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FABIANISM AND THE FISCAL QUES- 
 TION. AN ALTERNATIVE POLICY. BY 
 ?HE FABIAN SOCIETY. DRAFTED BY 
 BERNARD SHAW. 
 
 INDON : THE FABIAN SOCIETY 
 l CLEMENT'S INN, W.C. 1904 
 
 'RICE ONE SHILLING. 
 
http://www.archive.org/details/fabianismfiscalqOOshawrich 
 
FABIANISM AND THE FISCAL QUESTION 
 
FABIANISM AND THE FISCAL QUES- 
 TION. AN ALTERNATIVE POLICY. BY 
 THE FABIAN SOCIETY. DRAFTED BY 
 BERNARD SHAW. 
 
 LONDON : THE FABIAN SOCIETY 
 3 CLEMENT'S INN, W.C. 1904 
 

EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 The literary man who places a well-known style at the disposal of 
 the Fabian Society will inevitably be credited with more than his 
 share of the opinions his pen drives home. I therefore hasten to 
 explain that though I am the penman of this Tract its authorship 
 is genuinely collective. The original draft, itself made after much 
 conference with representative members of the Society, has been 
 repeatedly amended in committee before being finally submitted to 
 the whole body of members, and reduced here and expanded there 
 to their greatest common measure. 
 
 The result of this process will be evident enough to expert 
 critics. The very important questions of dumping, of sweating in 
 foreign countries, and of the pressure of colonial opinion, have been 
 virtually omitted. There was no room for a treatment of these phe- 
 nomena sufficiently elaborate and qualified to secure the necessary 
 agreement. In dealing with the actual political controversy now 
 raging, we have had to confine ourselves to description, without 
 more partiality than the occasional liveliness of our language may 
 imply. Even as it is, careless readers will probably overlook the dis- 
 tinction made throughout between Cobden's doctrine of Free Trade, 
 which the Society repudiates, and the particular device of taxation 
 of imports. The doctrine of Free Trade is not simply that imports 
 should not be taxed, but that a country's prosperity can be secured 
 automatically by abolishing State interference with commerce, and 
 allowing everyone to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the 
 dearest. Every Factory Act and every Fair Wages Clause is a 
 
 591 
 
repudiation of Fr«3e Trade : in fact, as Mr. Balfour has remarked in 
 one of the few flashes of wit which have enlivened the controversy 
 so far, it may well be asked whether the very existence of a Govern- 
 ment is not an infraction of Free Trade. And as the nation listens 
 without confusion to Mr. Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain vying with 
 each other in solemn assurances that they are thorough Free 
 Traders in principle, and that this is indeed the very reason why 
 they seek power to impose import duties, perhaps the Fabian 
 Society may be allowed to say that it is thoroughly Protectionist in 
 principle without therefore being in the least committed to approval 
 of import duties. 
 
 As for my individual opinions, which I only mention because it 
 is so obviously vain to expect that they will be left out of account 
 by the reviewers, all I can say here is that I quite believe that if the 
 counsels given in the following pages be carried into effect by the 
 nation, we shall not need to trouble about such makeshifts as tariffs. 
 But the counsels are arduous. They will perhaps be popular on 
 that account ; for I have noticed a widespread opinion among young 
 Britons lately that the way to become strong is to lift heavy weights. 
 Personally I incline rather to the opinion that the way to lift heavy 
 weights is to become strong. With all proper respect to those of us 
 who have lately taken to describing themselves as " God's English- 
 men," I am inclined to fear that a relapse into tariffs may prove 
 more suited to our strength and sagacity than the Fabian plan, and 
 that perhaps the leave-things-alone-and-muddle-through plan is still 
 more in our line than tariff making. Democracy has given us a 
 power which we have neither been bred to use nor schooled to 
 understand : the vote, flung at us as if it were a talisman that would 
 make magicians of us, is but the latest quack remedy for ailments 
 that only the profoundest political science can treat successfully. 
 In this controversy the number of even our legislators who have 
 
7 
 shewn any knowledge of its merest ABC can be counted on the 
 ringers of one of the hands of an employee in an American sawmill. 
 Our ignorance is frightful. However, no doubt it will be as easy 
 for a group of determined manufacturers, with the aid of plenty 
 of money and a capable agitator, to force the nation from free 
 imports into taxed ones, as it was for them in the forties to force 
 the nation from taxed corn to free corn. For my own part, there- 
 fore, I have hitherto tried to advise the working folk how to make 
 the best of it when they are so forced rather than to offer them 
 alternative methods which we all seem to me morally and intellectu- 
 ally incapable of pursuing. Nobody will be better pleased than I 
 if I have under-rated myself and my neighbors. 
 
 Finally, may I inform purchasers of this edition de luxe (for such 
 it is) that they can obtain as many plain copies as they desire from 
 the Secretary of the Fabian Society, 3 Clement's Inn, London, W.C., 
 at the reasonable rate of a penny each, or ninepence per dozen. 
 The present more costly form has been issued with a view to the 
 profit of the bookseller, the dignity of the reviewer, and the luxuri- 
 ous tastes of the plutocratic classes. 
 
 G. B. S. 
 
FABIANISM AND THE 
 FISCAL QUESTION. . . 
 
 The ease with which Mr. Chamberlain has reopened a question 
 which for fifty years has been marked off by all parties as closed in 
 English practical politics, is perhaps the severest blow the triumph- 
 ant Whig anti-Socialism of the nineteenth century has yet received. 
 The establishment of Free Imports seemed as stable and final as the 
 disestablishment of the Irish Church, of Purchase in the Army, of 
 duelling, and of the property qualification for the franchise. 
 
 Now it is not for a Socialist Society to undertake the rehabilita- 
 tion of its old enemies the Whigs. The Socialists have all along 
 urged, in season and out of season, that the triumphs of modern 
 commercial civilization, whether under tariffs abroad or under the 
 Free Import system at home, were and are rotten at the foundation. 
 Besides, in so far as Protection means the deliberate interference of 
 the State with trade, both foreign and domestic, for the regulation 
 of prices and wages, the dictation of the terms of contracts, the 
 resolute social moralization of competition, the choice of our markets 
 and our industries, and, in general, the subordination of commercial 
 enterprise to national ends, Socialism has no quarrel with it : on the 
 contrary, Socialism is in these respects ultra-Protectionist. The 
 Fabian Society in particular has demanded extensive and energetic 
 State interference with trade, both to suppress sweating at home 
 and to guide and assist our exporters abroad. In short, there is no 
 objection to a tariff or any other form of State interference as such 
 from the Socialist point of view on the ground of economic or poli- 
 tical principle. But what Socialist has ever dreamt of demanding a 
 tariff of taxes on imports as a panacea for social ills ? The reason 
 for this indifference on the part of the Socialists to Protectionist 
 agitation is clear enough. All that tariffs can do has been done 
 in Germany and the United States. The results are, to say the 
 least, very far from millennial. The subjection of the State to the 
 capitalist interest could not very well be more complete than it is in 
 America ; and the subjection of labor to both the nobility and the 
 capitalists is carried in Germany to lengths which we have outgrown 
 in England. 
 
IO 
 
 Further, Socialism is international in tradition and sentiment. 
 The appeal to popular jealousy of the foreigner jars on the Socialist 
 instead of exciting him. Neither Mr. Chamberlain nor Lord Rose- 
 bery would be received in a congress of English Socialists as cordially 
 as M. Jaures or Herr August Bebel. International trade is welcome 
 to the Socialist, quite apart from its commercial profit, as a restraint 
 on war and a developer of international intercourse and interdepend- 
 ence : in short, to use the old Socialist watchword, of human solid- 
 arity. The Fabian Society knows very well that British Socialism 
 must develop nationally as a British product on British initative, 
 and must not, like Anacharsis Klootz and the old Liberal cosmo- 
 politans and Socialists of the eighteen-sixties, assume the end before 
 it has achieved the beginning ; but it has not slackened its grip of 
 the fact that the fundamental interests of labor are continuous 
 throughout civilization in spite of all the frontiers, and that if capit- 
 alists and capitalist governments cannot agree, that is a much better 
 reason for getting rid of both than for putting additional fiscal 
 weapons into their hands. On the whole, its prepossessions are not 
 on the side of aggressive nationalism. 
 
 However, though the Fabians did not raise the Fiscal Con- 
 troversy, and flatly deny that either Mr. Chamberlain's or Lord 
 Rosebery's solution of it will bring about any radical improvement 
 in the condition of our industrial population, there is no reason why 
 the Society should not seize the opportunity, not to take sides, but to 
 emphasize its own demands. It is not sorry to see those Liberals 
 who would not listen to the Fabians confronted with a formidable 
 agitation for something that shocks them still more than Fabianism. 
 Once more, then, the Fabian Society invites the British citizen to 
 forget for a moment that he is a Conservative or Liberal partisan, 
 and to look round him and see how his country stands. 
 
 Our social condition is beyond all question extremely disgraceful 
 to us. Our commercial prosperity is no index of real prosperity : 
 it is a prosperity that is shared by our pawnshops, our workhouses, 
 our prisons, our hospitals, and our lunatic asylums. The Corn 
 Laws were repealed in 1846. A year later, we took a turn at 
 the opposite principle — that of State Interference and Regulation 
 — by passing the Ten Hours Act of 1847, which we made really 
 effective in 1850. Since then we have taken import duties off 
 and put legislation on as the need of the moment drove us, flourish- 
 
II 
 
 ing the principles of the Manchester school one day and flouting 
 them the next. By the close of the nineteenth century we had 
 made an end of all the protective import duties ; and we had also 
 made an end of Laisser-faire. Lord George Bentinck was dead ; but 
 Bastiat was, if possible, deader. If there was one thing that experi- 
 ence had proved more certainly than another it was that commerce 
 is no more exempt from the need of energetic State regulation than 
 any other department of civilized life, and that the Manchester mil- 
 lennium of u the economic harmonies " was the silliest of all the 
 Utopias. And if there was one proposition that was more question- 
 able than all the others, it was that the industrial "leaps and bounds" 
 of the second half of the nineteenth century were the outcome of a 
 single cause, and that cause the abolition of the old protective 
 tariff. 
 
 In the face of all this, the twentieth century is not yet four years 
 old when Mr. Chamberlain's proposal to revive the tariff is met by 
 nothing more plausible than a revival of the exploded economics and 
 " natural freedom " sociology of Bastiat, supported by a desperate 
 claim that everything that has been gained since 1846 has been 
 gained by Free Trade. If the Liberal leaders can do no better than 
 this, their ultimate defeat is certain. The nation is tired of the 
 Cobden Club ; and unless the case for Free Trade is given fresh air 
 and shewn in modern lights — above all, unless it is purged of its old 
 confusion of industrial freedom with industrial anarchy, and renounces 
 its claims to the credit of the vast social improvement produced 
 by Collectivist measures which its doctrinaires notoriously resisted, 
 the electorate will spew it out from mere nausea. The Liberal chiefs 
 are still counting on the working man as by nature a Liberal, a Free 
 Trader, a Church Disestablisher : in short, a Gladstonian. He is 
 nothing of the sort. He had not much voting power before 1885 : 
 to-day he can sweep all the constituencies. He may not trouble 
 himself much about the failure of Cobden's prophecies, so much 
 insisted on by Mr. Chamberlain, as to the adoption of Free Trade by 
 the rest of the world ; but he is still saturated with the tradition of 
 the time when the Trade Unions proved that the pseudo political 
 economy of the Cobdenites, with its ingenious demonstrations of the 
 ruin that must ensue from Factory Legislation, and of the existence 
 of a Wages Fund against which Trade Unionism must struggle in 
 vain, was an anti-social imposture devised in the interests of the 
 
12 
 
 manufacturers. That sort of political economy was banished to 
 Saturn ; and it will take something more to stop Mr. Chamberlain — 
 if he is to be stopped — than a parade of its ghost by the Cobden 
 Club. 
 
 Unfortunately, the only effect on our rulers of the decay of the 
 Manchester school seems to be a conviction that nothing is left to us 
 except to relapse helplessly into the status quo ante by a simple 
 return to the ancient tariff system. It is perhaps natural that old 
 men should think so ; and old men are powerful in England, where 
 reputations are made so slowly that it seems almost impossible for 
 anyone to become a popular idol before the age of seventy, by which 
 time the idol is succumbing to the facile enthusiasms of old age, and 
 losing all touch with contemporary realities. In our civil, military 
 and naval services this danger is provided against by superannuation 
 at sixty-five. The treasury bench, however, being the seat of 
 government, is not supposed to matter : it remains available even 
 for centenarians. Mr. Morley's famous biography has just set us 
 reflecting very seriously on the last twenty years of the life of Glad- 
 stone. He had then at last attained the honors of popular idolatry 
 as the Grand Old Man ; and he could use them only to destroy his 
 party. Home Rule as the conviction of Mr. Redmond's prime one 
 can treat seriously. As the infatuation of Gladstone's old age, it 
 helped neither Ireland nor England. 
 
 Now in a national emergency like the present, when so much 
 depends on the personality of Mr. Chamberlain, it is impossible to 
 ignore the fact that he is approaching the dangerous age, and that 
 the symptoms are sufficiently Gladstonian to suggest caution in 
 accepting his leadership in a matter in which his feelings are evi- 
 dently strongly and sincerely engaged. Evidently, that is, to all 
 except the veterans on the Liberal front bench and the unthinking 
 heirs of their weather-beaten opinions. To them, as we all know, 
 Mr. Chamberlain still seems a young, agile and unscrupulous political 
 intriguer, caressed by duchesses, and openly deficient in sincerity. 
 We need not apologize for dismissing this elderly babble without 
 discussion. It is of a piece with the reproach made twenty years 
 ago to the Fabian Society by an aged Scotch clergyman, who de- 
 nounced Socialism as "a mistaken idea derived from a recent German 
 atheist named Hegel." No doubt Mr. Chamberlain was a young 
 man when our official Liberals (mostly younger) became fossilized. If 
 
13 
 
 they live to see his hundredth birthday, they will regard it as simply 
 another piece of impudence on the part of " pushful Joe." But to 
 those who are out of patience with the staleness and puerility of the 
 old party game, and who take politics seriously, it is plain enough 
 that Mr. Chamberlain's enthusiasm for the Empire is as sincere as 
 Gladstone's enthusiasm for Home Rule was. That is precisely what 
 makes Mr. Chamberlain dangerous. Enthusiasm is infectious : poli- 
 tical intrigue is not. The stock Liberal gibe at Mr. Chamberlain is 
 to compare him to the harlequin with his coat of many colors. But 
 the harlequin is the man who sets everything right. The performer 
 who sets everything wrong in transports of elderly emotion is the 
 pantaloon. Ever since the Fabian Society was founded it has had 
 to struggle with a plague of pantaloons in politics ; and it will per- 
 haps be excused for saying that Mr. Chamberlain, with all his energy, 
 is hardly young enough to be a Fabian pioneer. It therefore 
 approaches the subject without any bias in favor of Mr. Chamber- 
 lain's leadership, though also without any assumption of political 
 capacity or economic knowledge on the part of his parliamentary 
 opponents. But it knows that even if Mr. Chamberlain's Protection- 
 ism is an infatuation, there are young and vigorous men behind him 
 with whom it is a reasoned conviction, and powerful interests 
 which will organize the Tariff movement as energetically and finance 
 it as lavishly as the Anti-Corn Law movement in 1846. 
 
 The Case for the Tariff. 
 
 Two objects are professed by the Tariff party. One is to hold the 
 Empire together ; the other to protect the English producer. The 
 two must be carefully discriminated, because many people who be- 
 lieve in the advantages of Free Imports would sacrifice them for the 
 sake of the Empire, just as New South Wales sacrificed them the other 
 day for the sake of the Australian Commonwealth. To them the 
 original proposal of a Zollverein was tempting, because the use of the 
 German word implied a Customs Union similar to that of the German 
 Empire or the United States : that is, a Customs Union on the basis 
 of Free Trade within the Empire. This aspiration has been rudely 
 strangled by the flat refusal of the Colonies to admit our manufactures 
 freely. Consequently the Zollverein is off; and the present Colonial 
 demand is that we should set up a tariff for the sole purpose of 
 exempting the Colonies from it, wholly or partially, thus manu- 
 
14 
 
 facturing for them, at our own expense (as the Free Traders contend), 
 an advantage over their European and American competitors for 
 our markets. This is obviously a very different proposal from the 
 Zollverein one. It may be worth while to consider it ; but it is im- 
 possible to be touched by it as an exhibition of filial attachment to 
 the Mother of Heroes. Hence Mr. Chamberlain's struggle to obtain 
 from the Colonies an offer of substantial preferences for us at the 
 Colonial Custom Houses, and the somewhat melancholy tone of his 
 last conference with the Colonial Premiers. 
 
 The second object of the tariff party : that of protecting the 
 home producer, means different things to different people. The 
 patriotic Imperialists and the scientific protectionists believe, rightly 
 or wrongly, that in Germany, in the north of Italy, and in the 
 United States, protective tariffs have built up, in some departments, 
 more highly developed and scientifically managed industries than 
 our own. They intend, accordingly, to support Mr. Chamberlain 
 in his proposal to follow the example of Bismarck and McKinley. 
 But the ordinary protectionist man of business has far narrower 
 views : he only desires relief from the pressure of competition, and 
 supports the proposed new departure because he thinks a tariff will 
 take his German and American competitors off his back. Now these 
 two views contradict one another. If a tariff really develops indus- 
 trial organization and forces manufacturers to put brains and science 
 as well as business instincts into their work, it can do so only by 
 increasing the pressure of home competition more than it relieves 
 the pressure of foreign competition. Consequently the tariff, far 
 from promising the desired relief to the ordinary tradesman, threatens 
 to turn the screw on him harder than Free Imports can turn it, and 
 is, in fact, advocated on that ground by the disinterested protectionist 
 economists as well as by the stronger employers and combinations of 
 employers who know that in such an intensified competitive struggle 
 the smaller fry would have no chance against them. If you ask a 
 Sheffield steel manufacturer whether he will vote for you if you shut 
 the gates of England on Solingen, he will say yes. If you ask him 
 whether he will vote for you if you enable a British Steel Trust to 
 commence operations in his neighborhood, he will say no, unless he 
 feels strong enough to compel a TVust to include him or buy him out 
 instead of extinguishing him. But the Free Traders are determined 
 to reassure him on these points. They contend that if the protec- 
 
15 
 
 tionist economists were not hopelessly behind the times they would 
 know that intense home competition under protection is never per- 
 manent, leading always directly to combination against the consumer. 
 Mr. Oppenheimer, Consul-General at Frankfurt-on-Maine, says in his 
 1900 report that u the price policy of syndicates will prevent modern 
 protective duties from benefiting the public of a protected country, 
 as was formerly the case when they still fostered a sound home 
 competition." There is comfort for the weak concerns, too, in Mr. 
 Oppenheimer's report for 1902. u Syndicates [in Germany] practic- 
 ally do away with competition, which had led to technical improve- 
 ments and inventions. As syndicates take in tow also weak concerns, 
 natural selection among the works of the same branch ceases ; and 
 it has not yet been proved that this is counterbalanced by the 
 endeavors of the various members of the syndicates to occupy a 
 prominent position in the same." Now every word said here by 
 Mr. Oppenheimer in disparagement of Protection, recommends it to 
 the Sheffield manufacturers. They want to be relieved from com- 
 petition ; to be guaranteed against having their prices cut ; and to 
 be taken in tow by powerful combinations when they are weak, 
 instead of being extinguished by competition. Thus the stars in 
 their courses seem to fight for Mr. Chamberlain ; for the opposition 
 between private and public interests which our individualist system 
 of industry creates makes it almost impossible for the Free Trader to 
 attack Protection on public grounds without recommending it on 
 private ones. There was a time when Free Imports obviously paid 
 the British manufacturer, and the Corn Laws did not. The result 
 was that Cobden was enabled to take the field with a war chest of 
 nearly half a million. To-day many of the manufacturers are con- 
 tending vigorously that Free Imports do not pay them ; and the 
 Free Trader can only reply by demonstrating, rightly or wrongly, 
 that Free Imports pay the nation. But what does the manufacturer 
 care about the nation ? All the nation does for him is to provide a 
 workhouse for him if he fails to make money. The nation still 
 repudiates Socialism ; and it cannot have its Unsocialism both ways. 
 If we will not conduct our own industries for our own benefit, we 
 must not be surprised if the manufacturer takes us at our word and 
 looks after himself instead of after us. 
 
i6 
 
 Protection and Labor. 
 
 As to the employee in the steel works, he, of course, does not 
 hesitate for a moment. The less steel made in Germany and the 
 more in England, the better for him. In vain will the Free Trader 
 implore him to remember his brother whose bread is earned in the 
 trades that produce the exports that now pay for the imported 
 German steel. He will blithely reply that they can come into the 
 steel trade ; and the Free Trader cannot very well retort with Mr. 
 Chamberlain's argument that you cannot teach new tricks to an old 
 dog. A nation never grows old, and must be always learning new 
 tricks if it is to keep its place in the world. In fact, the employee's 
 argument is unanswerable unless it can be proved either that we 
 cannot make steel as well as other nations do, or else that we are 
 capable of rendering to the rest of the world services of so much 
 greater value than steel making, that it is not worth our while to 
 make steel, whether we can make it as well as the foreigner or not, 
 or even whether we can make it better. But how can such a pre- 
 tension be proved ? What guarantee have we, with our present 
 tolerance of sweating, that if we lose steel it will not be replaced by 
 pickles and jam, by slops, cordage, soap, "slaughtered" furniture, 
 rubber goods and oil cloth, rather than by the products of the 
 chemist, the electrician, the philosopher, poet, legislator, or whoever 
 else may be accepted as more important to mankind than the steel 
 smelter ? Here again the changed conditions of the world's industry 
 alter the force of the political appeal. In 1846 it was clear that we 
 could hold our steel trade against the world, because we made steel 
 better than any other nation could. But in doing so we taught our 
 customers how to make steel for themselves ; and the development 
 of electric power has completed the lesson by making an Italian or 
 Swiss waterfall as valuable as a Yorkshire coal mine. There are few 
 manufactures now that one nation cannot carry on as easily as 
 another when once it gets its hand in and its resources developed. 
 It would be hard to persuade us nowadays that Belgium and Ger- 
 many cannot make steel for themselves as well as for one another ; 
 and what is true of these contiguous countries is equally true of 
 England, the United States, Japan and Lombardy. In all such 
 industries the substitution of home production for purchase from 
 abroad can be effected by import duties without decrease of employ- 
 ment, which is the only point that interests the employee. Clearly, 
 
we have a case here which, whether it be right or wrong, is, 
 to say the very least, plausible enough for electioneering purposes. 
 It is by no means ill-calculated to carry the day with the operative 
 steel worker and his fellows in cognate industries when it is backed, 
 as it is, by his obvious and immediate interest as a vendor of 
 labor. 
 
 Free Trade and Labor. 
 
 When we pass on to industries permanently handicapped in 
 England by climatic conditions and British idiosyncratic inaptitude, 
 the Free Trade position is undeniable : international trade is clearly 
 a labor-saving device. But here the vice of our proletarian system 
 instantly asserts itself. The vendor of labor is never favorable to 
 labor-saving devices. Machinery had to be forced on the proletariat 
 at the point of the bayonet ; and to this day it is welcomed only by 
 the organized trades whose piecework lists enable them to secure 
 a share of the increased output. Stuart Mill pointed out long ago 
 that machinery had not lightened the toil of the working classes, 
 and had beggared many of them without compensation. Precisely 
 the same thing may be said of Free Imports. No doubt also pre- 
 cisely the same thing may be said of Protective Tariffs. But the 
 resultant indifference of the proletariat to benefits which it does not 
 share throws it back on its own immediate personal interest in the 
 labor market. The more convincingly the Free Trader demon- 
 strates that under Protection we should need more labor to supply 
 our wants than at present, the more strongly he recommends it to 
 the man who lives by selling labor. When that man has con- 
 sidered the matter deeply enough to understand that the price 
 of labor is limited by its product, he is generally a Socialist who 
 knows also that wages annually fall short of that limit by no less 
 than ^650,000,000 of rent and interest, and that until they absorb 
 that ^650,000,000, the need of the organizer of industry for more 
 hands is the opportunity of the laborer. It is true that the more 
 skilled of the pro-Tariff economists are prepared to prove that the 
 effect of a Tariff would be just the opposite ; that it would stimulate 
 the employer to higher efficiency in method and greater economy 
 in unskilled labor. But the pro-Tariff economist takes particular 
 care to do nothing of the sort when he addresses the working 
 classes. 
 
i8 
 
 The Free Traders, on the other hand, urge their unpopular labor- 
 saving theory on every platform. The corollary that the more 
 labor and capital we save in one industry the more we shall have for 
 developing another, commends itself as little to the man displaced by 
 the international division of labor as it did to the man displaced by 
 machinery. Even the appeal to him not "to tax the food of the 
 people" is not so conclusive as those who urge it think. Any vege- 
 tarian or teetotaller can testify to the intense hostility of the working 
 classes to any demonstration of the practicability of cheaper feeding. 
 Demonstrations that the cost of living has risen are, on the contrary, 
 highly popular. The reason is plain. Unregulated, unorganized labor 
 — that is, the labor of the bulk of our proletariat — can, under our 
 present system, hope for no higher wages than will keep it alive. 
 Reduce that cost ; and an equivalent fall in wages will be produced 
 by the competition of the unemployed, who are always with us, 
 though we treat them as negligible when their numbers fall below 
 the point at which they cease to trouble us by agitations. This 
 " iron law of wages " has been the theme of the Labor orator ever 
 since the phrase was brought into vogue by Lassalle, who seized on 
 the admission of the orthodox economists that subsistence wages are 
 " the natural price of labor." Even Trade Unionism struggles for no 
 more than the recognition, maintenance, and steadying of this 
 standard by means of " a living wage." It is the greatest mistake to 
 suppose that prosperity is associated in the laborer's imagination 
 with cheapness. That is the notion of the middle class man with a 
 stable position and a fixed income. Cheapness to the laborer connotes 
 poverty. This may seem unreasonable, just as his association of war 
 and high prices with "good times" may seem unreasonable, and 
 would actually be so in a Socialist State. But under our social 
 system the consumer's extremity is the producer's opportunity ; and 
 to threaten a producer with high prices is like threatening a glazier 
 with a hailstorm. You may dismay a workman's wife by telling her 
 that boots and bread will be dearer under Protection ; but her hus- 
 band, who will probably leave it to her to make both ends meet, 
 has a lurking expectation that even if Mr. Chamberlain breaks his 
 pledge and puts more on bread than he takes off tea, yet an 
 increased cost of living will mean a rise in wages. If you tell him 
 that wages are lower in protected Europe, he admits it with some 
 contempt for the foreigner, but reminds you that they are higher 
 
19 
 
 in protected "Anglo-Saxon" America. He may be virtually wrong 
 in either case or in both ; but we are here dealing with probabilities 
 as to his electoral attitude towards the fiscal controversy and not 
 with the soundness of his views or the accuracy of his information. 
 If the working classes were preponderantly Radical in politics, as the 
 Reformers of 1832 and 1846 erroneously believed them to be, the 
 high standing of Free Trade among the Liberal traditions might 
 count for something. But they are preponderantly Conservative : so 
 much so that since their enfranchisement in 1884 the only brand 
 of Democracy they have tolerated — outside municipal Progressivism, 
 which repudiates Free Trade in labor — has been Tory Democracy. 
 
 The Case for Free Trade. 
 
 Let us now turn from the inducements of Protection to the real 
 strength of the Free Trade position. Free Trade has its heroic side : 
 Cobden was something more than the mouthpiece of the sordid 
 manufacturing interests of the forties ; and his doctrine is as applic- 
 able to the new conditions as to the old, though it makes much 
 greater demands on the national mind and character, and has no 
 such overwhelming backing of immediate commercial interest. 
 
 Let us assume that for all practical purposes there is now no 
 permanent need for international trade between civilized nations in 
 machinery and textiles, in metal-work, wood-work, brick-work, glass- 
 work, or, indeed, in anything but natural products — that each nation, 
 after a protected apprenticeship, can do all this work for itself just as 
 skilfully and cheaply as any of the others. To the Protectionist this 
 seems a decisive concession. Convinced as he is that by a com- 
 bination of tariffs with price manipulation and dumping, those com- 
 petitors who enjoy all the economies of production on a very large 
 scale can capture our existing markets, he asks whether, when there 
 is no economic advantage to be gained by it, we intend deliberately 
 to allow ourselves to become as dependent on the foreigner for every 
 article in our houses, including the fabric of the house itself, and for 
 every stitch of clothes on our backs, as we now are for our food. The 
 super-Cobdenite answer is simply Why not ? Why does a Prime 
 Minister or a poet, an Archbishop or an astronomer, recklessly make 
 himself dependent for the blacking of his boots and the cooking of 
 his dinner on a class which is in continual strife with his own ? Why 
 does he not clamor for Protective legislation to secure for him a 
 
20 
 
 share in the bootblacking and the cooking industry ? Clearly because 
 he has mastered a more difficult function, and knows that it is worth 
 his household's while to perform the easier one for him. Far from 
 being disabled by his exclusion from the common drudgeries of 
 civilization, he finds his wealth, power and importance greatly 
 increased. He accepts the theory of staple industries without 
 reserve, and insists that his own industry is a more important staple 
 than agriculture, because man does not live by bread alone. 
 
 Therefore, says the super-Cobdenite, let any of our present indus- 
 tries go if it must : we can find something better to do, and pay for 
 our imports with the fruit of higher work. Now, whatever else this 
 doctrine may be, it is not sordid. Nor can it be bluntly dismissed 
 as unpractical ; for the process it contemplates is one which no 
 tariff can finally stand against if we are capable of higher occupations 
 than our present ones. It may become the avowed policy of the 
 world when social integration obliterates frontiers and effects those 
 simple socialist preliminaries, in the absence of which industry is 
 only an organization of robbery. Even as it is, a strong case can be 
 made for it. At worst, though we are clearly no cleverer than our 
 neighbors at present, yet Necessity is the mother of Invention ; and 
 if the supplantation of all our industries by foreign competition, 
 which is theoretically a possible phenomenon under Free Trade, forced 
 on us the alternative of facing starvation or else finding some new 
 employment for our brains and labor, we probably should not all 
 die, though some of us might before the rest were convinced of the 
 reality and imminence of the danger, like the unfortunate Tuscan 
 strawplaiters who cling, for twopence a day, to an industry in which 
 they have to compete with Chinese women chopstick-fed with rice 
 by their sweaters lest their hands should have to stop work for a 
 moment. We very wisely exchanged strawplaiting for straw hat- 
 making ; and nobody doubts that Luton is all the better for it. 
 But a general supplantation is still only a vision. Before it comes, 
 all possible improvements in methods of production have to be ex- 
 hausted. Now it is not credible that we have yet got further than 
 the threshold of the mechanical developments that lie before us. 
 We have not yet harnessed the tides to our power factories,* nor 
 taken the house-to-house distribution of electric power and the use 
 
 * See Britain and the British Seas, by H. J. Mackinder (London : Heinemann ; 1902). 
 
21 
 
 of machine tools in highly skilled fingers seriously in hand. Until we 
 do, a return to protection may well seem to the super-Cobdenite 
 a mere refuge for laziness and a respite for obsolescence. 
 
 The Socialist Free Trader. 
 
 Certain obvious replies to this are discounted when the Free 
 Trader is also a Socialist. For instance, the fact that Venice sank 
 when her trade left her, and that what happened in Venice has 
 happened in all the other States and cities which have been left high 
 and dry by changes in the currents of trade, is not conclusive as to 
 future developments. The defeated trades and methods, like the old 
 handloom weavers in England, have always begun the decay by 
 starving themselves in a desperate attempt to undersell the victorious 
 foreign product. The Socialist Free Trader advocates a statutory 
 Minimum Wage, with such an extension of our Factory Legislation 
 that an industry would be abandoned the moment it ceased 
 to support its employees at the full national standard of living. 
 If Venice had known this modern political device, and had been 
 forced by it to choose between sudden death and (say) the Suez 
 Canal, before her energy had been sapped by poverty, she might 
 possibly have made the canal and even invented the turbine steamer, 
 or, at least, established the best fleet of Cape liners in Europe. Un- 
 fortunately, Venice had cheap labor, the greatest curse under which 
 a State can groan. If the United States beat us in mechanical 
 invention in the nineteenth century, it was because their labor was, 
 happily for them, so dear. If we engaged a hundred laborers to do 
 the work of two Americans with a hydraulic lift or a steam crane, 
 the reason was that human life was cheaper than machinery in Eng- 
 land and dearer in America. If the twentieth century Free Trader, 
 unlike Cobden and his followers, combines freedom of imports with 
 the resolute enforcement by law of a high standard of living for 
 labor at home, so that the fatal path of competition in cheapness 
 founded on sweating is barred, and only the upward path of increased 
 efficiency in production, or the opening up of new and higher 
 industries (in short, the advancement of civilization) remains open, 
 he is on new ground, and the rout of the Manchester economists 
 by the Bismarck-Chamberlainite school does not affect him. The 
 supplantation by foreign competition of all the trades lamented by 
 the Birmingham Tariff Reform League, including even the fiftieth 
 
22 
 
 annual and positively final ruin of the Welsh tin plate trade, leaves 
 him as tranquil as the Jews are left by their withdrawal from 
 husbandry to finance, or, as it might be fashionably called, "the ruin 
 of Jewish agriculture." All we have to do is to meet foreign com- 
 petition by improving our methods (as in sugar refining) up to the 
 limit of possibility ; and if we are then surpassed in economy of pro- 
 duction for any reason whatever, we can surrender the industry 
 without regret, and make ourselves dependent on other nations for 
 it as frankly as we have made ourselves dependent for wheat, at the 
 same time entering on a higher industry to get the wherewithal to 
 pay for our imports. If, in the future, Russia or America builds all 
 the ships in Europe, manufactures all the house fittings, makes all 
 the hardware and soft goods, and, in short, as far as the ordinary 
 everyday commodities of civilization are concerned, reduces the 
 rest of the world to the dependence of a Rothschild, whilst the other 
 nations emulate one another in scientific and learned handicrafts or 
 headicrafts, the only party to the transaction who need complain of 
 having the worst of the bargain will be Russia or America as the 
 case may be. It is easy to object on the ground of the unwhole- 
 someness of excessive specialization ; but factory industry without 
 abundant leisure and good wages is specialization gone mad. The 
 higher pursuits carry their own cure for specialization ; for no one 
 can work at them profitably for long hours ; and the specialists 
 of the higher professions are the amateurs of a hundred sports, 
 athletic and artistic, and even of a hundred industries, from forestry 
 and haymaking to roadmaking. In fact, though division of labor 
 among slaves and proletaries may be and has been carried to a 
 dehumanizing extreme, it has no terrors for the Socialist Free 
 Trader ; whilst the ideal of perfect independence and self-sufficiency, 
 whether for individuals or nations, is, in his view, absurd beyond all 
 reasonable tolerance. 
 
 Our worst danger lies in the possibility of the United Kingdom 
 investing its capital in this hypothetical Russia, and living on its 
 dividends, making the whole country a magnified Nice or Mentone, 
 with huge imports, no exports, and a population of retainers minis- 
 tering to an idle and worthless rich class ; but as this is an evil 
 which is rampant already, and will have to be sternly extirpated by 
 Socialism, protection or no protection, Free Trade or no Free Trade, 
 if we are not to go the way of Rome or Babylon, no Socialist can 
 
23 
 
 include it as a factor in his political theory of the future. It is silly 
 to take measures against the foreign producer whilst submitting like 
 sheep to the exactions of the unproductive consumer at home. No 
 producer, whatever his nationality, can injure us as our own idlers 
 injure us ; and in spite of the parliamentary conspiracy of silence on 
 this point, it will remain the true centre of the industrial problem, 
 and of the moral and patriotic problem, until we have courage and 
 character enough to face it and set our idlers to work. If we persist 
 in plutocracy, nothing will be of any use : we shall simply go to the 
 devil with our eyes open. What is the use of ignoring the glaring 
 fact that the tariffs of the protectionist countries have not solved a 
 single social problem for them ? Their populations are just as poor, 
 their bankruptcies as frequent, their crises of unemployment as 
 acute, their slums as squalid as ours. Protection is precisely like 
 Free Trade in the fact that when either system displaces a trade 
 the workers suffer the worst of the ruin, and when it multiplies its 
 gains the prize money is riddled through a ladder and the proprietary 
 class gets what falls between the rungs. 
 
 The Confusion of Tongues. 
 
 Another practical political question of the hour is whether, 
 pending the actual planking down of Mr. Chamberlain's tariff— for 
 the original ten per cent, proposals, having served their purpose of 
 opening the discussion, may now be discarded— any real agreement 
 can be found among the partisans who have been taking sides on 
 the question of Free Trade versus Protection since October, 1903. 
 Consider again the double object of the Tariff agitation : the further 
 integration of the Empire, and the protection of British industry 
 from foreign competition. Each is put forward as a stalking-horse 
 for its fellow ; and the result, for the ordinary citizen, is the usual 
 British muddle, our political orators and leader writers slipping from 
 one point of view to the other, and condemning all discrimination 
 between them as " inconsistent." Many " little Englanders " covet 
 Protection so keenly that they are ready to sacrifice their anti- 
 Imperialism for it. Many Free Traders desire the Empire so 
 ardently that they are ready to sacrifice Free Imports to it. Many 
 Socialists who believe in Free Imports would sacrifice United States 
 wheat for a statutory minimum wage, and German steel for nation- 
 alization of railways. Many Protectionist Socialists dare not trust 
 
2 4 
 
 our present class Governments and their lobbies with the power of 
 manipulating tariffs. The cross currents of interest and theory are 
 so numerous that even in parliament, where party discipline is 
 forced to the utmost, we have the Conservatives divided into Free 
 Importers, Retaliatory Free Fooders, and Chamberlainites ; whilst on 
 the Liberal side the old divisions between Anti-Socialists and Col- 
 lectivists (alias Whigs and Progressives), Roseberyites and Banner- 
 manites, are now complicated by a Liberal Tariff League opposing 
 the Cobdenites, and indeed by the very divisions on the Fiscal 
 Question that have appeared on the opposite side of the House. 
 No doubt the popular newspaper division between Balfourite and 
 Chamberlainite is a blunder : Mr. Balfour has certainly done all that 
 man could do to explain that he is ready for Mr. Chamberlain's 
 program as soon as the country is ready for it, and that nothing 
 short of it will be of any use. None the less, two sorts of tariff 
 are possible : one to tax imported manufactures and leave food 
 free, thereby accepting our dependence for wheat on the United 
 States and Russia, and on the Argentine for mutton, as frankly 
 as we accept our necessary dependence on China for Chinese tea ; 
 and the other to tax not only manufactures but food imported 
 from outside the Empire, with a view to make the Empire self- 
 sufficing as to food by substituting Canadian for United States 
 wheat and New Zealand mutton for South American. Add to the 
 intelligent exponents of these two views the unintelligent people 
 who, vaguely assenting to the cry for a weapon to retaliate with in 
 tariff wars, imagine that a retaliatory tariff need not be preferential 
 and does not violate " the true principles of Free Trade." Set 
 against them the superstitious people who believe that the Napoleonic 
 episode of the big and little loaf was a Cobdenite episode. Finally, 
 imagine the effect of coming to business in the House of Commons 
 with a tariff on 2,000 articles, with Mr. Chamberlain fighting his way 
 in committee through the opposition raised by quite unforeseen 
 practical reactions of his proposals, with supporters attacking him 
 here, and opponents rallying to him there, according to the special 
 incidence of this or that item of the great tariff; and some faint 
 notion may be gathered of the approaching confusion, and of the 
 absurdity of supposing that there is any single clue, in the shape of 
 an abstract principle, that will guide our statesmen and electors 
 through it. 
 
Another Way Out. 
 
 On the whole, it is fortunate that tariff manipulation is not the 
 only active course open to us. There are other ways of helping our 
 oversea commerce ; and as those ways fortunately involve important 
 instalments of Socialism, the Fabian Society desires to draw attention 
 to them, knowing that their Socialistic character will recommend 
 them at once to the intelligence of the country, and shock nobody 
 but its ancient politicians. Further, they are badly needed in any 
 case, and will, in fact, have to be dealt with whether the Govern- 
 ments of the next ten years be Free Trade or Protectionist. 
 
 The Empire. 
 
 First, there is the question ol the enormous distances which 
 separate the provinces of the empire. If these distances were over 
 land instead of over sea, the empire would be impossible. As it is, they 
 constitute a striking difference between us and the German Empire, 
 the United States, and indeed all the other world-powers, which, 
 except for their African territories, are, so to speak, ring-fenced. A 
 glance at the map of the world will shew how natural it is that 
 Bavaria should be federated with Wurtemburg and Illinois with 
 Indiana, and how absurd it is that Jamaica should be an append- 
 age of England and that Canada should maintain armed forces and 
 custom houses against the United States. Such incidents as the flat 
 refusal of Canada to contribute to our fleet on the express ground 
 that she intends to have a fleet of her own, and of Australia to 
 admit our exports freely, shew how determined our colonists are 
 that the bond between us shall not be one of dependence or subjec- 
 tion. They do not want to cut the painter ; but they will keep the 
 axe in their own hands. Considering that these distant Dominions 
 and Commonwealths, though on many points much more Conservative 
 in sentiment than we are, are practically as Republican in their social 
 atmosphere as Switzerland, whilst Imperialism in England is associ- 
 ated with a revival of court influence and aristocratic prestige, is it 
 not at least possible that there will be a considerable revulsion of 
 feeling among the colonial premiers and their class as soon as they 
 become sufficiently familiar with London society to realize the ex- 
 clusiveness of our system and the frivolity and idleness of the 
 colleagues it will saddle them with ? The notion that the forces 
 making for disintegration can be neutralized by ten per cent, pre- 
 
26 
 
 ferential duties is not worth discussing : indeed the raising of the 
 fiscal question seems at least as likely to reveal our commercial 
 antagonisms as our community of interests. And the huge distances 
 will be mighty forces on the side of disintegration unless we abolish 
 them. 
 
 Well, why not abolish them ? Distances are now counted in 
 days, not in miles. The Atlantic Ocean is as wide as it was in 1870 ; 
 but the United States are four days nearer than they were then. 
 Commercially, however, distance is mainly a matter of freightage. 
 Now it is as possible to abolish ocean freightage as it was to make 
 Waterloo Bridge toll free, or establish the Woolwich free ferry. It 
 is already worth our while to give Canada the use of the British 
 Navy for nothing. Why not give her the use of the mercantile 
 marine for nothing instead of taxing bread to give her a preference ? 
 Or, if that is too much, why not offer her special rates ? It is really 
 only a question of ocean road making. A national mercantile fleet, 
 plying between the provinces of the Empire, and carrying empire 
 goods and passengers either free or at charges far enough below cost 
 to bring Australasia and Canada commercially nearer to England 
 than to the Continent, would form a link with the mother country 
 which, once brought fully into use, could never be snapped without 
 causing a commercial crisis in every province. 
 
 Of the real conditions of ocean traffic at present the public has 
 no suspicion. All our lines of communication are controlled by 
 shipping rings which carry preferential rating (an illegal practice in 
 our inland transit) to an extent that would shock Mr. Chamberlain 
 back again to Free Trade if he realized it ; for their preferences are 
 by no means patriotic : they have helped Belgium into our Indian 
 market, and Germany and America into South Africa and New Zea- 
 land. The Cotton Conference of Liverpool directly assisted the 
 American exporters of cotton to China by the heavy charges they 
 made against the Lancashire manufacturer — charges which were 
 modified only after repeated protests. These rings and rates con- 
 stitute the most dangerous disintegrating force we have to face. 
 Our railway experience proves that it is not enough to make pre- 
 ferential rates illegal. They reappear too easily in the form of 
 rebates, and even of allowances which belong to the more private 
 chapters of capitalist history. Besides, even if the preference of 
 certain customers could be abolished in all its forms, indirect as well 
 
27 
 
 as direct, the preference of places would still remain ; for though 
 you can prevent a transit company from openly agreeing to carry 
 one man's cotton cheaper than that of his next-door neighbor, you 
 cannot compel it to give equal advantages to all the towns and all 
 the ports in the Empire without regard to their distance from our 
 shores ; and this is why the attempts of the Railway Commission to 
 abolish preference in railway rates have left us with a system which 
 could not be much worse from the national-industrial point of view 
 if there were no Commission at all. There is only one way out : we 
 must own our own trading fleets as we own our own fighting fleet. 
 We want a Canadian fleet, an Australasian fleet, an Indian fleet, and 
 a China fleet as simple extensions of the parcel post. At present, 
 when we undertake only the transport of sacks of letters, we provide 
 for it by Cunard subsidies and the like, including in the bargain a 
 call on the Cunard fleet in certain national emergencies ; but it is 
 clear that when we get seriously to work with our whole inter- 
 imperial industrial ocean traffic, the subsidy phase will be outgrown, 
 and we shall build our own liners, and conduct the traffic and fix the 
 rates in the sole interest of the Empire as a whole, and not, as at 
 present, simply with a view to making the highest profits for private 
 shipowners. The Belgian Government has for a long time past 
 maintained its own State line of steamers between Ostend and 
 Dover, greatly promoting its trade with us thereby ; and it has not 
 yet occurred to us that the Ostend-Dover line should be to us that 
 most telling of all good examples, a lost opportunity. No doubt it 
 will be asked whether the proposed trading fleets are to be paid 
 for wholly by the mother country for the benefit of her children. 
 The reply is that even so it would pay her much better than the 
 present system. Still, there is no reason in the world why the trading 
 fleet should not be an Imperial fleet administered by an Imperial 
 Shipping Board, or Industrial Admiralty, with the colonies fully re- 
 presented on it. 
 
 But a free or assisted ocean ferry by itself acts as an enormous 
 bounty to the producer on the coast. Imagine the feelings of the 
 Staffordshire manufacturer on finding Sydney, Melbourne and Quebec 
 brought commercially nearer to Liverpool and London, Southampton 
 and Glasgow, than his own works ! Clearly we should soon have to 
 nationalize our railways and give land transit as cheaply or freely as 
 inter-imperial marine transit. And there are urgent reasons for 
 
28 
 
 railway nationalization, ocean ferry or no ocean ferry. The thrice 
 three hundred times told tale of our absurd system of competing 
 railways — of goods sent from one English town to another via the 
 United States because they are carried more cheaply in that way — 
 need not be retold here. Our system is the laughing stock of 
 Europe. We had to take our telegraph system out of the hands of 
 private companies because it pays the nation to have a complete 
 system of telegraphic communication even if the public sixpences 
 have to be supplemented by taxation to make both ends of the tele- 
 graph exchequer meet. A complete railway system is a still more 
 pressing need, and one that cannot be supplied by separate companies 
 working for separate dividends, or, indeed, for any dividend at all. 
 Nationalization of railways, then, is an obvious and immediate 
 measure compared with which a tariff is the most farfetched of 
 fantasies. 
 
 But our railways, as they stand at present, are the merest nucleus 
 of an adequate internal transit system. Industrially, Great Britain 
 consists only of its railway stations. The rest of the country remains 
 unknown and inaccessible. If there were a railway station, or a 
 posting station on a motor road, wherever there is now a post office ; 
 and if the absurd I lib. limit to the parcel post were abolished 
 (beginning, perhaps, with agricultural produce), great tracts of Eng- 
 lish country which are now, like the village in Haydn's canzonet, 
 " asleep or dead " because all its Lubins fly from its dulness to the 
 unhealthy activity of the city slums, and which no tariff could rouse, 
 would awaken and quicken. It is useless to depend on commercial 
 enterprise for such an undertaking, because commercial enterprise 
 will not, and indeed cannot, construct lines that do not pay, for the 
 sake of national benefits that cannot be swept into the company's 
 till. It is no comfort to a company to see all the incomes in the 
 countryside doubled by its line if the expenses exceed the takings at 
 the booking office. But to the Chancellor of the Exchequer a deficit 
 on a national locomotion budget would be merely a sprat to catch a 
 whale : the increase in the national income would send up the pro- 
 ceeds of his ordinary taxes and excises by leaps and bounds. 
 Besides, his deficit would be less than that of separate companies 
 attempting the same work. The saving by unification of manage- 
 ment in railway business is surprising. The Prussian State Railways 
 saved a million pounds a year by a very partial concentration of 
 
29 
 
 office management. Plausible calculations suggest that we might 
 reduce our freight charges to the continental level (that is, to one- 
 third of our existing charges), and, by a sinking fund lasting less 
 than fifty years, buy out the shareholders as well out of the saving 
 which a transfer of railways to the State would effect.* Now that 
 the electrification of railways seems to be inevitable, and that the 
 supply of electric power is so largely in public hands, there are 
 technical reasons to expect economy from railway nationalization 
 which did not exist before. 
 
 Against such savings must be set the penalty of having left the 
 first planning of our lines to companies which aimed at, instead of 
 avoiding, competition and overlapping whenever they saw a chance 
 of taking one another's business. Unification will therefore cost 
 more now than it would have cost had it been part of a State system 
 from the first. But it cannot cost more than it is worth. The cal- 
 culations of those who predict a net saving in railway expenses by 
 nationalization are quite unnecessary. Railways on a commercially 
 paying basis are as absurd as Cheapside or London Bridge with turn- 
 pikes and toll takers to levy their cost on users. Nobody now is so 
 foolish as to expect the Bath Road to shew a profit on the cost of 
 surveying and mending it ; and there is even less reason for demand 
 ing a dividend from the Great Western Railway. Unfortunately, we 
 are not likely to think of this, obvious as it is, as long as we remain a 
 nation of shopkeepers, and fatuously accept that jibe at our deficiency 
 in social comprehension as a compliment to our practical turn. Our 
 canals, with their obsolete tow-path banks which will not bear the 
 wash from modern water motors, satisfy our notions perfectly, even 
 when we have seen the new Belgian canal which is to raise Bruges 
 la Morte from the dead. The Manchester ship canal, obvious as the 
 need for it was, should have been made by the central government ; 
 and it is disgraceful to us that it was not so made, as it would have 
 been in any other developed European State. With national rail- 
 ways and canals, and an unlimited parcel post, we should give small 
 holdings a chance, and find out what English agriculture can do for 
 itself under reasonable conditions. But it seems easier to us to 
 balance the ruin of our own farmers by an attempt to ruin the 
 
 * Sir J. J. Jenkins estimates a probable annual saving of ten per cent. (^9,000,000) 
 by concentration of railway management. Sir A. Hickman believes it would be much 
 more than that. — Iron and Coal Trades Review, 15th June, 1900. 
 
30 
 
 American farmers than to face the effort of collective action for the 
 restoration of agricultural prosperity. During the last half century 
 we have lost more by our "business principle" of dividing up our 
 national work into competing one-man and one-company specula- 
 tions, and insisting on every separate speculation paying its own 
 separate way, than by all the tariffs and blockades that have been set 
 up against us. 
 
 Foreign Trade. 
 
 Foreign Trade, too, needs a little more " paternalism " than we 
 give it. There is nothing in our annual balance sheet, obsolete as 
 it is in many respects, quite so staggering as the item of ^"600,000 
 for our entire consular and diplomatic service. This is not a mis- 
 print for six millions or for sixty : we actually spend no more on the 
 representation of British interests in the four continents than six 
 hundred thousand pounds ; and this sum includes our political 
 diplomatists as well as our commercial agents. No doubt our 
 ambassadors and attaches willingly add their private means to their 
 salaries in order to protect themselves against middle class intrusion 
 and competition ; but the consul must either live on his pay or give 
 most of his time, his thought, and his interest to private business. 
 The following " slice of life " from a recent description of the trans- 
 Siberian railway gives a convincing impression of the result. 
 
 " After going to my hotel [at Vladivostock, the most important town on the 
 Trans-Siberian railway] I went out to visit the English Consul. There wasn't 
 one. So I called upon the American representative. ' And there isn't a British 
 Consul or a British representative here?' I moaned. 'No. There are com- 
 mercial representatives of France and Germany and America, Holland and Japan, 
 but no British representative. One or two of the Britishers here have been 
 worrying your Foreign Office this last year or two ; but they don't take much 
 notice. Guess you Britishers don't want trade. We Americans and the Germans 
 have the most of it.' . . . Another day I met a Britisher from Shanghai who 
 was half-despondent and half-blasphemous about British trade not holding its 
 own. He gave me what he called an instance of how the British Consul is 'too 
 big for his job.' He went into a Consulate recently and asked, 'Could you, 
 please, give me a list of all the merchants in this town who are in such-and-such 
 a line?' 'Who are you?' asked the Consul. 'Well, I'm travelling to push this 
 particular line in the East.' 'Look here,' said the Consul, 'you musn't think I'm 
 here as a sort of directory to help men who have got something to sell. You quite 
 misunderstand a Consul's duties.' 'Now,' continued this wrathful Englishman to 
 me, ' I went straight to the German Consulate and asked as politely as I could if 
 he had a list of firms who dealt in so-and-so. Of course he had : he told me all 
 about the local prices and who would be likely to do business with me.' "* 
 
 * The Real Siberia, by John Foster Fraser (London: Cassell ; 1902. 6s.). 
 
3i 
 
 Here we come upon the root of half our difficulties in the 
 inveterate survival of the tradition that the public service is only 
 the outdoor relief department of the House of Lords. Our system 
 of primogeniture involves the existence of a younger son class which, 
 having no property, must either lapse into the vulgar earning class 
 or else be provided with sinecures. Formerly our dukes had no 
 scruple in extending this method of providing for their relatives to 
 their superfluous butlers, who regarded the Inland Revenue Depart- 
 ment much as the cadets of the house regarded the embassies, the 
 Foreign Office and the Guards mess : that is, as their perquisite. 
 The scandals of the Crimean War led to the introduction of the 
 competitive examination system for the Civil Service, and the 
 abolition of purchase in the army ; but though this got rid of the 
 butlers, and forced the younger son class to compete for places with 
 the whole class of the secondarily educated, it did not alter the sense 
 of caste which leads a Government official to repudiate the notion 
 that he is a commercial traveller, and haughtily contest the right of 
 11 the public " to come into his office without an appointment or 
 introduction and ask him questions. Now a consul who is not a 
 national commercial traveller, and who is preoccupied with the im- 
 portance to his own social position of keeping the common bagman 
 at a distance, is a greater danger to the Empire than the American 
 and German fleets combined. 
 
 But, indeed, the very word consul is a guarantee of pompous 
 nonsense. What we want is an agent whose duty it shall be, not to 
 fly the British flag and insult the British traveller, but to get business 
 for us. Australian gas coal and hardwood have been introduced into 
 South Africa, not by the silent operation of Imperial fraternity, but 
 by the hustling of the trade office opened in Cape Town by the 
 Governments of New South Wales and Victoria. Canadian govern- 
 ment agents send home not only consular reports to be buried in 
 bluebooks which are never advertized nor exposed for sale, but 
 orders for Canadian produce. We, on the other hand, do not get 
 any consular reports from our colonies. It may be asked, why ? 
 The official reply is so exquisitely foolish that it should not be read 
 without a little preparation. If the reader is now sufficiently braced, 
 he may go on to learn that as consuls are under the Foreign Office, 
 and the colonies are not foreign countries, we have no consuls in 
 the colonies ! 
 
32 
 
 The spectacle of the activity with which our colonial and foreign 
 competitors are backed by their governments is not wholly lost on 
 us ; for we find our trade papers vainly demanding from our incap- 
 able "governing class" British Trade Bureaus in the colonies to 
 keep British manufacturers posted in every movement of supply and 
 demand, every advance in foreign competition, every opening for 
 home enterprise, besides offering suggestions for the recovery of 
 lost trade, and keeping lists of importers and files of trade catalogues 
 shewing net prices, for reference on the spot. Can any sane man 
 doubt that we need a service of this kind in every country with 
 which we trade ? Its organization would not be a mere matter of a 
 consul at every port. The local agencies doing routine work in any 
 country should be centralized by a head agency or Trade Bureau, 
 in which a staff of experts in woollen, cotton, iron, etc. — not for- 
 getting an expert in labor conditions — should help to concert our 
 trade with that country as a whole. There should be permanent 
 exhibitions of British products in foreign towns or ports, and per- 
 manent exhibitions of foreign products in our own manufacturing 
 towns (this is the reality at which that absurd job, the Imperial 
 Institute, aimed awry), both exhibitions being carefully kept up to 
 date. If all the British exporters in each branch at each port would 
 pool their interests so far as to form a Guild to accept contracts, 
 afterwards dividing the contracts among themselves, the British 
 agent could obtain contracts to place at their disposal ; but this 
 would involve standardizing the quality of British products so as 
 to stop the export of damaged and inferior goods. The Bradford 
 Wool Conditioning House, established in 1891 with parliamentary 
 powers, standardizes wool now. The Congested Districts Board 
 markets in England fish caught on the west coast of Ireland. Vic- 
 toria organizes her poultry and egg export trade. In these matters 
 there is much to be learnt from the Canadian and Australasian 
 Agents-General. Their governments already standardize produce 
 at the exporting seaport. They know how their official trade com- 
 missioners work already; and they themselves lose no opportunity 
 of raising the credit of their colony's securities, and encouraging 
 our investors to supply them with cheap capital. Among other 
 exploits, they have established a Reign of Terror in the London 
 Press by the vigor and the convincing fulness of information 
 with which they annihilate the newspaper correspondents who 
 
33 
 
 try from time to time to grind commercial axes by assuring the 
 Times that their colonies are on the verge of bankruptcy, and their 
 advanced labor laws breaking down in a welter of ruin and confu- 
 sion. One wonders how soon England, instead of complaining use- 
 lessly of the attacks made on her in the continental press, will take 
 a leaf out of the book of New Zealand, and take care to have 
 these attacks met by somebody on the spot who is neither a Stilt- 
 stalking at the Embassy nor a Barnacle sticking to a little consulate, 
 but a genuine Agent-General or Trade Commissioner for Great 
 Britain. 
 
 Technical Education. 
 It can hardly be said that we neglect education as we neglect 
 transit and foreign markets. On the contrary, education is now as 
 much a fetish in England as in China. Millionaires who, a few cen- 
 turies ago, would have left funds to redeem Christian prisoners from 
 Turkish captivity, now divide their bounty between hospitals and 
 schools or public libraries ; and the hospital is dragged in only 
 because it has a spiritual function practically identical with that six- 
 teenth century sale of indulgences of which Tetzel was the Sydney 
 Holland. When we abolish the subscription-begging private hospital, 
 many of its gifts and bequests will be turned to education ; but they 
 will still be largely wasted on survivals of the old schooling which 
 was devised to produce that obsolete commodity, the book written 
 in Latin (the medieval Volapuk or Esperanto), and that obsolete 
 specialist, the medieval grammarian. In the Mesopotamian name of 
 Education we might sink hundreds of millions without getting what 
 we most urgently need : that is, more technical instruction in indus- 
 trial and political science. All the free libraries in the world will not 
 turn our ignorant and passionate Liberal and Conservative partisans 
 into capable voters, nor save our electrical manufacturers from dis- 
 graceful defeat, beyond all practicable rescue by the custom house, at 
 the hands of German-Swiss firms. Our most ancient and famous 
 universities are too venerable for reform. An attempt to adapt 
 Oxford and Cambridge to modern industrial needs would be an act 
 of Vandalism comparable to the turning of Westminster Abbey into 
 a railway station. They are the onlv two institutions of their kind 
 in the world ; and though it is conceivable that in the future their 
 undergraduates and dons may be represented by wax figures, and 
 admission regulated by a turnstile, no real change is likely to be 
 
34 
 
 tolerated. It is none the less necessary to recognize the need for 
 genuine modern universities consisting of technical schools, and 
 making no attempt to compete with the older foundations in their 
 professed work — hardly convincing in its results — of forming the 
 character and enriching the minds of its students, relying rather on 
 the moral and intellectual discipline of learning to do something 
 under pressure of a conviction that the acquirement will presently 
 have to stand the severe test of the markets of the world. We 
 recognize this need so far as to give to our university colleges 
 .^27,000 a year : about the income of a single peer anxiously looking 
 out for an American heiress to increase his pocket money. Would 
 it be too much to suggest a prompt increase to at least a beggarly 
 quarter million ? 
 
 But suppose we get our quarter million ! Suppose we even 
 attain to as many and as well equipped and efficient universities as 
 Prussia or France, where are we to catch our students and pro- 
 fessors ? There must be a capacity-catching machine to find them 
 — one which will set to work on children ten years before they are 
 ripe for the university. At present the machine is a chance supply of 
 secondary schools to which only ten per cent, of the population can 
 afford to send their children. This means that our brainworkers, 
 instead of being the pick of a hundred per cent, of the population, 
 are not even the pick of the ten per cent, who can afford secondary 
 education ; for the most expensively educated of the ten per cent, 
 have independent incomes and therefore no incentive to acquire any 
 sort of productive efficiency. In Scotland the capacity-catching 
 machine reaches a much larger percentage ; but it catches only one 
 sort of capacity, the examination passing sort. The new education 
 authorities, with the shortcomings of the Scotch and English systems 
 before them, have ample powers to establish secondary schools and 
 to enlarge the capacity-catching machine by elementary scholarships 
 entitling the holders to maintenance during their passage through 
 those secondary schools, where further scholarships could select 
 capacity for technical colleges. That is, they can do these things if 
 the ratepayers will let them. If we are a superior race with a great 
 future before us, the ratepayers will let them. If not . 
 
 But the recognition of the fact that industry is an art in the 
 university sense involves consequences that have not yet been faced. 
 It is not so very long since surgical bleeding was looked on as the 
 
35 
 
 natural gift of a barber, and dentistry of a blacksmith. Yet we have 
 practically abolished the barber surgeon and the blacksmith dentist. 
 We are even timidly interfering with Mrs. Gamp the heaven-born 
 midwife. Our plan is to make it either illegal or prohibitively dis- 
 advantageous to practise surgery, dentistry, or midwifery without a 
 qualification — meaning without a certificate of technical proficiency 
 only obtainable after a period of technical training followed by an 
 examination. What we do not yet realize is that the qualifications 
 of the directing staff of an engineering firm, a shipbuilding yard, a 
 railway, factory, colliery or bank, are as important to the nation as 
 the qualifications of a professional man. Many large commercial 
 concerns have an official doctor, a chaplain, and a solicitor who 
 obtains counsel's opinion when necessary. But they cannot give 
 any of these appointments to an unqualified man merely because he 
 happens to be related to a director, an influential shareholder, or the 
 chairman. Yet the best paid places in the counting house and the 
 manufacturing departments may be filled by just such nepotism. 
 There is no reason whatever why this should be tolerated. If a 
 doctor may not hand over his practice, or even his surgery, to his 
 son until the son has been statutorily registered as a duly qualified 
 physician, surgeon, and apothecary, why should a "captain of in- 
 dustry" be allowed to hand over his shipbuilding yard, his factory or 
 his foundry to his son quite unconditionally ? It may be argued that 
 incompetence in business brings its own remedy in the form of loss 
 and ruin, whereas doctors and lawyers actually become famous by 
 the deaths of their patients and the execution of their clients. But 
 this is not how things actually happen. The practical exigencies of 
 business create for every trade a routine which can be followed with- 
 out comprehension, and almost without intelligence, by anybody who 
 will "go to the office " regularly and do what comes to his hand in a 
 customary manner for so many hours a day. That is how the great 
 mass of our business is actually done. The thoughtlessness and con- 
 servatism of this method bring about no such dramatic retribution as 
 overtakes the good-for-nothing who will neither attend to his routine 
 nor live within his income. On the contrary, the elimination of in- 
 dividual eccentricity makes everything go steadily until the whole 
 trade begins to stagger under the competitive pressure of rival 
 routines brought up to date by American and German manufacturers 
 who are using, not only their own brains, but the superior training 
 
36 
 
 and knowledge of a staff selected from the graduates of the technical 
 universities which their nations have had the sense to establish and 
 endow. In English businesses there is practically only one rule : 
 " do what was done last time." It is a safe and most brainsaving 
 rule as long as the rest of the world marks time in the same manner ; 
 but when new conditions have to be faced, and new occasions risen 
 to, it is suicidal. One good technical university is then worth ten 
 custom houses. 
 
 Other Reforms. 
 
 There is no end to the reforms by which the threatened Tariff 
 could be put off by a really active positive — not negative — Opposi- 
 tion. There is the bounty system, which does not raise prices, and 
 might be used to hasten the development, within the Empire, of 
 supplies of food and raw material to replace those which our present 
 alien purveyors will soon want for their home markets. This would 
 include the establishment of cotton fields in our own tropical pro- 
 vinces, a measure already demanded by Manchester, and one that 
 would have been taken in hand long ago if the Laisser-faire tradi- 
 tion had not blinded our Governments to all sense of public obli- 
 gation and national thrift in the industrial sphere. Our present 
 supply of long wools- is not the result of Laisser-faire : it was 
 deliberately created by the Bradford Chamber of Commerce in 1859 
 and afterwards by sending out long-haired sheep, advising colonial 
 breeders, etc. It is quite easy to form a Lancashire Cotton Supply 
 Committee with the Government represented on it, and give it half 
 a million to produce an Imperial cotton crop which we alone should 
 have the right to purchase. To provide the necessary funds, including 
 bounties for all purposes, we have available for taxation the hundreds 
 of millions of unearned rent and interest which we now, with sicken- 
 ing unthrift, waste on idleness and fashion, not having a word to say, 
 apparently, about those English exports, unbalanced by any imports, 
 which make the Mediterranean coast and all the fashionable capitals 
 of Europe so many traps to catch English money and waste it. Our 
 local government system, enormously developed by the legislation of 
 the last fifteen years, has reduced its obsolete municipal area bound- 
 aries to absurdity, and made the unification of some of our muni- 
 cipal services by specialized provincial departments a pressing need 
 of the time. Behind the railway and shipping question there is the 
 
37 
 
 question of the mines and quarries and the land. We have never 
 explored our coalfields, because our official Geological Survey is not 
 allowed to make deep borings for an underground survey, the exist- 
 ence of coal being treated as the private business of local landholders 
 and speculators, whose communications on the subject are too 
 obviously interested to command confidence. Agriculture is clearly 
 not as productive as it might be : we have in last July's consular 
 report on Agricultural Instruction in Germany an account of the 
 experiments made in Quednau, in East Prussia, by Dr. Backhaus, 
 who took a neglected estate with poor soil, in an unfavorable climate, 
 with a record of six years' annual loss of ^"200, and managed to 
 extract 3 j per cent, profit from it in spite of all initial experimental 
 blunders. There is nothing new in this : example after example has 
 suggested for years past that our "scientific" agriculture, introduced 
 a century ago at the instance of Arthur Young, is not the last word 
 on the subject. Finally there is the great poverty question, defeat- 
 ing all reform by reducing the majority of the population to a 
 condition of untrained drudgery which makes modern scientific 
 methods as useless to them as a Marconi transmitter is to a railway 
 fogman. No tariff will remedy that. 
 
 The Liberal Party. 
 
 Unfortunately, we have no positive Opposition — nothing but a 
 negative Obstinacy. The Liberal Party, with one leader whom nobody 
 will follow, and another who in theory dreams of the Individualism 
 of William Pitt, and in action tries to rally the ratepayer to the 
 attack on the Progressive municipalities, has nothing to offer its Free 
 Church friends but the hostility of its Agnostics to the Establishment, 
 or to its Teetotaller partisans but a select taste in wines and a readi- 
 ness to close the poor man's club at the corner. It cannot get its 
 chiefs to relieve either taxpayer or ratepayer by an attack on un- 
 earned incomes even in the popular, though invidious, form of 
 Taxation of Ground Values ; and as for sweating, neither its sensa- 
 tional horrors nor the most convincing economic demonstrations 
 of the social, political and industrial disastrousness of it can move 
 them to agree to a new Factory Bill. But it is useless to pur- 
 sue this theme : the Liberals have spent their reputation. There 
 is no more gratitude for them to abuse, no more confidence to 
 betray, no more hope to defer. Until quite lately it was said of 
 
3» 
 
 them that they were not worth voting for because they could 
 not get their measures through the House of Lords. To-day it 
 is impossible not to rejoice in the fact that so comparatively pro- 
 gressive an institution as the House of Lords retains a veto on their 
 powers of reaction. 
 
 The Conservative Party. 
 
 As to the Conservative Party, it has effectually cleared itself of 
 all suspicion of Conservatism, perhaps in despair of competing with 
 the Opposition on that point. When legislation is demanded, Con- 
 servative Ministers do not hesitate to send a sheet of paper into 
 Committee with the words "Be it enacted, etc." at the top, knowing 
 that it will clothe itself with sufficient amendments to come out as a 
 tolerably workable Act. But if all the Acts of the present and late 
 Conservative Governments had been drafted by Solon and passed 
 through committee in charge of Socrates, the country would still 
 be asking itself whether it can stand any more of the fashionable 
 amateur Secretaries of State and Presidents of Boards who are not 
 even sportsmen enough to buy horses for the army without being 
 cheated. The imagination will not bear the strain of conceiving 
 these gentlemen struggling with the huge and ruthless commercial 
 interests which will, if the Conservatives return to power, lobby 
 the tariff to suit their own balance-sheets without the smallest refer- 
 ence to the common weal. " Measures, not Men " is a plausible 
 electioneering cry ; but the Conservatives really carry it too far : 
 a counter-cry of " Ministers, not Nincompoops," is bursting from 
 the throats of a sorely tried nation. If the next Cabinet be the 
 usual Conservative Cabinet with Mr. Chamberlain at the head of 
 it, then it is hard to say whether Mr. Chamberlain or the nation 
 will be the more to be pitied. If, however, it be a Chamberlain 
 Cabinet, meaning a Cabinet of younger men of Mr. Chamberlain's 
 own stamp, then — well, then we shall see what we shall see. Mean- 
 while, it would be interesting to hear Mr. Chamberlain's views on 
 this subject. 
 
 The Labor Party. 
 
 The Labor Party is at last making an attempt to mobilize ; but 
 it still bolts into the Liberal camp at every alarm, and will continue 
 to do so until it accepts Socialism as the basis of its policy. Mr. 
 Chamberlain's agitation, now openly organized as a formidable em- 
 
39 
 
 ployers' movement with labor as completely unrepresented as the 
 professions and the fine arts, would instantly have united an intelli- 
 gent Labor Party on two points, (i) A statutory minimum wage 
 automatically varying with prices in order to guarantee a standard 
 livelihood to the laborer in every trade in the event of a tariff raising 
 prices. (2) A public pledge from all opponents of free imports 
 that, in the event of a tariff producing additional revenue, not a 
 farthing of it shall be applied to the reduction of taxation on un- 
 earned incomes. It is true that Mr. Chamberlain, in moments of 
 emotion on the platform, gives personal pledges on matters which are 
 obviously beyond his power, and, for the Empire's sake, would prob- 
 ably, in a crisis of patriotic enthusiasm, pledge himself in all sincerity 
 to good harvests for the next twenty years. But such a definite 
 financial pledge as we suggest could not be repudiated without open 
 dishonor ; and it would at once find out which are the sincere 
 Imperialist enthusiasts, and which the schemers who are advocating 
 the tariff solely as a means of reducing their own Income Tax bilis 
 by an increase of indirect taxation. As a Labor Party, whatever its 
 views may be as to Free Imports, must necessarily be uncompromis- 
 ingly Protectionist as regards the laborer's standard of life, it should 
 differentiate itself from the Liberals and their Whig leaders by 
 making this demand from both parties and exacting this pledge 
 from all candidates ; though, of course, if it were really in earnest, it 
 would redouble its efforts to capture seats enough to enable it to 
 enforce its own requirements. 
 
 Unfortunately, it has made no such demand, exacted no such 
 pledge, given its followers no such lead. It shouts for Free Trade 
 as lustily as any 1846 cotton lord, and applauds when its orators call 
 Mr. Chamberlain "a political trickster " or " Judas " or the like. It 
 is always difficult for people who have no faith in themselves to 
 understand how formidable are those who, like Mr. Chamberlain and 
 his supporters, add all the force of conviction and all the resources 
 of interest, to a practically unlimited war chest. 
 
FABIAN SOCIETY.— The Fabian Society oonsists of Socialists. A state- 
 ment of its "Rules and the following publications can be obtained from the 
 Seoretary, at the Fabian Office, 3 Clement's Inn, London, W.C. 
 
 FABIANISM AND THE EMPIRE: A Manifesto. 4d. post free. 
 
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 Policy. Drafted by Bernard Shaw. is. 
 
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 Leaflets, 4 pp. each, price Id. for six copies, Is. per 100, or 8{6per 1000. 
 The Set of 88, 3s. ; post free 3/5. Bound in Buckram, 4/6 ; post free for 5s. 
 
 I.— On General Socialism in its various aspects. 
 
 Tbacts. — 113. Communism. By Wm. Morris. 107. Socialism for Million- 
 aires. By Bernard Shaw. 79. A Word of Remembrance and Caution 
 to the Rich. By John Woolman. 78. Socialism and the Teaching of 
 Christ. By Dr. John Clifford. 87. The same in Welsh. 42. Christian 
 Socialism. By Rev. S. D. Headlam. 75. Labor in the Longest Reign. 
 By Sidney Webb. 72. The Moral Aspects of Socialism. By Sidney Ball. 
 69. Difficulties of Individualism. By Sidney Webb. 51. Socialism : True 
 and False. By S. Webb. 45. The Impossibilities of Anarchism. By 
 Bernard Shaw (price 2d.). 15. English Progress towards Social Demo- 
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 for Socialists. Leaflets — 13. What Socialism Is. 1. Why are the Many 
 Poor? 38. The same in Welsh. 
 
 II.— On Application of Socialism to Particular Problems. 
 Tracts. — 116. Fabianism and the Fiscal Question: an Alternative 
 Policy. 115. State Aid to Agriculture : an Example. By T. S. Dymond. 
 112. Life in the Laundry, no. Problems of Indian Poverty. By 
 S. S. Thorburn, 98. State Railways for Ireland. 88. The Growth of 
 Monopoly in English Industry. By H. W. Macrosty. 86. Municipal 
 Drink Traffic. 85. Liquor Licensing at Home and Abroad. By E. R. 
 Pease. 84. Economics of Direct Employment. 83. State Arbitration 
 and the Living Wage. 74. The State and its Functions in New Zealand. 
 73. Case for State Pensions in Old Age. By G. Turner. 67. Women and 
 the Factory Acts. By Mrs. Webb. 50. Sweating: its Cause and Remedy. 
 48. Eight Hours by Law. 23. Case for an Eight Hours Bill. 47. The 
 Unemployed. By J. Burns, M.P. Leaflets. — 89. Old Age Pensions at 
 Work. 19. W T hat the Farm Laborer Wants. 104. How Trade Unions 
 benefit Workmen. 
 
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 Tracts. — 117. The London Education Act, 1903: how to make the best 
 of it. 114. The Education Act, 1902. in. Reform of Reformatories 
 and Industrial Schools. By H. T. Holmes. 109. Cottage Plans and 
 Common Sense. By Raymond Unwin. 105. Five Years' Fruits of the 
 Parish Councils Act. 103. Overcrowding in London and its Remedy. 
 By W. C. Stkadman, L.C.C. ioi. The House Famine and How to Relieve 
 it. 52 pp. 76. Houses for the People. 100. Metropolitan Borough 
 Councils: their powers and duties, gg. Local Government in Ireland. 
 82. Workmen's Compensation Act: what it means and how to make use 
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 them. FABIAN MUNICIPAL PROGRAM, First Series. London's 
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 Municipal Tramways. The Scandal of London's Markets. A Labor 
 Policy for Public Authorities. Second Series (Nos. 90 to 97). Munici- 
 palization of the Milk Supply. Municipal Pawnshops. Municipal 
 Slaughterhouses. Women as Councillors. Municipal Bakeries. Mun- 
 icipal Hospitals. Municipal Fire Insurance. Municipal Steamboats. 
 Each Series in a red cover for Id. (9d. per dcz.); separate leaflets, 1/- per 100. 
 
 IV.— On Books. 
 
 29. What to Read on social and economic subjects. 6d. net. 
 
 V. — On General Politics and Fabian Policy. 
 
 116. Fabianism and the Fiscal Question : an alternative policy. 108. 
 Twentieth Century Politics. By Sidney Webb. 70. Report on Fabian 
 Policy. 41. The Fabian Society: its Early History. By Bernard Shaw. 
 
 VI. —Question Leaflets, containing Questions for Candidates for the 
 following bodies : — 20, Poor Law Guardians. 21, Parliament. 27, Town Coun- 
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