er as Treasurer,
and it was decided that the Chairman with H.M. Hyndman and Bernard Shaw
should draft a Joint Manifesto. The "Manifesto of English Socialists,"
published on May 1st, 1893, as a penny pamphlet with the customary red
cover, was signed by the three Secretaries, H.W. Lee of the S.D.F.,
Emery Walker of the H.S.S., and myself, and by fifteen delegates,
including Sydney Olivier and Sidney Webb of the F.S., Harry Quelch of
the S.D.F., and the three authors.

Like most joint productions of clever men, it is by no means an
inspiring document. The less said, the less to dispute about, and so it
only runs to eight pages of large print, four devoted to the evils of
capitalism, unemployment, the decline of agriculture, and the
ill-nurture of children, and the rest to remedies, a queer list,
consisting of:--

An eight hours law.

Prohibition of child labour for wages.

Free Maintenance for all necessitous children (a compromise in which
Fabian influence may be traced by the insertion of the word
"necessitous").

Equal payment of men and women for equal work.

(A principle which, whether good or bad, belongs rather to individualism
than to Socialism: Socialism according to Bernard Shaw--and most of us
agree with him--demands as an ideal equal maintenance irrespective of
work; and in the meantime payment according to need, each to receive
that share of the national product which he requires in order to do his
work and maintain his dependents, if any, appropriately.)

To resume the programme:--

An adequate minimum wage for all adults employed in Government and
Municipal services or in any monopolies such as railways enjoying
State privileges.

Suppression of all sub-contracting and sweating (an ignorant
confusion between a harmless industrial method and its occasional
abuse).

Universal suffrage for all adults, men and women alike.

Public payment for all public service.

These of course were only means tending towards the ideal, "to wit, the
supplanting of the present state by a society of equality of condition,"
and then follows a sentence paraphrased from the Fabian Basis embodying
a last trace of that Utopian idealism which imagines that society can be
constituted so as to enable men to live in freedom without eternal
vigilance, namely, "When this great change is completely carried out,
the genuine liberty of all will be secured by the free play of social
for