ty
Acts, and Trade Board Acts became a recognised part of the policy of
both political parties.

Fabian teaching has had more direct influence in promoting the
administrative protection of Labour. The Fair Wages policy, now
everywhere prevalent in State and Municipal employment, was, as has been
already described, if not actually invented, at any rate largely
popularised by the Society. It was a working-class demand, and it has
been everywhere put forward by organised labour, but its success would
have been slower had the manual workers been left to fight their own
battle.

I have said that the work of the Society was the interpretation of an
existing movement, the explanation and justification of tendencies which
originated in Society at large, and not in societies, Fabian or other.
That work is only less valuable than the formulation of new ideas. None
of the Fabians would claim to rank beside the great promulgators of new
ideas, such as Owen and Marx. But the interpretation of tendencies is
necessary if progress is to be sustained and if it is to be unbroken by
casual reaction. In an old country like ours, with vast forces of
inertia built up by ages of precedents, by a class system which forms a
part of the life of the nation, by a distribution of wealth which even
yet scarcely yields to the pressure of graduated taxation, legislation
is always in arrear of the needs of the times; the social structure is
always old-fashioned and out of date, and reform always tends to be
late, and even too late, unless there are agitators with the ability to
attract public attention calling on the men in power to take action.

* * * * *

But this victory of a principle is not a complete victory of the
principles of Socialism. It is a limitation of the power of the
capitalist to use his capital as he pleases, and Socialism is much more
than a series of social safeguards to the private ownership of capital.
Municipal ownership is a further step, but even this will not carry us
far because the capital suitable for municipal management on existing
lines is but a small fraction of the whole, and because municipal
control does not directly affect the amount of capital in the hands of
the capitalists who are always expropriated with ample compensation.

We have made some progress along another line. Supertax, death duties,
and taxes on unearned increment do a little to diminish the wealth of
the few: ol