[29] “Fabian News,” August, 1892.

Chapter VII

“Fabianism and the Empire”:  1900-1

The Library and Book Boxes—­Parish Councils—­The Workmen’s Compensation Act—­The Hutchinson Trust—­The London School of Economics—­Educational Lectures—­Electoral Policy—­The controversy over the South African War—­The publication of “Fabianism and the Empire.”

The next few years were devoted to quieter work than that of the period described in the previous chapter.  The Conservative Party was in power, Liberalism, which had lost its great leader, and a year or two later lost also his successor, Lord Rosebery, was in so hopeless a minority that its return to power in the near future seemed to be and was impossible.  It had been easy to permeate the Liberals, because most of our members were or had been connected with their party.  It was impossible to permeate Conservatism on similar lines, both because we were not in touch with their organisation and because Conservatives in general regarded our proposals with complete aversion.  It was a time, therefore, for educational rather than political activity, and to this the Society devoted the greater part of its energies.  Its work in this field took various forms, some of which may be briefly described.

[Illustration:  From a photograph by Emery Walker

G. BERNARD SHAW, IN 1889]

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We had started a lending library in boxes for our local societies, and as these died away we offered the use of it to working-class organisations, and indeed to any organisation of readers or students.  Books were purchased from special funds, a collection of some 5000 volumes was ultimately formed, and for the last twenty years the Society has kept in circulation anything up to 200 boxes of books on Socialism, economics, history and social problems, which are lent for ten shillings a year to Co-operative Societies, Trade Unions, Socialist Societies, and miscellaneous organisations.  The books are intended to be educational rather than directly propagandist, and each box is made up to suit the taste, expressed or inferred, of the subscriber.  Quarterly exchanges are allowed, but the twenty or thirty books in a box usually last a society for a year.  It is a remarkable fact that although boxes are lent freely to such slight organisations as reading classes, and are sent even to remote mining villages in Wales or Scotland, not a single box has ever been lost.  Delays are frequent:  books of course are often missing, but sooner or later every box sent out has been returned to the Society.

Another method of securing the circulation of good books on social subjects has been frequently used.  We prepare a list of recent and important publications treating of social problems and request each member to report how many of them are in the Public Library of his district, and further to apply for the purchase of such as are absent.