ng
holes. It is a lesson that Socialism stood in need of, and which
henceforth it will always bear in mind. But suppose we want to dig a
dozen holes, it may be worth while to spend a little time in going to
beg, borrow or buy a spade. If we have to dig holes indefinitely, day
after day, it will be sheer foolishness sticking to the bat. It will
be worth while then not simply to get a spade, but to get just the
right sort of spade in size and form that the soil requires, to get
the proper means of sharpening and repairing the spade, to insure a
proper supply. Or to point the comparison, the reconstruction of our
legislative and local government machinery is a necessary preliminary
to Socialization in many directions. Mr. Webb has very effectually
admitted that, is in fact himself leading us away from that by taking
up the study of local government as his principal occupation, but the
typical "Webbite" of the Fabian Society, who is very much to Webb what
the Marxist is to Marx, entranced by his leader's skill, still clings
to a caricature distortion of this earlier Fabian ideal. He dreams of
the most foxy and wonderful digging by means of box-lids,
table-spoons, dish-covers--anything but spades designed and made for
the job in hand--just as he dreams of an extensive expropriation of
landlords by a legislature that includes the present unreformed House
of Lords....

Sec. 3.

It was only at the very end of the nineteenth century that the Fabian
Socialist movement was at all quickened to the need of political
reconstruction as extensive as the economic changes it advocated, and
it is still far from a complete apprehension of the importance of the
political problem. To begin with, Mr. and Mrs. Webb, having completed
their work on Labour Regulation, took up the study of local government
and commenced that colossal task that still engages them, their book
upon _English Local Government_, of which there has as yet appeared
(1907) only one volume out of seven. (Immense as this service is, it
is only one part of conjoint activities that will ultimately give
constructive social conceptions an enormous armoury of scientifically
arranged fact.)

As the outcome of certain private experiences, the moral of which was
pointed by discussion with Mr. and Mrs. Webb, the present writer in
1902 put before the Fabian Society a paper on Administrative
Areas,[22] in which he showed clearly that the character and
efficiency and possibilitie