good and useful work and is
worthy of sympathy and support." This was carried nem. con. On March 7th
a pamphlet committee was nominated, and on March 21st the Executive was
reappointed. On April 4th the Pamphlet Committee reported, and 2000
copies of "Fabian Tract No. 1" were ordered to be printed.

This four-page leaflet has now remained in print for over thirty years,
and there is no reason to suppose that the demand for it will soon
cease. According to tradition, it was drafted by W.L. Phillips, a
house-painter, at that time the only "genuine working man" in our ranks.
He had been introduced to me by a Positivist friend, and was in his way
a remarkable man, ready at any time to talk of his experiences of
liberating slaves by the "Underground Railway" in the United States. He
worked with us cordially for several years and then gradually dropped
out. The original edition of "Why are the many poor?" differs very
little from that now in circulation. It was revised some years later by
Bernard Shaw, who cut down the rhetoric and sharpened the phraseology,
but the substance has not been changed. It is remarkable as containing a
sneer at Christianity, the only one to be found in the publications of
the Society. Perhaps this was a rebound from excess of "subordination of
material things to spiritual things" insisted on by the Fellowship of
the New Life!

The tract had on its title page two mottoes, the second of which has
played some part in the Society's history. They were produced, again
according to tradition, by Frank Podmore, and, though printed as
quotations, are not to be discovered in any history:--

"Wherefore it may not be gainsaid that the fruit of this man's long
taking of counsel--and (by the many so deemed) untimeous delays--was
the safe-holding for all men, his fellow-citizens, of the Common
Weal."

"For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently,
when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but
when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your
waiting will be in vain, and fruitless."

It has been pointed out by Mr. H.G. Wells, and by others before him,
that Fabius never did strike hard; and many have enquired when the
right time for the Fabians to strike would come. In fact, we recognised
at that time that we did not know what were the remedies for the evils
of society as we saw them and that the right time for striking would not