In December, 1910, we won our first electoral victory. Will Crooks had lost his seat at Woolwich in January by 295 votes. It was decided to take over his candidature from the Coopers' Union, a very small society which only nominally financed it, and also to support Harry Snell again at Huddersfield. Will Crooks was victorious by 236 votes, but Harry Snell failed to reduce the Liberal majority. Elsewhere members of the Society were very successful. In all eight secured seats for the Labour Party and four for the Liberals, amongst the latter Mr. (now Sir) L.G. Chiozza Money, then a member of the Executive Committee.
This brings the electoral record of the Society up to the present time, except that it should be mentioned that Mr. Arthur Henderson, M.P., who became a member of the Society in 1912, was in 1915 both Secretary of the Labour Party Executive and Chairman of the party in the House of Commons, until he relinquished the latter position on joining the Coalition Cabinet as Minister for Education, being thus actually the first member of a Socialist society to attain Cabinet rank in this country during his membership.
During these later years the Fabian Society with its increased numbers was entitled to several delegates at the annual conference of the Labour Party, and it frequently took part in the business by putting motions or amendments on the agenda paper. All talk of forming a Fabian Socialist Party had died away, and the Executive Committee had shown itself far more appreciative of the importance of the Labour Party than in earlier years. I continued to represent the Society on the Executive Committee until the end of 1913, when I retired, and the new General Secretary, W. Stephen Sanders, took my place. When in December, 1915, he accepted a commission for the period of the war, as a recruiting officer, Sidney Webb was appointed to fill the vacancy.
The account of the part taken by the Society in the work of the Labour Party has carried us far beyond the period previously described, and a short space must now be devoted to the years which intervened between the Education episode and the outburst of activity to be described in the next chapter.
Social progress advances in waves, and outbursts of energy are always succeeded by depressions. Up to 1899 the Society slowly grew in membership until this reached 861. Then it slowly declined to 730 in 1904. This was symptomatic of a general lack of interest in Socialism. The lectures and meetings were poorly attended, and the really important debates which decided our educational policy were conducted by only a few dozen members. Twenty years had passed since the Society was founded. Of the Essayists Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb, Hubert Bland, and when in England, Sydney Olivier were still leaders of the Society, and so until January, 1904, was Graham Wallas, who then resigned his membership on account of his disagreement with the tract on Tariff Reform, but really, as his letter published in "Fabian News" indicated, because in the long controversy over education policy he had found himself constantly in the position of a hostile critic. It should be added that his resignation has been followed by none of those personal and political disagreements which so commonly accompany the severance of old associations. Mr. Wallas has remained a Fabian in all except name. His friendship with his old colleagues has been unbroken, and he has always been willing to assist the Society out of his abundant stores of special knowledge both by lecturing at its meetings and by taking part in conferences and even by attending quite small meetings of special groups.
In all these years a large number of younger members had come forward, none of them of quite the same calibre as the Essayists, but many of them contributing much to the sum total of the Society's influence. Of these perhaps the most active was Henry W. Macrosty,[33] who sat on the Executive from 1895 till 1907, when he retired on account of the pressure of official duties. During and indeed before his period of office Mr. Macrosty was constantly engaged in research and writing for the Society. He prepared the Eight Hours Bill which approached nearest to practicability (Tract 48, "Eight Hours by Law," 1893); in 1898 he wrote for the Society "State Arbitration and the Living Wage" (Tract 83); in 1899, Tract 88, "The Growth of Monopoly in English Industry"; in 1905 "The Revival of Agriculture, a national policy for Great Britain," the last named an extraordinarily farsighted anticipation of the chief reforms which were advocated with such vigour by the Liberal Party, and indeed by all parties in the years preceding the great war. In the same year his "State Control of Trusts" was published as Tract 124. As I have before explained, a great part of the published work of the Society has been prepared co-operatively, and in this process Mr. Macrosty always took an active part. He had a considerable share in drafting the innumerable documents issued in connection with the education controversy, and indeed participated in all the activities of the Executive until his retirement.
Scarcely less active was Joseph F. Oakeshott, who has been already mentioned in connection with the Fellowship of the New Life. He joined the Executive when it was first enlarged in 1890, and sat until 1902. A Somerset House official, like Macrosty, he was strong on statistics, and for many years he undertook the constant revisions of the figures of national income, in the various editions of our "Facts for Socialists,"
His "Democratic Budget" (Tract 39) was our first attempt to apply Socialism to taxation: and his "Humanising of the Poor Law" (Tract 54), published in 1894, set out the policy which in recent years has been widely adopted by the better Boards of Guardians.
John W. Martin sat on the Executive from 1894 to 1899, wrote Tract No. 52, "State Education at Home and Abroad" (1894), and did a lot of valuable lecturing, both here and in America, where he married the leading exponent of Fabianism and editor of a monthly called "The American Fabian," and, settling in New York, has since, under the name of John Martin, played a considerable part in the educational and progressive politics of his adopted city.