The Socialism of Robert Owen had made a profound impression on the working people of England half a century earlier, but the tradition of it was confined to those who had heard its prophet.  Owen, one of the greatest men of his age, had no sense of art; his innumerable writings are unreadable; and both his later excursions into spiritualism, and the failure of his communities and co-operative enterprises, had clouded his reputation amongst those outside the range of his personality.  In later years we often came across old men who had sat at his feet, and who rejoiced to hear once more something resembling his teachings:  but I do not think that, at the beginning, the Owenite tradition had any influence upon us.

Karl Marx died in London on the 14th March, 1883, but nobody in England was then aware that the greatest figure in international politics had passed away.  It is true that Marx had taken a prominent part in founding the International at that historic meeting in St. Martin’s Town Hall on September 28th, 1864.  The real significance of that episode was over-rated at the time, and when the International disappeared from European politics in 1872 the whole thing was forgotten.

In Germany Marxian Socialism was already a force, and it was attracting attention in England, as we have seen.  But the personality of Marx must have been antipathetic to the English workmen whom he knew, or else he failed to make them understand his ideas:  at any rate, his socialism fell on deaf ears, and it may be said to have made no lasting impression on the leaders of English working-class thought.  Though he was resident in England for thirty-four years, Marx remained a German to the last.  His writings were not translated into English at this period, and Mr. Hyndman’s “England for All,” published in 1881, which was the first presentation of his ideas in English, did not even mention his name.  This book was in fact an extremely moderate proposal to remedy “something seriously amiss in the conditions of our everyday life,” and the immediate programme was no more than an eight hours working day, free and compulsory education, compulsory construction of working-class dwellings, and cheap “transport” for working-class passengers.  It was the unauthorised programme of the Democratic Federation which had been founded by Mr. Hyndman in 1881.  “Socialism Made Plain,” the social and political Manifesto of the Democratic Federation (undated, but apparently issued in 1883), is a much stronger document.  It deals with the distribution of the National Income, giving the workers’ share as 300 out of 1300 millions sterling, and demands that the workers should “educate, agitate, organise” in order to get their own.  Evidently it attracted some attention, since we find that the second edition of a pamphlet “Reply” by Samuel Smith, M.P., then a person of substantial importance, was issued in January, 1884.

At the end of 1883 Mr. Hyndman published his “Historical Basis of Socialism in England,” which for some time was the text-book of the Democratic Federation, but this, of course, was too late to influence the founders of the Fabian Society.