WILLIAM CLARKE, ABOUT 1895]

FOOTNOTES: 

[24] Shaw demurs to this passage, and says that he did not revise the papers verbally, especially those by Mrs. Besant and Graham Wallas, but that he suggested or made alterations in the others.  I am still disposed to suspect that my statement is not far from the truth.

[25] The opinions of some of the Essayists about co-operation were apparently modified by some small meetings with leading co-operators on March 27th, April 17th, and May 22nd, 1889.  Bernard Shaw tells me that he thinks that they were held at Willis’s Rooms, that he was in the chair, and that Mr. Benjamin Jones (whose name I find as a speaker at Fabian Meetings about this period) played a prominent part on behalf of the Co-operative Wholesale Society.

The first printed Annual Report presented on 5th April, 1889, mentions that “the Society is taking part in a ‘Round Table Conference’ to ascertain amongst other objects how far the various Co-operative and Socialist bodies can act together politically,” a problem, thirty years later, still unsolved.  It is a pity that the references to Co-operation in “Fabian Essays” were not modified in the light of the Conference which was held after the lectures were written but before they were published.  No record of the Conference seems to have been preserved.

Chapter VI

“To your tents, O Israel”:  1894-1900

   Progress of the Society—­The Independent Labour Party—­Local Fabian
   Societies—­University Fabian Societies—­London Groups and Samuel
   Butler—­The first Fabian Conference—­Tracts and Lectures—­The 1892
   Election Manifesto—­The Newcastle Program—­The Fair Wages Policy—­The
   “Fortnightly” article—­The “Intercepted Letter” of 1906.

During the next two or three years the Society made rapid progress.  The membership was 541 in 1892, 640 in 1893, and 681 in 1894.  The expenditure, L640 to March, 1891, rose to L1100 for 1892, and L1179 in 1893.  In both these years large sums—­L350 and L450—­were given by two members for the expenses of lectures in the provinces, and in provincial societies the growth was most marked.  In March, 1892, 36 were recorded:  the report for 1893 gives 74, including Bombay and South Australia.  This was the high-water mark.  The Independent Labour Party was founded in January, 1893, at a Conference at which the Fabian Society of London and nine local Fabian Societies were represented, and from this time onward our provincial organisation declined until, in 1900, only four local and four University Societies remained.