Secretary, at the Fabian Umce, 5 Clement's inn, Lonaɑon, w.u. FABIANISM AND THE EMPIRE: A Manifesto. 4d. post free. Tracts, each 16 to 52 pp., price 1d., or 9d. per doz., unless otherwise stated. Leaflets, 4 pp. each, price 1d. for six copies, 1s. per 100, or 8/6 per 1000. The Set of 88, 3s.; post free 35. Bound in Buckram, 4/6; post free for 5s. I.-General Socialism in its various aspects. TRACTS.-113. Communism. By WM. MORRIS. 107. Socialism for Millionaires. 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 Democracy. By S. WEBB. 7. Capital and Land (6th edn. revised 1904). 5. Facts for Socialists (9th edn., revised 1904). LEAFLETS-13. What Socialism Is. 1. Why are the Many Poor? 38. The same in Welsh. II.-Applications of Socialism to Particular Problems. TRACTS.-118. The Secret of Rural Depopulation. By Lieut.-Col. D. C. PEDDER. 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. 110. 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. What the Farm Laborer Wants. 104. How Trade Unions benefit Workmen. III.—Local Government Powers: How to use them. TRACTS.-117. The London Education Act, 1903: how to make the best of it. 114. The Education Act, 1902. III. 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. STEADMAN, L.C.C. 101. The House Famine and How to Relieve it. 52 pp. 76. Houses for the People. 100. Metropolitan Borough Councils: their powers and duties. 99. Local Government in Ireland. 82. Workmen's Compensation Act: what it means and how to make use of it. 77. Municipalization of Tramways. 62. Parish and District Councils. 61. The London County Council. 54. The Humanizing of the Poor Law. By J. F. OAKESHOTT. LEAFLETS.-81. Municipal Water. 68. The Tenant's Sanitary Catechism. 71. Same for London. 63. Parish Council Cottages and how to get them. 58. Allotments and how to get them. FABIAN MUNICIPAL PROGRAM, FIRST SERIES. London's Heritage in the City Guilds. Municipalization of the Gas Supply. Municipal Tramways. The Scandal of London's Markets. A Labor Policy for Public Authorities. SECOND SERIES (Nos. go to 97). Municipalization of the Milk Supply. Municipal Pawnshops. Municipal Slaughterhouses. Women as Councillors. Municipal Bakeries. Municipal Hospitals. Municipal Fire Insurance. Municipal Steamboats. Each Series in a red cover for 1d. (9d. per doz.); separate leaflets, 1/- per 100. IV. Books. 29. What to Read on social and economic subjects. 6d. net. V.-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. 24, Parliament. 27, Town Councils. 28, County Councils, Rural. 56, Parish Councils. 57, Rural District Councils. 59, Urban District Councils. 102, Metropolitan Borough Councils. BOOK BOXES lent to Societies, Clubs, Trade Unions, for 6s. a year, or 2/6 a quarter Printed by G. Standring, 7 Finsbury St., London, E.O., and published by the Fabian Society, 3 Clement's Inn, Strand, London W.C. In the Days of the Corn Laws. To the The work was done and done well. The farmers ate, drank and enjoyed themselves. That the laboring population had any "rights" as against the "masters" was a notion dismissed with contempt a part of the professional agitator's stock-in-trade. "The country' meant the landlord and the farmer. When we think of Athens ir the days of Pericles, we hardly give a thought to the slave popul tion. They are below the notice of history. And so it practicaly was with our rural laborers until the days of the Agricultura Laborers' Union. The Church knew them as "the poor." employers they were "the men." Charles Kingsley, in Alton Lock gives a vivid description of an agricultural riot, its aimless despair its impotent violence. I have here a reprinted report of a mort peaceful demonstration in 1846. It is sad reading. But there is nothing in it to frighten anybody. The word "rising" cannot be applied to these pitiful wrigglings of the great invertebrate earthworm upon which the classes then recognized as England were se light-heartedly treading. Its head was never reared to strike. Its demonstrations demonstrated nothing but its own feebleness. The repeal of the Corn Laws left the laborer morally much where he was. Bread was cheaper, but the hand of the employer was perhap heavier than before. From 1855 to the days of Joseph Arch was perhaps as black a time as any the laborers had to pass. The price of wheat was high, the squires raised their rents, the farmers re couped themselves by cutting down wages. The prosperity & squires and farmers was thus squeezed out of the already abject poverty of the poor. Any appearance of discontent was sternly repressed. To quote the words of a great agricultural authority. "It was a state of things disgraceful to all concerned." Except to laborers, I think. But it created no commotion. The Church represented in every country parish, raised no protest. The parson had long ceased to be the "persona" of his flock. He thought more of the hurdles than of the sheep, as they say. The souls of squires and farmers rotted in the cradle of an easy conscience. They were good Churchmen to a man. Then, all at once, a bolt from the blue, came The Agricultural Laborers' Union. I need not dwell upon the history of that great movement Opposed though it was by the landed interest in every form, denounced by too many of the country clergy and unhelped by the rest. it went on triumphantly until it had raised agricultural wages almost throughout the whole of England to a point at which the existence of the laborer was no longer intolerable. That much obtained, it collapsed. It is a remarkable instance of a great rising against longendured oppression which contented itself with a bare rectification of the immediate wrong complained of. There was no violence, no resentment. This was undoubtedly due in great measure to the personal character and influence of the leader of the movement, Joseph Arch, a man of whom it is impossible to think without gratitude and respect. But it is no less true that the moderation shown by the men, both in their struggle and their success, argues à certain want of resilience which testifies to the extent to which the fire and vigor of the race had been sapped by long-continued semistarvation and enforced submission to petty tyranny. The Agricultural Union did not, I think, appreciably raise the laborer; it only raised his wages. Instead of calling up a spirit of independence like that which animated the leader (a man, we must remember, born and bred in a cottage the property of his father, not of his employer), it left them generally, although materially better off, individually as submissive and as incapable of assertion of their personal rights as they had been through long generations of practical serfdom. But the apathy of their hopelessness had been disturbed. The employers' difficulty had been the emigration agents' opportunity, and the plethora of labor had been relieved by the departure of a large percentage of the agricultural population. When the smoke of the struggle cleared off it was quite obvious that horizons had widened. Young men who dared not defy the arrogance of their employers found courage enough to escape from it to the railways or the towns. In this way the best young blood kept gradually draining away. The process has been steadily going on since. The best men go. Laboring parents plot escape for their boys from the land as if they were prisoners in an enemy's country. Nobody stays of choice. You may hear former farm laborers speak of their late employers as a seventeenth century mariner might have spoken of the Moors of Tangiers, among whom he had been a captive. Is the Laborer in Fault? It has been said by a vigorous clerical writer that the laborer's discontent is merely a survival from the "bad, old, black past," when he really had something to complain of. All that has long gone by. It is the laborer's "evil temper " that still "provokes masters to harsh measures, harsh words, driving, and all such seemingly needless regulations as the command to keep no fowls or pigs, the tied cottages, and the domineering tone." All this is the laborer's fault, says the writer. Things are not now as they were in the times when "laborers were scornfully trampled on-and when the Church, cowed and faithless, was as little inclined as the State to help their condition." All that is gone by. Farmers and parsons have undergone a wonderful change. Like the Homeric hero they "boast that they are a great deal better than their fathers." But the laborer is bad indeed. The characteristics of the laborer are "shirking, dishonesty and negligence." "Tom, Dick and Sam abuse their employer, sit under the hedge when he is out of sight, steal his corn and meal, leave his horses harnessed and go off drinking, teach him that they have no love or gratitude, but only fear." The coloring suggests the moral complexion of a chain-gang. He might have adopted the words which Mr. Sam Weller in Pickwick puts into the mouth of a "wirtuous clergyman." "He's a malicious, bad-disposed, worldly-minded, spiteful, windictive creetur, with a hard heart as there ain't no soft'nin." Our "wirtuous clergyman" in this case pronounces the rural villages to be in a state of utter decay, and exhorts us to build our hopes for the future entirely upon the progress of our urban population. Villages and villagers are played out. telligible changes. Farmers are much what they were sixty years ago. Clergymen are not so very different. The cut of their coats is altered, that is about all. Their intentions are as good as ever and the influence they exert exactly as bad, as far as the independence and manliness of their poor parishioners is concerned. And the laborer is what these have made him. He is still, as he has so long been, like an eel on an eel spear. He can wriggle, but that is about all. Until he is set free we can't expect anything very great of him in the way of moral improvement. But his good qualities are only dormant, held in abeyance till the winter of his discontent is made glorious summer by the sun of-Land Reform. At any rate, whatever he is, it is the social and economical system of England that has made him so. He has been crushed under an intolerable pressure, and until that is removed we must expect his faults to be of the grovelling sort. Give him opportunity and he will be erect, and his faults will probably be what they were in Froissart's time. How the Laborer Lives. Let us give one comprehensive glance to the conditions under which the laborer mostly lives, and under which some people expect him to cultivate all the Christian graces. A miserable cottage which as a tenant-at-will he can only repair or improve at the risk of his outlay in labor or in money being appropriated by his employer, a life of constant hardship, wages even now barely sufficient for food. fire and clothing, the proud man's contumely, the want of hope, the long vista of thankless drudgery through which the eye looks only to rest finally upon the workhouse, the absence of anything like social enjoyment, the tyranny of drink, the capricious restrictions upon personal liberty of action which his employer may at pleasure impose, and to which he must submit or go. It is a gloomy picture. The strange thing is that up to so comparatively recent a time Englishmen should have accepted a life like this, a life still worse than this, as their natural doom, exactly as an Esquimaux may submit unrepiningly to the rigors of an Arctic climate. An Esquimaux wants more seals; ice and snow and darkness are matters of course. So Joseph Arch's men wanted more wages, they had no dislike to their occupation or the hardships inseparable from it. The best of them had doubtless the same pride and pleasure in their work which every skilled craftsman finds in the exercise of his skill. A great change has passed over the laborer in this respect. Tillage in all its branches appears to most of them sheer drudgery, absolutely uninteresting if not positively hateful. No mere rise of wages will alter this. Skilled Labor and Farm Wages. I do not think I can put this more forcibly before you than by condensing here a conversation I had a month or two ago with a man of the highest farming class, engaged in the management of one of those immense farms which seem to me to be the ruin of England. It was a very favorable specimen. The management was evidently liberal, the owner, I believe, personally kindly. But the system was |