Part 1 (1/2)
The History of the Fabian Society.
by Edward R. Pease.
Preface
The History of the Fabian Society will perhaps chiefly interest the members, present and past, of the Society. But in so far as this book describes the growth of Socialist theory in England, and the influence of Socialism on the political thought of the last thirty years, I hope it will appeal to a wider circle.
I have described in my book the care with which the Fabian Tracts have been revised and edited by members of the Executive Committee. Two of my colleagues, Sidney Webb and Bernard Shaw, have been good enough to revise this volume in like manner, and I have to thank them for innumerable corrections in style, countless suggestions of better words and phrases, and a number of amplifications and additions, some of which I have accepted without specific acknowledgment, whilst others for one reason or another are to be found in notes; and I am particularly grateful to Bernard Shaw for two valuable memoranda on the history of Fabian Economics, and on Guild Socialism, which are printed as an appendix.
The MS. or proofs have also been read by Mrs. Sidney Webb, Mrs. Bernard Shaw, Sir Sydney Olivier, Graham Wallas, W. Stephen Sanders, and R.C.K.
Ensor, to each of whom my cordial thanks are due for suggestions, additions, and corrections.
To Miss Bertha Newcombe I am obliged for permission to reproduce the interesting sketch which forms the frontispiece.
E.R.P.
THE PENDICLE, LIMPSFIELD, SURREY,
_January_, 1916.
Chapter I
The Sources of Fabian Socialism
The ideas of the early eighties--The epoch of Evolution--Sources of Fabian ideas--Positivism--Henry George--John Stuart Mill--Robert Owen--Karl Marx--The Democratic Federation--”The Christian Socialist”--Thomas Davidson.
”Britain as a whole never was more tranquil and happy,” said the ”Spectator,” then the organ of sedate Liberalism and enlightened Progress, in the summer of 1882. ”No cla.s.s is at war with society or the government: there is no disaffection anywhere, the Treasury is fairly full, the acc.u.mulations of capital are vast”; and then the writer goes on to compare Great Britain with Ireland, at that time under the iron heel of coercion, with Parnell and hundreds of his followers in jail, whilst outrages and murders, like those of Maamtrasma, were almost everyday occurrences.
Some of the problems of the early eighties are with us yet. Ireland is still a bone of contention between political parties: the Channel tunnel is no nearer completion: and then as now, when other topics are exhausted, the ”Spectator” can fill up its columns with Thought Transference and Psychical Research.
But other problems which then were vital, are now almost forgotten.
Electric lighting was a doubtful novelty: Mr. Bradlaugh's refusal to take the oath excited a controversy which now seems incredible. Robert Louis Stevenson can no longer be adequately described as an ”accomplished writer,” and the introduction of female clerks into the postal service by Mr. Fawcett has ceased to raise alarm lest the courteous practice of always allowing ladies to be victors in an argument should perforce be abandoned.
But in September of the same year we find a cloud on the horizon, the prelude of a coming storm. The Trade Union Congress had just been held and the leaders of the working cla.s.ses, with apparently but little discussion, had pa.s.sed a resolution asking the Government to inst.i.tute an enquiry with a view to relaxing the stringency of Poor Law administration. This, said the ”Spectator,” is beginning ”to tamper with natural conditions,” ”There is no logical halting-place between the theory that it is the duty of the State to make the poor comfortable, and socialism.”
Another factor in the thought of those days attracted but little attention in the Press, though there is a long article in the ”Spectator” at the beginning of 1882 on ”the ever-increasing wonder” of that strange faith, ”Positivism.” It is difficult for the present generation to realise how large a s.p.a.ce in the minds of the young men of the eighties was occupied by the religion invented by Auguste Comte. Of this however more must be said on a later page.
But perhaps the most significant feature in the periodical literature of the time is what it omits. April, 1882, is memorable for the death of Charles Darwin, incomparably the greatest of nineteenth-century Englishmen, if greatness be measured by the effects of his work on the thought of the world. The ”Spectator” printed a secondary article which showed some appreciation of the event. But in the monthly reviews it pa.s.sed practically unnoticed. It is true that Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey, but even in 1882, twenty-three years after the publication of the ”Origin of Species,” evolution was regarded as a somewhat dubious theorem which respectable people were wise to ignore.
In the monthly reviews we find the same odd mixture of articles apposite to present problems, and articles utterly out of date. The organisation of agriculture is a perennial, and Lady Verney's ”Peasant Proprietors.h.i.+p in France” (”Contemporary,” January, 1882), Mr. John Rae's ”Co-operative Agriculture in Germany” (”Contemporary,” March, 1882), and Professor Sedley Taylor's ”Profit-Sharing in Agriculture” (”Nineteenth Century,”
October, 1882) show that change in the methods of exploiting the soil is leaden-footed and lagging.
Problems of another cla.s.s, centring round ”the Family,” present much the same aspect now as they did thirty years ago. In his ”Infant Mortality and Married Women in Factories,” Professor Stanley Jevons (”Contemporary,” January, 1882) proposes that mothers of children under three years of age should be excluded from factories, and we are at present perhaps even farther from general agreement whether any measure on these lines ought to be adopted.
But when we read the articles on Socialism--more numerous than might be expected at that early date--we are in another world. Mr. Samuel Smith, M.P., writing on ”Social Reform” in the ”Nineteenth Century” for May, 1883, says that: ”Our country is still comparatively free from Communism and Nihilism and similar destructive movements, but who can tell how long this will continue? We have a festering ma.s.s of human wretchedness in all our great towns, which is the natural hotbed of such anarchical movements: all the great continental countries are full of this explosive material. Can we depend on our country keeping free from the infection when we have far more poverty in our midst than the neighbouring European States?” Emigration and temperance reform, he thinks, may avert the danger.
The Rev. Samuel (later Canon) Barnett in the same review a month earlier advocated Free Libraries and graduated taxation to pay for free education, under the t.i.tle of ”Practicable Socialism.” In April, 1883, Emile de Lavelaye described with alarm the ”Progress of Socialism.” ”On the Continent,” he wrote, ”Socialism is said to be everywhere.” To it he attributed with remarkable inaccuracy, the agrarian movement in Ireland, and with it he connected the fact that Henry George's new book, ”Progress and Poverty,” was selling by thousands ”in an ultra popular form” in the back streets and alleys of England. And then he goes on to allude to Prince Bismarck's ”abominable proposition to create a fund for pensioning invalid workmen by a monopoly of tobacco”!
Thirty years ago politics were only intermittently concerned with social problems. On the whole the view prevailed, at any rate amongst the leaders, that Government should interfere in such matters as little as possible. Pauperism was still to be stamped out by ruthless deterrence: education had been only recently and reluctantly taken in hand: factory inspection alone was an accepted State function. Lord Beaconsfield was dead and he had forgotten his zeal for social justice long before he attained power. Gladstone, then in the zenith of his fame, never took any real interest in social questions as we now understand them. Lord Salisbury was an aristocrat and thought as an aristocrat. John Bright viewed industrial life from the standpoint of a Lancas.h.i.+re mill-owner.