It is interesting after twenty-five years to re-read these essays and to observe how far the ideas that inspired them are still valid, and how far the prophecies made have been fulfilled.
Bernard Shaw contributed the first Essay on "The Economic Basis of Socialism," and also a second, a paper read to the British Association in September, 1888, on the "Transition to Social Democracy." His characteristic style retains its charm, although the abstract and purely deductive economic analysis on which he relied no longer commends itself to the modern school of thought. Sidney Webb's "Historic Basis" is as readable as ever, except where he quotes at length political programmes long forgotten, and recounts the achievements of municipal socialism with which we are all now familiar.
William Clarke in explaining the "Industrial Basis" assumed that the industry would be rapidly dominated by trusts—then a new phenomenon—with results, the crushing out of all other forms of industrial organisation, which are but little more evident to-day, though we should no longer think worthy of record that the Standard Oil Company declared a 10 per cent cash dividend in 1887!
If the Essays had been written in 1890 instead of 1888 the authors would have acquired from the great Trade Union upheaval of 1889 a fuller appreciation of the importance of Trade Unionism than they possessed at the earlier date. Working-class organisation has never been so prominent in London as in the industrial counties, and the captious comments on the great Co-operative movement show that the authors of the Essays were still youthful, and in some matters ignorant.[25]
Sydney Olivier's "Moral Basis" is, in parts, as obscure now as it was at first, and there are pages which can have conveyed but little to most of its innumerable readers. Graham Wallas treated of "Property" with moderation rather than knowledge. Time has dealt hardly with Mrs. Besant's contribution. She anticipated, as the other Essayists did, that unemployment caused by labour-saving machinery would constantly increase; and that State organisation of industries for the unemployed would gradually supersede private enterprise. She apparently supposed that the county councils all over England, then newly created, were similar in character to the London County Council, which had already inaugurated the Progressive policy destined in the next few years to do much for the advancement of practical socialism. The final paper on "The Outlook," by Hubert Bland, is necessarily of the nature of prophecy, and in view of the difficulty of this art his attempt is perhaps less unsuccessful than might have been expected. He could foresee the advent neither of the Labour Party, mainly formed of Trade Unionists, nor of Mr. Lloyd George and the policy he represents: he assumed that the rich would grow richer and the poor poorer; that Liberals would unite with Tories, as they have done in Australia, and would be confronted with a Socialist Party representing the dispossessed. Possibly the developments he sketches are still to come, but that is a matter which cannot be discussed here.
I can find no trace in the records of the Society that the first success of their publication occasioned any elation to the Essayists, and I cannot recollect any signs of it at the time. The Annual Report mentions that a substantial profit was realised on the first edition, and states that the authors had made over the copyright, "valued at about £200," to the Society; but these details are included in a paragraph headed "Publications," and the Essays are not mentioned in the general sketch of the work of the year.
In fact the obvious results of the publication took some months to materialise, and the number of candidates for election to the Society showed little increase during the spring. It is true that great changes were made in the organisation of the Society at the Annual Meeting held on March 28th, 1890, but these were in part due to other causes. The Executive Committee was enlarged to fifteen, and as I happened to be available I was appointed paid secretary, half time, at the modest salary of £1 a week for the first year. The newly elected Executive included the seven Essayists, Robert E. Dell, now Paris correspondent for several journals, W.S. De Mattos, for many years afterwards an indefatigable organiser for the Society, and now settled in British Columbia, the Rev. Stewart D. Headlam, Mrs. L.T. Mallet, then a prominent member of the Women's Liberal Association, J.F. Oakeshott, of the Fellowship of the New Life, and myself.
The lectures of the early months of 1890 were a somewhat brilliant series. Sidney Webb on the Eight Hours Bill; James Rowlands, M.P., on the then favourite Liberal nostrum of Leasehold Enfranchisement (which the Essayists demolished in a crushing debate); Dr. Bernard Bosanquet on "The Antithesis between Individualism and Socialism Philosophically Considered"; Mrs. Besant on "Socialism and the School Board Policy"; Mr. (now Sir) H. Llewellyn Smith on "The Causes and Effects of Immigration from Country to Town," in which he disproved the then universal opinion that the unemployed of East London were immigrants from rural districts; Sydney Olivier on "Zola"; William Morris on "Gothic Architecture" (replacing a lecture on Morris himself by Ernest Radford, who was absent through illness); Sergius Stepniak on "Tolstoi, Tchernytchevsky, and the Russian School"; Hubert Bland on "Socialist Novels"; and finally on July 18th Bernard Shaw on "Ibsen." This last may perhaps be regarded as the high-water mark in Fabian lectures. The minutes, which rarely stray beyond bare facts, record that "the paper was a long one," nearer two hours than one, if my memory is accurate, and add: "The meeting was a very large one and the lecture was well received." In fact the lecture was the bulk of the volume "The Quintessence of Ibsenism," which some regard as the finest of Bernard Shaw's works, and it is perhaps unnecessary to say that the effect on the packed audience was overwhelming. It was "briefly discussed" by a number of speakers, but they seemed as out of place as a debate after an oratorio.