truth. The great provincial municipalities took over the
management of their water and gas because they found municipal control
alike convenient, beneficial to the citizens, and financially
profitable: Birmingham in the seventies was the Mecca of
Municipalisation, and in 1882 the Electric Lighting Act passed by Mr.
Joseph Chamberlain was so careful of the interests of the public, so
strict in the limitations it put upon the possible profits to the
investor, that electric lighting was blocked in England for some years,
and the Act had to be modified in order that capital might be
attracted.[22]

What the Fabian Society did was to point out that Socialism did not
necessarily mean the control of all industry by a centralised State;
that to introduce Socialism did not necessarily require a revolution
because much of it could be brought about piecemeal by the votes of the
local electors. And secondly the Society complained that London was
singularly backward in municipal management: that the wealthiest city in
the world was handed over to the control of exploiters, who made profits
from its gas, its water, its docks, and its tramways, whilst elsewhere
these monopolies were owned and worked by public authorities who
obtained all the advantages for the people of the localities concerned.
Moreover, it may be questioned whether the Fabian advocacy of
municipalisation hastened or retarded that process in London. In
provincial towns municipalisation--the word of course was unknown--had
been regarded as of no social or political significance. It was a
business matter, a local affair, a question of convenience. In London,
partly owing to Fabian advocacy and partly because London had at last a
single representative authority with a recognised party system, it
became the battle ground of the parties: the claim of the Socialists
awakened the Individualists to opposition: and the tramways of London
were held as a trench in the world-wide conflict between Socialism and
its enemies, whose capture was hailed as an omen of progress by one
side, and by the other deplored as the presage of defeat.

"Facts for Londoners" was the work of Sidney Webb, but there is nothing
in the tract to indicate this. The publications of the Society were
collective works, in that every member was expected to assist in them by
criticism and suggestion. Although several of the tracts were lectures
or papers written by members for other purposes, and are so descr