or two that the revolutionary wing in these
last-named countries has begun to grow rapidly again and promises to
regain control.

There can be no doubt that Socialist "reformism" has become very
widespread. President Gompers of the American Federation of Labor, who
had every facility of meeting European Socialists and unionists on a
recent tour, made some observations which are by no means without a
certain foundation.[95] He says that he talked to these people about
Socialism and, though they all knew "the litany, service, and
invocation" and the Socialist text for the coming revolution, they
preserved this knowledge for their speech making, while in conversation
it all faded away into the misty realms of the imagination.
"Positively," writes Mr. Gompers, "I never found one man in my trip
ready to go further into constructive Socialism than to repeat
perfunctorily its time-worn generalities. On the other hand, I met men
whom I knew years ago, either personally or through correspondence or by
their work, as active propagandists of the Socialists' theoretical
creed, who are now devoting their energies to one or other of the
practical forms of social betterment--trade unionism, cooeperation, legal
protection to the workers--and who could not be moved to speak of
utopianism [Mr. Gompers's epithet for Socialism]." It is doubtless true,
as Mr. Gompers says, that the individuals he questioned have practically
abandoned their Socialism, even though they remain members of the
Socialist parties. For if such activities as he mentions could be
claimed as "Socialism," then there is very little public work an
intelligent and honest workingman can undertake, no matter how
conservative it may be, which is not to go by that name.

The chief characteristic of the reformists is, indeed, frankly to claim,
either that all the capitalist-collectivist reforms of the period are
Socialist in origin, or that they cannot be put into execution without
Socialist aid, or that such reforms are enacted only as concessions, for
fear that Socialism would otherwise sweep everything before it.

Rev. Carl D. Thompson, formerly a Socialist member of the Wisconsin
Legislature, and now Town Clerk of Milwaukee, for example, claims
Millerand as a Socialist minister, though the French Socialist Party
agreed by an almost unanimous vote that he is not to be so considered,
and attributes to this minister a whole series of reforms in which he
was only a single