critics what to expect when they are confronted with the statistics of the ordinary socialistic propagandist.

Let us now turn from his estimate of things as they are to his estimate of things as, under Socialism, they will be, and examine what he says about the home. The first thing which the Socialist must do, in view of the general sentiments of mankind, is, he says, to show that Socialism would destroy none of those beautiful characteristics which give to any genuine home life its value. No doubt persons like Mr. Wells are perfectly sincere in declaring that their object is to secure both the privacy of the home and its purity, and have no desire to turn it into a stud farm'; but what we have to consider is not their own personal objects, but the necessary result of their proposals, as they themselves specify them. Let us glance again at these proposals as Mr. Wells formulates them. (1) Husband and wife would be mutually independent of each other, each being free to go his or her own way. (2) The father would be so completely deprived of his existing authority over his own children, that he would not have even any voice in deciding in what religion they should be brought up. (3) No family might have any private policy, or, as Mr. Wells puts it, any 'private adventure' of its own. (4) The State, through its inspectors, would be always inquiring into the conduct of the mother towards her children, so as to prevent her from doing anything of which the inspectors did not approve. (5) The mother's conduct during pregnancy would be under similar control. If, for example, to take Mr. Wells's own illustration, a mother, when in that condition, were to try to increase her income by doing a little typewriting,' the Government inspector would at once say to her 'Drop that.' (6) When a young man and woman wish to marry, they must first satisfy the inspector not only that they are healthy, sane, and devoid of criminal instincts—a proviso for which there is much to be said-but they must also satisfy him that they are 'educable' up to a certain Government standard. If either of them cannot pass this examination, he or she is to be doomed to perpetual celibacy. (7) For every child which the mother presents to the State, she will receive a grant sufficient for its decent up-bringing, as a due payment on the State's part for presenting it with this 'human stuff'; but these grants will be subject to one signal exception. The State will only pay on this scale for as much human stuff as it needs,' and if the mother shows a tendency to make the supply exceed the demand, it will not indeed put an inspector in charge of the lady's actions, but will practically fine her for each child beyond & certain number by reducing the grants made to her, on account of all the stuff which is superfluous, to a sum below that which she will be forced to spend on its maintenance. A home like this, which fulfilled these seven conditions, however structurally comfortable, would, in the opinion of nine people out of ten, have been only swept and

garnished for the accommodation of seven devils. So much for Mr. Wells on the beauties of the socialistic home.

Let us now advance, as he does, to the more fundamental questions which lie behind these proposals, and which bear on the question which he recognises as the first question of all, whether Socialism—be it desirable or undesirable-is a system which could be made to go. It could be made to go, he says as we have seen already, on one condition only—namely, that the desire to 'serve' amongst all classes of society takes the place of the present desire to get. On his contention that the desire to serve to do the best and utmost for the pure delight of doing it is really the deepest characteristic of the British workman (cooks included) to-day, and only waits to be liberated by the general dissociation of superior work from corresponding pecuniary rewards, we need offer no outside comment; for Mr. Wells supplies us with comments of his own which will be enough for us. Some of these comments are psychological. Others are embodied in the details of his constructive programme. He declares (and I have often myself insisted on the same thing also) that contemporary Socialism exhibits one great deficiency. It is entirely wanting in any system of serious 'social psychology.' Mr. Wells gives us a variety of scattered examples of the generalisations to which this science will lead us. He divides human beings into certain well-marked classes-those who are temperamentally adverse to work'; those whose qualities are of so unpretending' a kind that they are economically capable of the simplest kinds of work only, such as carrying round the milk; those who have considerable talents, but no ambition to use them; those who have ambition, but have no talents to use; people with capacities which fit them for the great constructive, literary, and artistic professions, and whose talents are vitalised by a sufficiency of stimulative ambition; and persons in whom talent which is purely economic and administrative (such as the talent which directs capital into the most productive channels) reaches an abnormal development, because these persons are so 'dull' that all their other talents are atrophied. Such is the estimate which Mr. Wells, as a psychologist, gives us of human nature, and yet, as a Socialist, he bases his entire programme on the assumption that the vast mass of mankind are typified by plumbers, carpenters, and cooks, who are only prevented from always doing their best by the knowledge that, under the existing hateful system, the better they work the greater will be their pecuniary reward.

Let us now turn to his constructive programme, and see how, according to him, Socialism, if once in action, would appeal and have to appeal to these varieties of human stuff, so as to make the spirit of service' substitute itself for the spirit of 'getting and keeping.' We must remember, says Mr. Wells, that Socialism, however completely realised, will still leave life a struggle for individual 'self

6

gratification,' and instead of destroying competition will at once depend on and encourage it. It will leave men free to compete for three fundamental things-for 'salaries,' for 'authority,' and for personal prestige, rank, or 'honour.' What, then, becomes of the elimination of the spirit of getting, and the substitution for it of the mere desire to serve? Let us take Mr. Wells's own concrete examples. What is to stimulate the teacher to utilise his or her professional talents to the utmost? The desire, he says, for 'promotion to a larger salary,' which larger salary will enable him or her to command a more luxurious dwelling, to collect pictures, or to 'run a rose garden,' and pay gardeners. What is to stimulate the artist? The desire to win money grants from the State, which will give to him or her 'golden years of youth in Italy,' and enable him or her to make a large income afterwards by a life of self-expression in the 'production of beautiful and saleable things.' Some time since Mr. Wells confided to a newspaper that he himself made about 2000l. a year, an income to which, on Socialistic principles, he had every right, and even so, he says in this book, he considers himself only moderately successful.' The late Mr. Wilde, to whom he refers as a type of the consistent Socialist, is stated, in a life of him written by an admiring friend, to have been making at one period an income of 8000l., when, says his biographer, he was able for the first time to express his nature adequately. How then, so far as the spirit of human conduct is concerned, does Socialism differ from the spirit which results in the existing system? Everything which Mr. Wells takes away in his theory he puts back as soon as he comes to practice. The exceptional prizes of life-the thousands a year, the positions of power and authority-these will be competed for by the few, and the most able amongst the few will get them. Of the defeated competitors—the teachers who fail to be promoted to larger salaries,' the artists whose things, even if beautiful, are not 'saleable 'the utmost that Mr. Wells is able to promise to these failures is that the State will teach them some trade which will keep them in bread and butter. As to the great mass of men and women, under a system of socialised industry, their position, he frankly admits, would be just what it is now, except that their employment would be more continuous, and their wages (so he says) higher; and these men the 'labour mass-whose case he typifies by that of the Government 'milkman,' are dismissed by him with the consoling observation that, if they do not like their lot, they have nothing but their own 'unpretending qualities' to thank for it.

But Mr. Wells's unintentional repudiation of every principle which he formally advocates becomes yet more striking and manifest as his argument advances towards its climax. Malignant critics contend, he says, that Socialism would destroy all freedom, and his answer is that conceivably the malignant critics might be right-that Socialism might easily become a system of bureaucratic tyranny, almost as

'detestable' as anything that went before it. Indeed, he adds, in Socialism, as at present formulated, there is nothing to show that this result would not take place. It is therefore necessary to supplement the theory and the projects of Socialism, as at present put forward, by certain addenda.' The foremost of these addenda is that, though Socialism has for its ideal the seizure by the State of all means of production, one of the largest and most important of all modern kinds of enterprise must still be left open to unfettered activity of individuals. This is the business of printing and publication. Unless in this case the root principles of Socialism are utterly thrown to the winds, Socialism, says Mr. Wells, would be a system of 'political and intellectual' slavery. This admission, wrung from Mr. Wells by his own common sense, would be sufficiently significant if it stood alone; but Mr. Wells's common sense carries him farther yet. The magnificent Socialistic principle, which is to give us New Worlds for Old,' will, we find at length, according to his most sanguine estimate, be incompetent to extend itself to more than half the activities of the community, the rest, comprising 'ten thousand kinds of work,' being left to individuals, as now. The only point to which Mr. Wells can make a show of sticking consistently is the common socialistic doctrine that, though Socialism will allow any man to own and spend anything, however much, that his efforts produce directly, he is not to be allowed to own any accumulated means of production.' That is to say, if a man makes 20,000l. by selling 'beautiful saleable things,' he may, if he pleases, spend the whole sum on fireworks; but if he spends it in perfecting and producing a new loom or printing-press, the State is to confiscate this as being a vital source of permanent unearned income. How would Mr. Wells deal with those necessary private presses which are to form the sole barrier between the denizens of his Utopia and detestable slavery? Mr. Wells's arguments are like worms with a fatal sting in them, which writhe back on him, and destroy each position which he seeks to substantiate.

To expose the whole of his absurdities-such, for this example, as his theory of the collective will,' which alone can drive the State officials,' and which is yet something totally different from democracy as commonly understood-would take a volume almost as long as his own. We will now pass on to Mr. Ramsay Macdonald. If Mr. Macdonald escapes some of Mr. Wells's errors, he only does so because he apprehends fewer of the points at issue. But with regard to the most important contention put forward in his manifesto, he and Mr. Wells are at one. I refer to his assertion that the main immediate object for which practical Socialists in England are at this moment working is the making of a radical discrimination between earned incomes and unearned, and the transference of all taxation to these last. Mr. Macdonald, though he professes a prudent dread of committing himself to any definitions except such as are of a hand-to

mouth description, and steers as clear as may be of any general principle, is entirely at one with Mr. Wells in defining unearned incomes as those which result from no immediate and contemporary effort, but consist of the usufruct of accumulated instruments of production. Of such instruments, his cardinal example is the railways, and the nationalisation of the railways is a measure which for him is typical of the procedure which his party is working for throughout the entire domain of industry.

Let us, then, take the railways as typical of industry generally, and what Mr. Macdonald declares that his party is working for here and now comes to this. All productive property, instruments, and appliances are to be taken over by the State, the present owners are to be credited with the present value of their holdings, and the State is to guarantee to them such dividends as they now draw from them; but no sooner is this change accomplished, than the State is to transfer to the income thus guaranteed by it the entire burden of taxation; and those members of the community who do not own this income, are to be given an absolute power of taking, if they please, the whole of it from those who do. In other words, the old principle is to be reversed—namely, 'no taxation unless the bulk of the taxpayers consent to it,' and all taxes will be laid on the shoulders of those who, ex hypothesi, will be unable to say yes or no. It is perfectly obvious that, in this case, the whole of the taxable incomes would at once be liable to confiscation, and before long would be confiscated, or subjected to what Mr. Sidney Webb describes as the ideal rate of twenty shillings in the pound.' Mr. Macdonald regards this as the ideal rate also, and declares that it could not possibly have any effect upon trade, because trade depends on a succession of active efforts, and these incomes correspond to no efforts at all.

This argument and the proposal are old. If Mr. Macdonald were to turn to my book, A Critical Examination of Socialism, he would find them discussed minutely, and illustrated by a parallel which is at once simple and illuminating. Many foreign States-the illustration is this raise a large revenue by means of public lotteries. The people put money into these lotteries because they hope to win prizes, some of which amount to ten or twenty thousand pounds apiece, and each venturer hopes to win a prize this year, because he has seen prizes paid to, and securely enjoyed by, others in the years that have gone before. But let us suppose that the State, having paid the winners this year, were suddenly to place a tax of twenty shillings in the pound on all winnings of the kind that it has just paid. What will happen then? If we confine our attention to this single transaction, the State will be a pure gainer. But this transaction would put an end to all gains, on the State's part, from State lotteries in the future, for nobody would put a penny into any such lottery again. The case is the same with unearned incomes generally-incomes