Essay, 92;

resigns, 98;

lecture, 187

Birth-rate, 160

Bland, Hubert, 31, 35, 222, 223, 265

Book-boxes, 121

Brooke, Miss Emma, 190

Brooke, Rupert, 234

Brooke, Rev. Stopford, 69

Burns, Rt. Hon. John, 67, 83, 110, 217

Butler, Samuel, 105

C

Campbell, Rev. R.J., 187

Carpenter, Edward, 36

Champion, H.H., 25, 31, 69, 75

Charrington, Charles, 131, 133

Christian Socialism, 25, 83

Chubb, Percival, 29, 69

Clarke, William, 31, 33;

joins, 47;

position, 64, 123

Clifford, Dr. John, 129

Cole, G.D.H., 230

Comte, Auguste, 14, 18, 263

Conference, of 1886, 55;

of 1892, 106;

of later years, 197

Conscription, 137

Co-operation, 44, 92, 114, 228

Cox, Harold, 46

Crane, Walter, 66, 71, 75, 88, 129, 131, 133, 264

Crooks, Rt. Hon. Will, 129, 152, 155

D

Darwin, Charles, 15

Davidson, Thomas, 26, 28

Decline of birth-rate, 160

De Mattos, W.S., 93, 105, 123

Democratic Federation, 24, 38, 49

Dock Strike, 75, 83, 114

Dodd, F. Lawson, 129, 131, 172, 202

Drink Trade, Municipal, 159

E

Edgeworth, Professor, 260

Education, 142

Education Group, 185

Eight Hours Bill, 84, 203

Elections, of 1892, 108, 112;

of 1906, 152;

of 1910, 220

Ellis, Havelock, 29, 36

Ensor, R.C.K., 180, 221

Evolution, 15, 17

F

"Facts for Londoners," 80

"Facts for Socialists," 69

"Fair Wages," 109, 114, 241

"Family, The," 15, 69, 175, 181

Feeding school children, 148, 203

Fellowship of the New Life, 28, 32, 35

Finance, 1884, 35; 1886, 60; 1891, 99; 1893, 100; 1908, 185

G

George, Henry, 16, 19, 25, 28, 38, 45, 260

"Government Organisation of Unemployed Labour," 57

Green, J. Frederick, 131, 133

Groups, Fabian, 104, 195

Guild Socialism, 230, 254

H

Haldane, Lord, 74, 111

Hampstead Historic, The, 65

Harben, Henry D., 222, 224, 227, 228

Hardie, J. Keir, 113, 167, 253

Headlam, Rev. Stewart D., 25, 57, 75, 94, 142, 166, 168, 172

Henderson, Rt. Hon. Arthur, 152, 155

Hobson, S.G., 130, 150, 172

Housing, 140

Huddersfield Election, 155

Hutchinson, Henry H., 95, 123

Hutchinson, Miss, 123

Huxley, T.H., 18

Hyndman, H.M., 24, 38, 51, 202, 252

I

Ibsen, 94

Imperialism, 135

Independent Labour Party, 63, 97, 101, 129, 202

Industrial Remuneration Conference, 44

"Intercepted Letter, An," 118

International Socialist Congress, 126, 209

J

Jevons, Stanley, 260

Joint Standing Committee, 202

K

"Kapital, Das," 24, 64, 236, 258

Keddell, Frederick, 31, 52

Kropotkin, Prince, 49, 66

L

Labour Party, The, 97, 116, 148, 167, 171

Lancashire Campaign, 95

Land, 47, 244, 260

Land taxation, 21, 25, 73

Lavelaye, Emile de, 16, 19

Leasehold Enfranchisement, 94, 110, 113

Lecturing, 77, 105, 108, 124

Library, 120

Local Fabian Societies, 99, 102, 191

Local Government Information Bureau, 206

London County Council, 79, 92, 109

London School Board, 109

London School of Economics, 123

M

Macdonald, J. Ramsay, 35, 125, 127, 129, 133, 249

Macrosty, Henry S., 131, 157, 172

Martin, J.W., 158

Marx, Karl, 23, 45, 61, 89, 236, 260

Massingham, H.W., 109, 116, 117

Maude, Aylmer, 180

Middle Class Socialist Party, 153, 172, 178, 180

Mill, John Stuart, 18, 21, 216, 244, 259

Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission, 215

Money, Sir Leo Chiozza, 169, 224

Morris, Miss May, 88

Morris, William, 23, 57, 66, 90, 183, 204, 259, 264

Motto, Fabian, 39, 165

Municipalisation, 81, 159, 242, 247

N

National Committee for the Prevention of Destitution, 219

National Insurance, 223

Newcastle Program, 112

Nursery, The Fabian, 189

O

Oakeshott, J.F., 36, 131, 158

Old Age Pensions, 159, 223

Olivier, Sir Sydney, 25;

joins, 46;

secretary, 65;

"Capital and Land," 73;

Governor of Jamaica, 128;

Wells' Committee, 166;

opinions, 263, 264

Owen, Miss Dale, 30, 31

Owen, Robert, 23, 241

P

Pankhurst, Mrs., 57, 133

Parish Councils, 121, 141

Parliamentary League, Fabian, 68, 73

Pease, Edward R., 29, 59, 80, 93, 149, 159, 232

Phillips, W.L., 39, 73

Podmore, Frank, 28, 39, 48, 53, 57, 73, 80

Poor Law, 14, 46, 213

Portsmouth Election, 155

Positivism, 14, 18

R

Reeves, Mrs. Pember, 166, 177, 180

Reform Committee, Fabian, 225

Research Department, 227

Ritchie, Professor D.G., 75, 116

Ruskin, John, 27, 263

S

Salt, Henry S., 36, 131, 133

Sanders, W. Stephen, 125, 155, 156, 172, 191, 232

School Boards, 142

Shaw, G. Bernard, 25;

joins, 40;

first tract, 40;

on Burglars, 45;

Fabian Essays, 87;

"Quintessence of Ibsenism," 94;

on Newcastle Program, 112;

on Fabian policy, 126;

Vestryman, 127;

"Fabianism and the Empire," 134;

Tariff Reform, 159;

versus Wells, 173;

retires from Executive, 223;

on Economics, 258;

on Guild Socialism, 265

Shaw, Mrs. Bernard, 123, 166, 172, 187, 190

Sidgwick, Henry, 258

Slesser, Henry H., 208, 222, 225

Small holdings, 47, 228

Smith, Samuel, 15, 24

Snell, Harry, 155

Social Democratic Federation, 49, 61, 89, 106, 203

Socialist League, 66, 89

South African War, 128

"Spectator," The, 14

Spencer, Herbert, 18

Standring, George, 74, 172

Stepniak, Sergius, 94

Summer School, 199

Syndicalism, 229, 254

T

Tariff Reform, 159

Taunton Election, 154

Tchaykovsky, Nicholas, 66

Tillett, Ben, 113

Tobacco, State cultivation of, 59

"Tory Gold," 50, 63

Trade Unionism, 44, 91, 112, 114, 228

Turner, George, 159

U

Unemployment, 52, 57, 69, 215

Unity, Socialist, 202, 253

University Fabian Societies, 103, 191, 193

University Socialist Federation, 195

W

Wallas, Graham, joins, 47;

lectures, 65;

London School Board, 127;

resigns, 156;

ideas, 262

War of 1914, The, 233, 234

Webb, Sidney, joins, 46;

Executive, 52;

"Facts for Socialists," 69;

"Facts for Londoners," 83;

elected to L.C.C., 109;

Education Acts, 142;

co-operation with Mrs. Webb, 212;

on Mill, 259

Webb, Mrs. Sidney, 114, 177, 187, Chapter XI

Wells, H.G., 39, 153, Chapter IX, 250

Wicksteed, Philip, 260

Williams, E.E., 205

Wilson, Mrs. C.M., joins, 48;

Tract 4, 54;

Women's Group, 189;

Executive, 222

Woolwich Election, 155

Women's Group, The, 189

Women's Suffrage, 175, 204

Workmen's Compensation, 122

THE END