ade use of for party purposes; and it will be guided in its action
by the character, record, and pledges of the candidates before the
constituencies. In Municipal, School Board, Vestry, and other local
elections, the League will, as it finds itself strong enough, run
candidates of its own, and by placing trustworthy Socialists on
local representative bodies it will endeavour to secure the
recognition of the Socialist principle in all the details of local
government."

Its history is narrated in the same Tract:--

"Here you have the first sketch of the Fabian policy of to-day. The
Parliamentary League, however, was a short-lived affair. Mrs.
Wilson's followers faded away, either by getting converted or leaving
us. Indeed, it is a question with us to this day whether they did not
owe their existence solely to our own imaginations. Anyhow, it soon
became plain that the Society was solidly with the Executive on the
subject of political action, and that there was no need for any
separate organization at all. The League first faded into a Political
Committee of the Society, and then merged silently and painlessly
into the general body."

Amongst the lecturers of the autumn of 1886 were H.H. Champion on the
Unemployed, Mrs. Besant on the Economic Position of Women, Percival
Chubb, Bernard Shaw on "Socialism and the Family"--a pencil note in the
minute book in the lecturer's handwriting says, "This was one of Shaw's
most outrageous performances"--and, in the absence of the Rev. Stopford
Brooke, another by Shaw on "Why we do not act up to our principles,"

A new Tract was adopted in January, 1887. No. 5, "Facts for Socialists,"
perhaps the most effective Socialist tract ever published in England. It
has sold steadily ever since it was issued: every few years it has been
revised and the figures brought up to date; the edition now on sale,
published in 1915, is the eleventh. The idea was not new. Statistics of
the distribution of our national income had been given, as previously
mentioned, in one of the earliest manifestoes of the Democratic
Federation. But in Tract 5 the exact facts were rubbed in with copious
quotations from recognised authorities and illustrated by simple
diagrams. The full title of the tract was "Facts for Socialists from the
Political Economists and Statisticians," and the theme of it was to
prove that every charge made by Socialism against the capitalist