The Report is unequal. An eloquent but irrelevant passage on the social effects of bringing the railway contractor's navvies to a rural village was possibly contributed by Hubert Bland, whilst the conclusion, a magniloquent eulogy of the moral value of Government service, written, according to Webb's recollection, by Frank Podmore, is evidently the work of a civil servant who has not got over the untamed enthusiasms of youth!
The Report shows immature judgment, but also in parts remarkable foresight, and a complete realisation of the right scientific method. With State tobacco farms and the public organisation of a corps of peripatetic State navvies, the childhood stage of the Fabian Society may be said to conclude.
My own connection with the Society also changed. In the spring of 1886 I gave up my business on the Stock Exchange and in the summer went to Newcastle-on-Tyne, where I lived till the autumn of 1890. My account of the Society for the next three years is therefore in the main derived from its records. Sydney Olivier succeeded me as "Acting Secretary," but for some months I was still nominally the secretary, a fact of much significance to my future, since it enabled me if I liked to deal with correspondence, and it was through a letter to the secretary of the Society, answered by me from Newcastle, that I made the acquaintance of the lady who three years later became my wife.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] "Misalliance: with a treatise on parents and children," 1914.
[11] Industrial Remuneration Conference. The Report, etc. Cassell, 1885, p. 400.
[12] William Clarke had attended some early meetings but dropped out and was actually elected to the Society in February, 1886.
[13] Presumably a "Times" reporter was present; but his report was not published.
[14] Later M.P. for Tyneside and a member of Mr. Asquith's Government.
[15] Contemporary accounts of the conference can be found in the July numbers of "To-day" and "The Republican," the former by Mrs. Besant, and the latter, a descriptive criticism, by the Editor and Printer, George Standring.