members, and was not intended to be anything else than a
means of communicating with the members as to the work of the Society,
and also in later years as to new books on subjects germane to its work.
It has been edited throughout by the Secretary, but everything of a
contentious character relating to the affairs of the Society has been
published by the express authority of the Executive Committee.

It may be mentioned that from this time forward the documents of the
Society are both fuller and more accessible than before. For the period
up to the end of 1889 the only complete record is contained in the two
minute books of the meetings. No regular minutes of Executive Committee
meetings were kept, and the Annual Reports were not printed until 1889.
From 1890 onwards the meetings of every committee were regularly
recorded: the Annual Reports were printed in octavo and can be found in
many public libraries, whilst "Fabian News" contains full information of
the current doings of the Society. It will not therefore be necessary to
treat the later years with such attention to detail as has seemed
appropriate to the earlier. The only "sources" for these are shabby
notebooks and the memories of a few men now rapidly approaching old age.
The later years can be investigated, if any subsequent enquirer desires
to do so, in a dozen libraries in Great Britain and the United States.

[Illustration: _From a photograph by Van der Weyde_

WILLIAM CLARKE, ABOUT 1895]

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Shaw demurs to this passage, and says that he did not revise the
papers verbally, especially those by Mrs. Besant and Graham Wallas, but
that he suggested or made alterations in the others. I am still disposed
to suspect that my statement is not far from the truth.

[25] The opinions of some of the Essayists about co-operation were
apparently modified by some small meetings with leading co-operators on
March 27th, April 17th, and May 22nd, 1889. Bernard Shaw tells me that
he thinks that they were held at Willis's Rooms, that he was in the
chair, and that Mr. Benjamin Jones (whose name I find as a speaker at
Fabian Meetings about this period) played a prominent part on behalf of
the Co-operative Wholesale Society.

The first printed Annual Report presented on 5th April, 1889, mentions
that "the Society is taking part in a 'Round Table Conference' to
ascertain amongst other objects how far the various Co-operative and
Socialist bodies can act together