POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN AMERICA
Addresses on Socialism--Arrangements for Their
Delivery--American Society in Long Island and New
York--Harvard--Prof. William James--President
Roosevelt--Chicago--Second Stay in New York--New York to
Brittany--_A Critical Examination of Socialism_--Propaganda in
England.
The invitation which I have just mentioned emanated from the Civic
Federation of New York--a body established for the promotion, by
knowledge and sober argument, of some rational harmony between the
employing classes and the employed. Its council comprised prominent
members of both, such as Mr. Gompers, the trade-union leader, on one
side, and industrial magnates of international fame on the other. It had
just been decided to include in their educational scheme the delivery at
various centers of special lectures on Socialism, by some thinker from
Europe or England who would deal with the subject in a temperate and yet
a conservative spirit. It had ultimately been decided that the person
who would best suit them was myself. Arrangements were made accordingly,
and I have every reason to be grateful to those concerned for the manner
in which, on my arrival, they consulted both my judgment and my
convenience. The great question to be settled related to the class of
audience to whom the lectures should be delivered, and to whose modes of
thought they should be accommodated. I said that in my opinion far the
best course would be to set the idea of mass meetings altogether aside,
and address congregations of the educated classes only. To this view it
was objected that the cruder forms of Socialism are sufficiently
repudiated by the educated classes already, and that converting the
converted would be merely a waste of time. My own reply was that the
immediate object to aim at was not to convert the converted, but to
teach the converted how to convert others. My position as thus stated
was ultimately approved by all; and Mr. Easley, the distinguished
secretary of the Federation, took measures accordingly. The best course,
he said, would be to arrange with the heads of certain great
universities for the delivery of the addresses to audiences of
professors and students, other persons being admitted who felt any
inclination to attend. These arrangements would take some weeks to
complete. Meanwhile, the character of the expected audiences being
known, I should have ample time to prepare the addresses accordingly.
The universities chosen were Columbia, Harvard, Chicago, Pennsylvania,
and Johns Hopkins.
Mr. Easley was so good an organizer that all the details of the program
were settled in the course of a few weeks; and, owing to the kindness of
American friends in England, I enjoyed meanwhile at New York so many
social amenities that I sometimes could hardly tell whether I was in
New York or in London. I was provided with a sheaf of introductions by
Mrs. Bradley Martin, the Duchess of Marlborough, Lady Cunard, and
others, while on my arrival I was to stay for ten days or a fortnight
with Mr. Lloyd Bryce, who had been educated at Oxford, where he and I
were intimates. He was, for the moment, at his country house in Long
Island, and Sandy Hook was still some hundreds of miles distant when a
wireless message reached me on board the steamer saying that his
secretary would meet me, and be looking out for me when I landed. The
secretary was there at his post. He promptly secured a carriage; he
escorted me across the city, accompanied me in the ferryboat from the
city to Long Island, and saw me into a train, which in less than an hour
set me down at Rosslyn, a mile or so from my friend's house. At the
station gates there were several footmen waiting, just as there might
have been at Ascot or Three Bridges, and several private carriages. One
of these--a large omnibus--was my host's. I entered it, followed by an
orthodox lady's maid, who was laden with delicate parcels evidently from
New York, and we were off. The country, for the time was January, was
covered with deep snow, which clung to the boughs of pine trees and
glittered on cottage roofs. A mile or two away from the station we
turned into a private drive, which, mounting a parklike slope, with dark
pines for its fringes, brought us to Lloyd Bryce's house. It was a
house of true Georgian pattern--a central block with two symmetrical
wings. Its red bricks might have been fading there for a couple of
hundred years. Indoors there was the same quiet simplicity. The grave
butler and two excellent footmen were English. The only features which
were noticeably not English were the equable heat which seemed to
prevail everywhere and the fact that half-drawn portieres were
substituted for closed doors.
On the evening of my arrival two young men came to dinner. They were
brothers, sons of a father who had rented for several years Lord Lovat's
castle in the Highlands. Next morning I was sent for a drive in a
sleigh. Here, too, I came across things familiar. The coachman was
Irish. He had been born on the lands of a family with which I was well
acquainted, and I was pleased by the interest he displayed when I
answered the questions which he put to me about the three young ladies.
A pleasant indolence would, however, have made me more contented with
the glow of a wood fire and conversation with an old friend than with
any ventures in the chill of the outer air. I was, therefore, somewhat
disquieted when I found, a day or two later, that my host had arranged
to give me a dinner in New York at the Metropolitan Club, then to take
me on to the opera, and not bring me back till midnight. But the
expedition was interesting. The marbles, the gilding, the goddesses, the
gorgeous ceilings of the Metropolitan Club would have made the Golden
House of Nero seem tame in comparison. The grand tier at the opera was
a semicircle of dazzling dresses, though there was not, as happens in
London, any obtrusion of diamonds. Here was an example of taste reticent
as compared with our own.
Two nights later my host dispatched me alone, to dine at what he
described to me as one of the pleasantest houses in New York. I shrank
from the prospect of the wintry journey involved, but the dinner was
worth the trouble. My entertainers--a mother and two unmarried
daughters--belonged to one of the oldest and best known New York
families. The house was in keeping with its inmates. It closely
resembled an old-fashioned house in Curzon Street. As I drove up to the
steps a butler and a groom of the chambers, both sedate with years and
exhaling an atmosphere of long family service, threw open tall doors,
and admitted me to the sober world within. The room in which the guests
were assembled seemed to be lined with books. On the tables were half
the literary reviews of Europe. My hostess and her daughters gave me the
kindest welcome. I was somewhat bewildered by the number of strange
faces, but among them was that of a diplomat whom I had known for many
years in London; and the "high seriousness," as Matthew Arnold might
have called it, of the men was tempered by the excellence of the dinner,
and by the dresses, perfect though subtly subdued, of the women.
Some days later Mr. Easley and an assistant secretary came from New
York to call on me and discuss the arrangements, of which I have already
spoken. Meanwhile I had secured rooms in the city at the Savoy Hotel, to
which in due time I migrated. The day after my arrival Mr. Easley
appeared again, and with him Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, the president
of Columbia University. It was arranged that my first addresses should
be given there under his auspices, and during the next three weeks I was
daily occupied in preparing them. When the day approached which had been
fixed for the delivery of the first, Doctor Butler gave a luncheon party
at the Metropolitan Club, at which he invited me to meet the editors and
other representatives of the weightiest of the New York papers. I
explained the general scheme of argument which I proposed to follow, and
it appeared, after an interchange of speeches, that it met with general
approbation.
This luncheon party and its results struck me as a marked example of the
promptitude and businesslike sagacity characteristic of American
methods. Every address which I delivered at Columbia University was
reported verbatim and fully in the columns of these great journals. The
audiences immediately addressed were, from the nature of the case,
limited, but my arguments were, in effect, at once brought home to the
minds of innumerable thousands, and their main points emphasized by a
concert of leading articles. The drastic efficiency of this procedure
in New York and at other centers was sufficiently shown by the
countless letters I received from Socialists in all parts of America,
most of these letters being courteous, some very much the reverse; but
all indicating that I had succeeded in making the writers reflect on
problems to which they had previously given insufficient attention.
The composition of these addresses, and the reduction of them to their
final form, was a work which, since time was limited, required much
concentrated labor; but the labor was lightened by the extraordinary
hospitality of friends, who made me feel that, so far as society goes, I
had only exchanged one sort of London for another. In my sitting room at
the Savoy Hotel, on arriving from Long Island, I found a number of notes
inviting me to dinners, to concerts, and various other entertainments.
The first of these was a luncheon at Mrs. John Jacob Astor's. Her house
was one which might have been in Grosvenor Place; and, for matter of
that, so might half the company. I found myself sitting by Mrs. Hwfa
Williams. Not far off was her husband, an eminent figure in the racing
world of England. There, too, I discovered Harry Higgins, whom I had
known in his Oxford days, before his translation from Merton to
Knightsbridge barracks; and opposite to me was Monsignor Vay di Vaya, an
Austrian ornament of the Vatican, who wore a dazzling cross on a
perfectly cut waistcoat, and who, when I last saw him, had been winding
wool in the Highlands for Mrs. Bradley Martin. Mrs. Astor, if I may pay
her a very inadequate compliment, merely by her delicate presence seemed
to turn life into a picture on an old French fan.
My first evening party was, if I remember rightly, a concert at the
house of one of the Vanderbilt families. I had hardly entered the music
room before my host, with extreme kindness, indicated a lady who was
sitting next a vacant chair, and said, "Over there is someone you would
like to know." He introduced me to this lady, who was Mrs. Stuyvesant
Fish--one of the best-known and important figures in the social world of
New York. I was subsequently often at her house. I have rarely been
better entertained than I was by her conversation that night during the
intervals of the musical program.
This kindness in introducing a stranger to persons likely to be
agreeable to him struck me as a distinguishing feature of the New York
world generally. I experienced it often at the opera, where the
occupants of the grand tier form practically a social club, as well as a
mere musical gathering. On one occasion, when I was with Mr. and Mrs.
Sloane in their box, Mr. Sloane took me round to the opposite side of
the house to present me to a lady whose attractions he praised, and did
not praise too highly. I asked him the name of another of singularly
charming aspect. Her box was close to his. "Come," he said, "I will
introduce you now." Here is one of those graces of social conduct which
are, as I have observed already with reference to London, possible only
in societies which are more or less carefully restricted.
There is another matter in which the social world of New York struck me
as differing from that of London, and differing from it in a manner
precisely opposite to that which those who derive their views from the
gossip of journalists would suppose. According to ordinary rumor,
fashionable entertainments in New York are scenes of extravagance so
wild that they cease to be luxurious and assume the characteristics of a
farce. My own short experience led me to a conclusion the very reverse
of this. Certain hotels, no doubt, are notoriously over-gilded. A story
is told of a certain country couple who stayed for a night at one of
them. The wife said to the husband, "Why don't you put your boots
outside the door to be blacked?" "My dear," said the husband, "I'm
afraid I should find them gilt." I speak here of private houses and
private entertainments only. The ultrafashionable concert which I
mentioned just now is an instance. The music was followed by supper. The
company strayed slowly through some intervening rooms to the dining
room. It was full of little round tables at which little groups were
seating themselves, but when I entered the tables were entirely bare.
Presently servants went round placing a cloth on each of them. Then on
each were deposited a bottle of champagne and two or three plates of
sandwiches. That was all. At a corresponding party in London there would
have been soups, souffles, aspic, truffles, and ortolans. As it was, the
affair was a simple picnic _de luxe_. To the dinner parties at which I
was present the same observation applies. The New York fashionable
dinner, so far as its menu is concerned, seemed to me incomparably
simpler than its fashionable counterpart in London. The only form of
extravagance, or of what one might call ostentation, so far as I could
see, was what would have been thought in London the multitude of
superfluous footmen, and in houses like that of Lloyd Bryce even this
feature was wanting. The only dinner which, within the limits of my own
experience, represented the extravagance so often depicted by
journalists--a dinner which was signalized by monumental plate, which
rose from the table to the ceiling--was at a house which, despite its
magnitude, was practically ignored by the arbitresses of polite society.
When the delivery of my addresses at Columbia University was completed I
went from New York to Cambridge and remained there for ten days. Harvard
in many ways reminded me of our own Cambridge. The professors, among
whom I made many charming acquaintances, had not only the accent, but
also the intonation of Englishmen. They had with them more, too, of the
ways of the outer world than is commonly found in the university dons of
England. Notable among these was Prof. William James, with whom I was
already familiar through his singularly interesting book, _Varieties of
Religious Experience_--to me very much more interesting than his
brother's later novels.
At Harvard, also, I was presented to Mr. Roosevelt, who had come there
for the purpose of addressing a great meeting of students. The
presentation took place in a large private room, and was a ceremony
resembling that of a presentation to the King of England. Some dozen or
more persons were introduced to the President in succession, their names
being announced by some _de facto_ official. With each of these he
entered into a more or less prolonged conversation. I observed his
methods with interest. In each case he displayed a remarkable knowledge
of the achievements or opinions of the person whom he was for the time
addressing; and, having thus done his duty to these, he proceeded to an
exposition, much more lengthy, of his own. When my turn came he was very
soon confiding to me that nothing which he had read for years had struck
him so forcibly as parts of my own _Veil of the Temple_, which he had
evidently read with care. He crowned these flattering remarks by asking
me, should this be possible, to come and see him at Washington before I
returned to England; and then, I cannot remember how, he got on the
subject of the Black Republic, and of how, in his opinion, such states
ought to be governed. On this matter he was voluble, and voluble with
unguarded emphasis. I never heard the accents of instinctive autocracy
more clearly than, for some ten minutes, I then heard them in his. I
wished I could have seen him at Washington, but I had no unoccupied week
during which he would have been able to receive me.
[Illustration: THEODORE ROOSEVELT]
From Cambridge I went in succession to Chicago, Philadelphia, and
Baltimore. At each of these places I addressed considerable gatherings,
and everywhere (except at Philadelphia) I encountered some hostile,
though no acrimonious, questioning. At the doors, however, on some
occasions a quiet Socialist emissary would offer some tract to the
in-goers, in which my arguments were attacked before they had been so
much as uttered. Why the temperament of one place should differ from
that at another is not easy to say, but at Philadelphia I was not only
listened to without question, but at every salient point I was greeted
with uproarious applause. Having spent some days at Baltimore, and
having accomplished what I had undertaken to do on behalf of the Civic
Federation, I returned to New York, and, except for two speeches outside
our formal program, I gave myself up for a month to the relaxations of
society.
My return to New York was marked by a curious incident, which occurred
when I left the ferryboat. The porter whom I secured told me, having
looked about him, that there was not a cab available. I pointed to a row
of four-wheeled motor hansoms, but none of these, he said, was going out
to-night, except one which had been just appropriated. While he was
explaining this to me, from the darkness of one of these vehicles a
courteous voice emerged, asking where I was going, as the speaker
perhaps might be able to drop me somewhere. I told him my destination;
he agreed to take me, and I was presently seated at his side,
perceiving, indeed, that he was a man and not a woman, but quite unable
to distinguish anything else. He presently informed me that he was just
back from a golf course. I informed him that I was from Baltimore.
"You," he said, "to judge from your voice, must, I think, be English. I
have often played golf in England not very far from Chichester." I asked
him where, on those occasions, he stayed. He answered, "With Willie
James." I told him that I had known Willie James years ago at Cannes.
"My own name is James," he said. "Will you think me inquisitive if I
venture to ask yours?" I, told him, and he at once "placed" me. "I
should think," he said, "you must know Baltimore well." I asked him why
he thought so. "Well," he said, "in the book of yours that I like
best--in _The Old Order Changes_--you introduce an American colonel--a
Southerner, and you describe him on one occasion as absorbed in the
perusal of the Baltimore _Weekly Sun_. That paper's a real paper, and,
because you introduced its name, I thought that you must know
Baltimore." The name, so far as I was concerned, was entirely my own
invention.
Lloyd Bryce, who knew of my arrival, and who had, during my absence,
left Long Island for New York, asked me next day to dine with him. This
was the first of a new series of hospitalities. The company was
extremely entertaining. It comprised Mr. Jerome, celebrated in the legal
world, and at that time especially celebrated in connection with a
sensational case which was exciting the attention of the public from New
York to San Francisco. This was the trial of Thaw for the murder of
Stanford White, of which dramatic incident Evelyn Nesbit was the
heroine. She was, at least in appearance, little more than a schoolgirl.
She had lived with Stanford White, however, on terms of precocious
intimacy. Subsequently Thaw, a rich "degenerate," had married her, but
the thought of Stanford White was always ready to sting him into moods
of morbid jealousy. He took her one evening after dinner to a roof
garden in New York. Stanford White was by accident sitting at a table in
front of him. Watching his wife closely, Thaw detected, or thought he
detected, signs of a continued understanding between her and her late
"protector." Quietly leaving her side, he approached Stanford White from
behind and shot him dead with a pistol before the whole of the assembled
company. The defense was that his rival had given him outrageous
provocation, and that he himself was temporarily, if not chronically,
insane. Every attempt was made by the partisans of his wife to enlist
public feeling in her favor; to prove that Stanford White was the
aggressor, and that her husband's deed was unpremeditated. The trial was
protracted, and the story, as it was brought to light, was one which
could hardly be equaled outside Balzac's novels. Had the heroine of this
drama not been a beautiful young woman, she and her husband would
probably have been forgotten in a week. As it was, if any man in the
street was seen to be absolutely stationary and absorbed in an evening
paper, an observer would have discovered that the main feature of its
pages was a portrait of Evelyn Nesbit in some new dress or attitude,
with her eyes half raised or drooping, and her hair tied up behind in a
black, semichildish bow. Mr. Jerome, with a good deal of pungent humor,
told me many anecdotes of the trial, and wound up with an allusion to
what he considered the defects of American judges. "In England," he
said, "you make men judges because they understand the law. The trouble
with us is that here, as often as not, a man will be made a judge
because he can play football."
The mention of Stanford White suggests a topic more creditable to
himself than his death, and also possessing a different and wider
interest. Stanford White, whatever may have been his private life, was
the greatest architect in America. Some of the finest buildings in New
York are due to his signal genius, and here I am led on to reflections
of a yet more extensive kind. My own impression was that architecture in
America generally possesses a vitality which to-day is absent from it
in older countries. This observation is pertinent to New York more
especially. New York being built on a narrow island, it has there become
necessary, to a degree hardly to be paralleled elsewhere in the world,
to extend new buildings not laterally, but upward. To this living upward
pressure are due the towering structures vulgarly called "skyscrapers."
These, if properly understood, resemble rather the old campanili of
Italy, and suggest the work of Giotto. They make New York, seen from a
distance, look like a San Gimignano reconstructed by giants. I am,
however, thinking not of the "skyscrapers" only. I am thinking rather of
buildings, lofty indeed, but not tower-like, such as certain clubs,
blocks of residential flats, or business premises in Fifth Avenue--such,
for instance, as those of the great firm of Tiffany. Though metal
frameworks are, no doubt, embedded in these, the stonework is
structurally true to the strains of the metal which it incases, and the
stones of the rusticated bases might have been hewn and put together by
Titans. We have more here than an academic repetition of bygone tastes
and models. We have an expression in stone of the needs of a new world.
One of the most charming examples of architectural art in New York,
lighter in kind than these, and when I was there the most recent, was a
new ladies' club, which largely owed its existence--so I was told--to
the aid of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan. Within and without, from its halls
to its numerous bedrooms, the taste displayed was perfect. When I was in
New York it was just about to be opened, and I was invited to take part
in the ceremony by delivering an inaugural address. I took for my
subject the Influence of Women on Industry; and the pith of what I had
to say was compressed into a single anecdote which I had heard only the
day before. My informant had just been told it by one of Tiffany's
salesmen. A few days previously the great jeweler's shop had been
entered by a couple singularly unlike in aspect to the patrons who were
accustomed to frequent it. One of them was a weather-beaten man in a
rough pilot jacket; the other was an odd old woman bundled up in a
threadbare coat of the cheapest imitation fur. The man, with a gruff
shyness, blurted out, "I should like to see a diamond necklace." The
salesman with some hesitation put a necklace before him of no very
precious kind. The man eyed it askance and said, dubiously, "Is that the
best you've got?" The price of this was twenty pounds. The salesman
produced another and a somewhat larger ornament. The price of this was
forty. The man, still dissatisfied, said, "Have you nothing better
still?" "If," said the salesman, by way of getting rid of him, "by
better you mean more expensive, I can show you another. The price of
that is four hundred." This drama was still repeated, till the salesman,
out of pure curiosity, put before him one the price of which was a
thousand. The man, however, again repeated his one unvarying question,
"Is that the best you've got?" The salesman, at last losing patience,
said, "Well, if it should happen to interest you, I can let you have a
look at the most magnificent necklace that money could buy in New York
City to-day. The price of that necklace is fifty thousand pounds." He
turned to put it away, but the weather-beaten man stopped him. He thrust
a hand into the pocket of his rough jacket and extracted from its
recesses an immense bundle of notes. He counted out the sum which the
salesman named. He clasped the necklace round the old woman's threadbare
collar and exclaimed, in a tone of triumph, "Didn't I always tell you
that as soon as I'd made my pile you should have the finest necklace
that money in New York could buy?" "That necklace," said Tiffany's
salesman to my informant, "will never be stolen so long as it's worn
like that, for no one in his senses will ever believe it's real." The
moral which I drew from this anecdote for the benefit of my fair
audience was that women, if not the producers of wealth, are the main
incentives to production, that if it were not for them half of the
civilized industries of the entire world would cease, and that the
Spirit of Commerce, looking at any well-dressed woman, might say, in the
words of Marlow, "This is the face that launched a thousand ships";
while the Spirit of Socialism could do nothing but "burn the topless
towers." In this way of putting the case there was perhaps some slight
exaggeration, but there is in it, at all events, more truth than
falsehood.
Another address--it took a more serious form--I delivered by special
request to a more comprehensive audience, in which ladies likewise
abounded. It was delivered in one of the theaters. The subject I was
asked to discuss was a manifesto which had just been issued by a
well-to-do cleric in favor of Christian Socialism. The argument of this
divine was interesting and certain parts of it were sound. Its fault was
that the end of it quite forgot the beginning. He began by admitting
that the great fortunes of to-day were due for the most part to the few
who possessed to an exceptional degree the talents by which wealth is
produced; but talents of this special class were, he said, wholly
unconnected with any moral desert. Indeed, the mere production of such
goods as are estimable in terms of money was, of all forms of human
activity, the lowest, and the men who made money were the last people in
the world who ought to be allowed to keep it. The demand of Socialism
was, he said, that this gross and despicable thing should be distributed
among other people. The special demand of Christian Socialism was that
the principal claimant on all growing wealth should be the Church. The
fault, he said, of the existing situation was due to the fathers of the
Constitution of the United States, who laid it down that one of the
primary rights of the individual was freedom to produce as much as he
could, and keep it; the true formula being, according to him, that
every man who produced appreciably more than his neighbors should be
either hampered in production or else deprived of his products. It was
not difficult to show, without passing the bounds of good humor, that
the arguments of this semienlightened reformer were, in the end, like a
snake whose head was biting off its tail.
Except for Monsignor Vay di Vaya, the only cleric whom I met in New York
society was one of distinguished aspect and exceedingly charming
manners, who was certainly not an apostle of Christian or any other form
of Socialism; but an anecdote was told me of another whose congregation,
according to a reporter, was "the most exclusive in New York," and had
the honor of comprising Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan. This clergyman was one
morning surprised by receiving a visit from a negro, who expressed a
desire to join his exclusive flock. The shepherd was somewhat
embarrassed, but received his visitor kindly. "You are," he said,
"contemplating a very serious step. My advice to you is that you seek
counsel in prayer; that, if possible, you should see our Lord; that you
make quite sure that this step is one of which our Lord would approve;
and that in three weeks' time you come and talk again to me." The
postulant thanked him, and in three weeks reappeared. "Well," said the
clergyman, "have you prayed earnestly, as I advised you?" The negro said
that he had. "And may I," said the clergyman, "ask you if you have seen
our Lord?" "Yes, sah," said the negro, "I have." "And what," asked the
clergyman, "was it that our Lord said to you? Could you manage to tell
me?" "What our Lord said to me," the negro replied, "was this: 'I've
been trying for eighteen years to get into that church, but I can't. I
guess that your trying will come to no more than mine.'"
Meanwhile I had begun, in the intervals between social engagements, to
recast my addresses, with a view, as I have said already, to
transforming them into a connected book. The first stage in this process
was the preparation of an intermediate version of them, which was to be
issued as a series of articles in an important monthly journal, these
serving as the foundation of the book in its complete form, which was by
and by to be issued in America and England simultaneously.
I had arranged to return by the French steamer _Provence_--a magnificent
vessel--the largest that the harbor of Havre could accommodate. The
restaurant was decorated like a _Salon_ of the time of Louis Quinze. The
cooking was admirable, the tables were bright with flowers. I was asked
to sit at a table reserved for a charming lady, who was bringing with
her her own champagne and butter, with both of which she insisted on
providing her friends also. My cabin, though small, was perfect in the
way of decoration. An ormolu reading lamp stood by the silken curtains
of the bed. The washing basin was of pink marble.
Before returning to England I had settled on spending some solitary
months in Brittany, during which it was my object to bring my
forthcoming work to completion. I spent a week in Paris, where my French
servant rejoined me, whom I had left to enjoy during my absence a
holiday, with his family near Grenoble. I never in my life met anyone
with more satisfaction.
Paris is notoriously congenial to the upper classes of America; and yet
between Paris and New York there is one subtle and pervading difference.
Paris has behind it in its buildings and the ways of its people what New
York has not--a thousand years of history. The influence of the past is
even more apparent in Brittany; and New York became something hardly
credible when I found myself in a little hotel--at which I had engaged
rooms--an hotel girdled by the ramparts and medieval towers of Dinan. I
remained there for six weeks, during which time my book, to which I gave
the name _A Critical Examination of Socialism_, was very nearly
completed. In spite, however, of my labor, I from time to time found
leisure for pilgrimages to moated chateaux, which seemed still to be
enjoying a siesta of social and religious peace, unbroken by revolutions
and even undisturbed by republics. Of these chateaux one was the home of
Chateaubriand. Another, which I traveled a hundred miles to see, was the
Chateau de Kerjaen, its gray gates approached by three huge converging
avenues, and the outer walls by which the chateau itself is sheltered
measuring seven hundred by four hundred feet. Though parts of it are
habitable and inhabited, Kerjaen is partly ruinous, but its ruin was not
due to violence. It was due to an accidental fire which took place when
Robespierre was still in his cradle and even in his dreams was
"guiltless of his country's blood." Coming, as I did, fresh from the New
World, there was for me in Brittany something of the magic of Hungary.
_A Critical Examination of Socialism_ was published a few months after
my return to England, where Socialist agitation meanwhile had become
more active than ever, and I presently discovered that certain attempts
were being made to establish some organized body for the purpose of
systematically counteracting it. I put myself in connection with those
who were taking, or willing to take, some leading part in this
enterprise. The final result was the establishment of two bodies--the
Anti-Socialist Union, under the presidency of Col. Claude Lowther, and a
School of Anti-Socialist Economics, which, through the agency of Captain
(now Sir Herbert) Jessel, was affiliated to the London Municipal
Society--a body which, owing to him, was already proving itself
influential. All the persons concerned had precisely the same objects,
but there were certain disagreements as to the methods which at starting
were most imperative. So far as principles were concerned, the
Anti-Socialist Union were so completely in agreement with myself that
they bought a large edition of my _Critical Analysis of Socialism_ for
distribution as a textbook among the speakers and writers whom it was
part of their program to employ. There were, however, certain details of
procedure in respect of which Captain Jessel's opinions were more in
accordance with my own. He and I, therefore, settled on working
together, taking the existing machinery of the London Municipal Society
as our basis, while the Anti-Socialist Union proceeded on parallel,
though on somewhat different, lines. Captain Jessel and I established,
by way of a beginning, a school for speakers--mostly active young
men--who would speak Sunday by Sunday in the parks and other public
places, and attract audiences whose attention had been previously
secured by Socialists. These speakers sent in weekly reports, describing
the results of their work, which were for the most part of a singularly
encouraging kind. But the number of these speakers was small, and, since
all their expenses were paid, the funds at our immediate disposal would
not enable us to increase it. It appeared to me, therefore, that our
work would be best extended by a distribution of literature--leaflets or
small pamphlets--simple in style, but coherent in their general import,
and appealing not to the man in the street only, but to educated men,
even Members of Parliament, also. A start in this direction was made by
the publication of skeleton speeches, many of them written by myself,
which any orator in the parks or in Parliament might fill in as he
pleased, and which was supplemented by weekly pamphlets called "Facts
Against Socialism." I found, however, that in preparing these my
attention was more and more occupied by industrial and social
statistics, and I was, in my colleague's opinion, concerning myself too
much with matters which were over the heads of the people.
For several reasons my view of the matter was not quite the same as his.
It was, therefore, settled that this statistical work should be
prosecuted by myself independently, and in something like two years I
issued, at the rate of two or three a month, a series of pamphlets
called "Statistical Monographs," addressed especially to Members of
Parliament. Three of these pamphlets dealt with the land of the United
Kingdom, the number of owners and the acreage and value of their
holdings. Two of them dealt with the number and value of the houses
which had been annually built during the past ten or fifteen years. Two
of them dealt with coal-mining and the ratio in that industry of wages
to net profits. Each was a digest of elaborate official figures, which
an average speaker, if left to his own devices, could hardly have
collected in a twelvemonth, but which when thus tabulated he could
master in a couple of days.
Many of these monographs, as I know, were used in practical controversy;
but the Conservative party, as a whole--this is my strong
impression--was but partly awake to the importance of statistics as a
basis of political argument. The use of systematic statistics was at
that time left to Socialists, and wild misstatements as to figures
formed at that time their principal and most effective weapon. The issue
of these monographs was continued till the outbreak of the recent war,
when conditions were so suddenly and so completely changed that the then
continuance of the monographs would not have been appropriate, even if
it had not been rendered impossible. Being, however, unfit for active
service, I devoted myself to a volume applicable, so I hoped, to
conditions which were bound to arise after the war was over. This volume
was _The Limits of Pure Democracy_, to the composition of which I
devoted the labor of four years. It has gone through four editions. A
translation of it has been published in France. Increased costs of
production have rendered a price necessary which would once have been
thought prohibitive, but if conditions improve the intention is to
reissue it in a cheaper form, when certain of its arguments will be
illustrated by events which have taken place since its last page was
completed.
* * * * *
Much of the matter contained in the "Statistical Monographs" was
condensed by me in a volume called _Social Reform_. This was a study,
more minute and extensive than any which I had attempted before, of the
income of this country and its distribution among various classes of
the population, not only as they were at the beginning of the twentieth
century, but also as they were in the earlier years of the nineteenth.
My authorities with regard to the latter were certain elaborate but
little known official papers showing the results of the income tax of
the year 1801. These returns, by means of a minute classification, show
the number of incomes from those between L60 and L70 up to those
exceeding L5,000, the upshot being that the masses--manual and other
wage-workers--were enjoying just before the war an average income per
head more than double that which would have been possible a hundred
years ago had the entire income of the country--the incomes of rich and
poor alike--been then divided in equal shares among everybody. This same
general fact had been broadly insisted on in _Labor and the Popular
Welfare_. It was here demonstrated in detail by official records, to
which I had not had access at the time when I wrote that volume, and of
the very existence of which most politicians are probably unaware
to-day. _Social Reform_ was, however, published at an unlucky moment. It
had not reached more than a small number of readers before the war, for
a time, put a stop to economic thought, and left men to illustrate
economic principles by action, thereby providing fresh data for economic
theory of the future.