The Fabian Society had since its earliest days been conscious of the problem of unemployment; but it had done little to solve it. The "Report on the Government Organisation of Unemployed Labour," printed "for the information of members" in 1886, had been long forgotten, and an attempt to revise it made some time in the nineties had come to nothing. In "Fabian Essays" unemployment is rightly recognised as the Achilles heel of the proletarian system, but the practical problem is not solved or even thoroughly understood; the plausible error of supposing that the unemployed baker and bootmaker can be set to make bread and boots for one another still persists. In 1893 we reprinted from the "Nineteenth Century" as Tract No. 47 a paper on "The Unemployed" by John Burns, and we had published nothing else.
In fact we found the subject too difficult. There were plenty of palliatives familiar to every social enquirer; Socialism, the organisation of industry by the community for the community, we regarded as the real and final remedy. But between the former, such as labour bureaux, farm colonies, afforestation, the eight hours day, which admittedly were at best only partial and temporary, and Socialism, which was obviously far off, there was a great gulf fixed, and how to bridge it we knew not. At last the Minority Report provided an answer. It was a comprehensive and practicable scheme for preventing unemployment under existing conditions, and for coping with the mass of incompetent destitution which for generations had Been the disgrace of our civilisation.
Into the details of this scheme I must not enter because it is, properly speaking, outside the scope of this book. The propaganda for carrying the Report into effect was undertaken by the National Committee for the Prevention of Destitution, established by Mrs. Webb as a separate organisation. The necessity for this step was significant of the extent to which Socialism, as it crystallises into practical measures, invades the common body of British thought. People who would not dream of calling themselves Socialists, much less contributing to the funds of a Socialist Society, become enthusiastically interested in separate parts of its program as soon as it has a program, provided these parts are presented on their own merits and not as approaches to Socialism. Indeed many who regard Socialism as a menace to society are so anxious to find and support alternatives to it, that they will endow expensive Socialistic investigations and subscribe to elaborate Socialistic schemes of reform under the impression that nothing that is thoughtful, practical, well informed, and constitutional can possibly have any connection with the Red Spectre which stands in their imagination for Socialism. To such people the Minority Report, a document obviously the work of highly skilled and disinterested political thinkers and experts, would recommend itself as the constitutional basis of a Society for the Prevention of Destitution: that is, of the condition which not only smites the conscientious rich with a compunction that no special pleading by arm-chair economists can allay, but which offers a hotbed to the sowers of Socialism. Add to these the considerable number of convinced or half-convinced Socialists who for various reasons are not in a position to make a definite profession of Socialism without great inconvenience, real or imaginary, to themselves, and it will be plain that Mrs. Webb would have been throwing away much of her available resources if she had not used the device of a new organisation to agitate for the Minority Report ad hoc.
Many Fabians served on the Committee—indeed a large proportion of our members must have taken part in its incessant activities—and the relations between the two bodies were close; but most of the subscribers to the Committee and many of its most active members came from outside the Society, and were in no way committed to its general principles.
For two whole years Mrs. Webb managed her Committee with great vigour and dash. She collected for it a considerable income and a large number of workers: she lectured and organised all over the country; she discovered that she was an excellent propagandist, and that what she could do with success she also did with zest.
In the summer of 1911 Mr. and Mrs. Webb left England for a tour round the world, and Mrs. Webb had mentioned before she left that she was willing to be nominated for the Executive. At the election in April, 1912, whilst still abroad, she was returned second on the poll, with 778 votes, only a dozen behind her husband.
From this point onwards Mrs. Webb has been on the whole the dominant personality in the Society This does not necessarily mean that she is abler or stronger than her husband or Bernard Shaw. But the latter had withdrawn from the Executive Committee, and the former, with the rest of the Old Gang, had made the Society what it already was. Mrs. Webb brought a fresh and fertile mind to its councils. Her twenty years of membership and intimate private acquaintance with its leaders made her familiar with its possibilities, but she was free from the influence of past failures—in such matters for example as Socialist Unity—and she was eager to start out on new lines which the almost unconscious traditions of the Society had hitherto barred.
The story of the Society has been traced to the conclusion of the intervention of Mr. Wells, and I then turned aside to describe the numerous new activities of the booming years which followed the Labour Party triumph of 1906. I must now complete the history of the internal affairs of the Society.
As a political body, the Society has usually, though not invariably, issued some sort of pronouncement on the eve of a General Election. In January, 1910, the Executive Committee published in "Fabian News" a brief manifesto addressed to the members urging them to "Vote against the House of Lords." It will be recollected that the Lords had rejected the Budget, and the sole issue before the country was the right of the House of Commons to control finance. Members were urged to support any duly accredited Labour or socialist candidate; elsewhere they were, in effect, advised to vote for the Liberal candidates. In April their action in publishing this "Special advice to members" without the consent of a members' meeting was challenged, but the Executive Committee's contention that it was entitled to advise the members, and that the advice given was sound, was endorsed by a very large majority.