as well as by the Rev. Russell Wakefield (now the Bishop of
Birmingham) and Mr. F. Chandler, Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of
Carpenters and Joiners, the Society took it up. Mr. and Mrs. Webb
reprinted the Minority Report with an introduction and notes in two
octavo volumes, and they lent the Society the plates for a paper edition
in two parts at a shilling and two shillings, one dealing with
Unemployment and the other with the reconstruction of the Poor Law, some
6000 copies of which were sold at a substantial profit.

The Treasury Solicitor was rash enough to threaten us with an injunction
on the ground of infringement of the Crown copyright and to demand an
instant withdrawal of our edition. But Government Departments which try
conclusions with the Fabian Society generally find the Society better
informed than themselves; and we were able triumphantly to refer the
Treasury Solicitor to a published declaration of his own employers, the
Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, a score of years before, in which
they expressly disclaimed their privilege of copyright monopoly so far
as ordinary blue books were concerned, and actually encouraged the
reprinting of them for the public advantage. And, with characteristic
impudence, we intimated also that, if the Government wished to try the
issue, it might find that the legal copyright was not in the Crown at
all, as the actual writer of the Report, to whom alone the law gives
copyright, had never ceded his copyright and was not a member of the
Royal Commission at all! At the same time we prepared to get the utmost
advertisement out of the attempt to suppress the popular circulation of
the Report, and we made this fact known to the Prime Minister. In the
end the Treasury Solicitor had to climb down and withdraw his objection.
What the Government did was to undercut us by publishing a still
cheaper edition, which did not stop our sales, and thus the public
benefited by our enterprise, and an enormous circulation was obtained
for the Report.

The Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission--although never, from
first to last, mentioning Socialism--was a notable and wholly original
addition to Socialist theory, entirely of Fabian origin. Hitherto all
Socialist writings on the organisation of society, whether contemporary
or Utopian, had visualised a world composed exclusively of healthy,
sane, and effective citizens, mostly adults. No Socialist had stopped to
think out how, i