Admissions and assertions, such as those which I have just now quoted, do, no doubt, represent a definite intellectual advance which has taken place in the theory of socialism, among those who are its most thoughtful exponents, and in a certain sense its leaders.  They represent what these leaders think and say among themselves, and what they put forward when disputing with opponents who are competent to criticise them.  But what they do not represent is socialism as still preached to the populace, or the doctrine which is still vital for socialists as a popular party.  This is still, just as it was originally, the socialism of Marx in an absolutely unamended form.  It is the doctrine that the manual efforts of the vast multitude of labourers, directed only by the minds of the individual labourers themselves, produce all the wealth of the world; that the holding of any of this wealth by any other class whatever stands for nothing but a system of legalised plunder; and that the labourers need only inaugurate a legislation of a new kind in order to secure and enjoy what always was by rights their own.  Let me illustrate this assertion by two examples, one supplied to us by England, the other by America.

In England the body which calls itself the Social Democratic Federation, and represents at this moment socialism of the more popular kind, began its campaign with a manifesto which was headed with the familiar words, “All wealth is due to labour; therefore to the labourer all wealth is due.”  This text or motto was followed by certain figures, with regard to the total income of Great Britain, and the manner in which it is at present distributed.  Labour was represented as getting less than one-fourth of the whole, and the labourers were informed that if they would but “educate themselves, agitate, and organise,” the remaining three-fourths would automatically pass into their possession.  This document, it is true, was issued some twenty years ago;[4] but that the form which socialism takes, when addressed to the masses of the population, has not appreciably altered from that day to this, will be made sufficiently clear by the following pertinent fact.  Shortly after my arrival in America, in the winter of 1907, the most active disseminator of socialistic literature in New York sent me, by way of a challenge, a new and very spruce volume, which contained the most important of his previous leaflets and articles, collected and republished, and claiming renewed attention.  The first of these—­and it was signalised by an accompanying advertisement as fundamental—­bore the impressive title of, “Why the Working Man should be a Socialist,” and the answer to this question is given in the writer’s opening words.  “You know,” he says, addressing any labourer and the street-worker, “or you ought to know, that you alone produce all the good things of life; and you know, or you ought to know, that by so simple a process as that of casting your ballot intelligently you will be able”—­to