ity of Marx must
have been antipathetic to the English workmen whom he knew, or else he
failed to make them understand his ideas: at any rate, his socialism
fell on deaf ears, and it may be said to have made no lasting impression
on the leaders of English working-class thought. Though he was resident
in England for thirty-four years, Marx remained a German to the last.
His writings were not translated into English at this period, and Mr.
Hyndman's "England for All," published in 1881, which was the first
presentation of his ideas in English, did not even mention his name.
This book was in fact an extremely moderate proposal to remedy
"something seriously amiss in the conditions of our everyday life," and
the immediate programme was no more than an eight hours working day,
free and compulsory education, compulsory construction of working-class
dwellings, and cheap "transport" for working-class passengers. It was
the unauthorised programme of the Democratic Federation which had been
founded by Mr. Hyndman in 1881. "Socialism Made Plain," the social and
political Manifesto of the Democratic Federation (undated, but
apparently issued in 1883), is a much stronger document. It deals with
the distribution of the National Income, giving the workers' share as
300 out of 1300 millions sterling, and demands that the workers should
"educate, agitate, organise" in order to get their own. Evidently it
attracted some attention, since we find that the second edition of a
pamphlet "Reply" by Samuel Smith, M.P., then a person of substantial
importance, was issued in January, 1884.

At the end of 1883 Mr. Hyndman published his "Historical Basis of
Socialism in England," which for some time was the text-book of the
Democratic Federation, but this, of course, was too late to influence
the founders of the Fabian Society.

We were however aware of Marx, and I find that my copy of the French
edition of "Das Kapital" is dated 8th October, 1883; but I do not think
that any of the original Fabians had read the book or had assimilated
its ideas at the time the Society was founded.

To some of those who joined the Society in its early days Christian
Socialism opened the way of salvation. The "Christian Socialist"[4] was
established by a band of persons some of whom were not Socialist and
others not Christian. It claimed to be the spiritual child of the
Christian Socialist movement of 1848-52, which again was Socialist only
on its critical side,