It plunders the workers of the wealth they make, and then flings back at them a thousandth part of their own product as ‘charity.’  It builds hospitals for the poor whom it has poisoned in filthy courts and alleys, and workhouses for the worn-out creatures from whom it has wrung every energy, every hope, every joy.  Miss Cobbe summons us to admire Christian civilisation, and we see idlers flaunting in the robes woven by the toilers, a glittering tinselled super-structure founded on the tears, the strugglings, the grey, hopeless misery of the poor.”

This first month of January, 1885, brought on me the first attack for my Socialistic tendencies, from the pen of Mr. W.P.  Ball, who wrote to the Reformer complaining of my paragraph, quoted above, in which I had advocated rate-supported meals for Board School children.  A brief controversy thus arose, in which I supported my opinion, waiving the question as to my being “at heart a Socialist.”  In truth, I dreaded to make the plunge of publicly allying myself with the advocates of Socialism, because of the attitude of bitter hostility they had adopted towards Mr. Bradlaugh.  On his strong, tenacious nature, nurtured on self-reliant individualism, the arguments of the younger generation made no impression.  He could not change his methods because a new tendency was rising to the surface, and he did not see how different was the Socialism of our day to the Socialist dreams of the past—­noble ideals of a future not immediately realisable in truth, but to be worked towards and rendered possible in the days to come.  Could I take public action which might bring me into collision with the dearest of my friends, which might strain the strong and tender tie so long existing between us?  My affection, my gratitude, all warred against the idea of working with those who wronged him so bitterly.  But the cry of starving children was ever in my ears; the sobs of women poisoned in lead works, exhausted in nail works, driven to prostitution by starvation, made old and haggard by ceaseless work.  I saw their misery was the result of an evil system, was inseparable from private ownership of the instruments of wealth production; that while the worker was himself but an instrument, selling his labour under the law of supply and demand, he must remain helpless in the grip of the employing classes, and that trade combinations could only mean increased warfare—­necessary, indeed, for the time as weapons of defence—­but meaning war, not brotherly co-operation of all for the good of all.  A conflict which was stripped of all covering, a conflict between a personal tie and a call of duty could not last long, and with a heavy heart I made up my mind to profess Socialism openly and work for it with all my energy.  Happily, Mr. Bradlaugh was as tolerant as he was strong, and our private friendship remained unbroken; but he never again felt the same confidence in my judgment as he felt before, nor did he any more consult me on his own policy, as he had done ever since we first clasped hands.