inker or speaker. One or two produced
praiseworthy local tracts on housing conditions and similar subjects.
They usually displayed less tolerance than the London Society, a greater
inclination to insist that there was but one way of political salvation,
usually the Labour Party way, and that all who would not walk in it
should be treated as alien enemies. If Socialism is only to be achieved
by the making of Socialists, as Mr. Wells announced with all the
emphasis of a rediscovery, no doubt the local societies achieved some
Socialism, since they made some members. If Socialism is to be attained
by the making of Socialist measures, doubtless they accomplished a
little by their influence on local administration. Organisation for
political work is always educative to those who take part in it, and it
has some effect on the infinitely complex parallelogram of forces which
determines the direction of progress. Possibly I underestimate the
importance of local Fabian Societies; there is a school of thought,
often represented in the Society, which regards the provinces with
reverent awe--omne ignotum pro magnifico--as the true source of
political wisdom, which Londoners should endeavour to discover and obey.
Londoners no doubt see little of organised labour, and even less of
industrial co-operation: the agricultural labourer is to them almost a
foreigner: the Welsh miner belongs to another race. But the business
men, the professional class, and the political organisers of Manchester
and Glasgow have, in my opinion, no better intuitions, and usually less
knowledge than their equivalents in London, and they have the
disadvantage of comparative isolation. London, the brain of the Empire,
where reside the leaders in politics and in commerce, in literature, in
journalism and in art, and which consequently attracts the young men who
aspire to be the next generation of leaders, where too are stationed all
the higher ranks of Civil Service, is different in kind, as well as in
size, from other cities. New thought on social subjects is almost always
the product of association. Only those who live in a crowd of other
thinkers know where there is room for new ideas; for it takes years for
the top layer of political thought to find expression in books.
Therefore the provincial thinker on social problems is always a little
out of date. Except for one or two University men (e.g. Sidney Ball and
Sir Oliver Lodge) practically all Fabian tract-writ