bles, we keep high-born paupers living on the national charity, we
squander wealth with both hands on army and navy, on churches and
palaces; but we grudge every halfpenny that increases the education
rate and howl down every proposal to build decent houses for the poor.
We cover our heartlessness and indifference with fine phrases about
sapping the independence of the poor and destroying their
self-respect. With loathsome hypocrisy we repair a prince's palace for
him, and let him live in it rent-free, without one word about the
degradation involved in his thus living upon charity; while we refuse
to 'pauperise' the toiler by erecting decent buildings in which he may
live--not rent-free like the prince, but only paying a rent which
shall cover the cost of erection and maintenance, instead of one which
gives a yearly profit to a speculator. And so, year after year, the
misery grows, and every great city has on its womb a cancer; sapping
its vitality, poisoning its life-blood. Every great city is breeding
in its slums a race which is reverting through the savage to the
brute--a brute more dangerous in that degraded humanity has
possibilities of evil in it beyond the reach of the mere wild beast.
If not for Love's sake, then for fear; if not for justice or for human
pity, then for sheer desire of self-preservation; I appeal to the wise
and to the wealthy to set their hands to the cure of social evil, ere
stolidity gives place to passion and dull patience vanishes before
fury, and they

"'Learn at last, in some wild hour, how much the wretched dare.'"

Because it was less hotly antagonistic to the Radicals than the two
other Socialist organisations, I joined the Fabian Society, and worked
hard with it as a speaker and lecturer. Sidney Webb, G. Bernard Shaw,
Hubert and Mrs. Bland, Graham Wallas--these were some of those who
gave time, thought, incessant work to the popularising of Socialist
thought, the spreading of sound economics, the effort to turn the
workers' energy toward social rather than merely political reform. We
lectured at workmen's clubs wherever we could gain a hearing, till we
leavened London Radicalism with Socialist thought, and by treating the
Radical as the unevolved Socialist rather than as the anti-Socialist,
we gradually won him over to Socialist views. We circulated questions
to be put to all candidates for parliamentary or other offices,
stirred up interest in local elections, educated men and women