universal attention.  The early Suffrage movement was mainly Socialist in origin:  most of the first leaders of the Women’s Social and Political Union were or had been members either of the Fabian Society or of the I.L.P. and it may almost be said that all the women of the Society joined one or more of the Suffrage Societies which for the next seven years played so large a part in national politics.  But besides the question of the vote, which is not peculiar to Socialism, there is a very large group of subjects of special interest to Socialist women, either practical problems of immediate politics relating to the wages and conditions of women’s labour and the treatment of women by Education Acts, National Insurance Acts, and Factory Acts; or remoter and more theoretical problems, especially those connected with the question whether the wife in the ideal state is to be an independent wage-earner or the mistress and manager of an isolated home, dependent on her husband as breadwinner.  Efficiently organised by Mrs. C.M.  Wilson, until ill-health required her resignation of the secretaryship in 1914; by Mrs. Bernard Shaw, Mrs. Pember Reeves, Miss Murby, Miss Emma Brooke, and many others, including in later years Dr. Letitia Fairfield, the Group has had many of the characteristics of an independent society.  It has its own office, latterly at 25 Tothill Street, rented from the parent Society, with its own paid assistant secretary, and it has issued for private circulation its own publications.  In 1913 it prepared a volume of essays on “Women Workers in Seven Professions,” which was edited by Professor Edith Morley and published by George Routledge and Sons.  It has prepared five tracts for the Society, published in the general list, under a sub-title, “The Women’s Group Series,” and it has taken an active part, both independently and in co-operation with other bodies, in the political movements specially affecting women, which have been so numerous in recent years.

* * * * *

It will be recollected that the only direct result of the Special Enquiry Committee, apart from the changes made in the organisation of the Society itself, was the decision to promote local Socialist Societies of the Fabian type with a view to increasing Socialist representation in Parliament.  I have recounted in a previous chapter how this scheme worked out in relation to the Labour Party and the running of candidates for Parliament.  It remains to describe here its measure of success in the formation of local societies.

The summer of 1905 was about the low-water mark of provincial Fabianism.  Nine societies are named in the report, but four of these appeared to have no more than a nominal existence.  The Oxford University Society had but 6 members; Glasgow had 30 in its University Society and 50 in its town Society; Liverpool was reduced to 63, Leeds and County to 15, and that was all.  A year later the Cambridge University Society