ibe, tradition and the undocumented will
of the strongest males. Socialism, I will admit, presupposes
intelligence, and demands as fundamental necessities schools,
organized science, literature and a sense of the State.

CHAPTER VI

WOULD SOCIALISM DESTROY THE HOME?

Sec. 1.

For reasons that will become clearer when we tell something of the
early history and development of Socialism, the Socialist propositions
with regard to the family lie open to certain grave misconceptions.
People are told--and told quite honestly and believingly--that
Socialism will destroy the home, will substitute a sort of human stud
farm for that warm and intimate nest of human life, will bring up our
children in incubators and creches and--Institutions generally.

But before we come to what modern Socialists do desire in these
matters, it may be well to consider something of the present reality
of the home people are so concerned about. The reader must not
idealize. He must not shut his eyes to facts, dream, as Lord Hugh
Cecil and Lord Robert Cecil--those admirable champions of a bad
cause--probably do, of a beautiful world of homes, orderly, virtuous,
each a little human fastness, each with its porch and creeper, each
with its books and harmonium, its hymn-singing on Sunday night, its
dear mother who makes such wonderful cakes, its strong and happy
father--and then say, "These wicked Socialists want to destroy all
this." Because, in the first place, such homes are being destroyed and
made impossible now by the very causes against which Socialism fights,
and because in this world at the present time very few homes are at
all like this ideal. In reality every poor home is haunted by the
spectre of irregular employment and undermined by untrustworthy
insurance, it must shelter in insanitary dwellings and its children
eat adulterated food because none other can be got. And that, I am
sorry to say, it is only too easy to prove, by a second appeal to a
document of which I have already made use.

One hears at times still of the austere, virtuous, kindly, poor Scotch
home, one has a vision of the "Cottar's Saturday night." "Perish all
other dreams," one cries, "rather than that such goodness and
simplicity should end." But now let us look at the average poor Scotch
home, and compare it with our dream.

Here is the reality.

These entries come from the recently published Edinburgh Charity
Organization Society's report upon the homes