What is more interesting and important for us, as Englishmen, is the unquestionable spread of Collectivist Socialism throughout the United States.* Here, where but yesterday all middle-class writers thought that individualism must necessarily dominate for ever, the great labour movement is growing into a Socialist shape more rapidly every day. Mr Henry George's interesting book has produced even more effect in his own country than it has in England. The growth of the land monopoly, the fearful economical tyranny and wholesale corruption practised by the great railroad kings, the monstrous exactions of corporations such as the Standard Oil Well Company and similar capitalist associations, are forcing the workers to combine more closely in organisations of a similar character to that of the knights of labour or the genuine Socialist bodies which are now springing up in every direction. Such a man as John Swinton of New York, who has worked for years in the cause, now begins to see some result for his unremitting labour. The constant influx of Socialists from Germany also aids the spread of the scientific economical socialism which alone can afford a sound basis for reconstruction.

Even as I write the Committee of the Senate on Labour and Education is taking evidence as to the condition of the working people, and the state of things disclosed-the low wages, the bad lodging, the tyranny of capital, the uncertainty of employment-has rivalled what may be seen in Europe. All thinking Americans have been shocked at the tale of misery which has been told. Nevertheless, the

When I pointed out two or three years ago in the Fortnightly Review that the class struggle in the United States threatened to be very bitter at no distant date, the capitalist journals on both sides of the Atlantic laughed a contemptuous laugh at my ignorance and silly pessimism.

workers as a whole in America are far better off than in Europe; but there, as here, it is the contrast between extreme wealth and excessive poverty which is so distressing, and the workers have made up their minds to remedy it. The United States is entering on another grave commercial crisis; during the last there were 3,000,000 tramps wandering through the country, whilst the risings in Pittsburg and Baltimore in 1876 showed clearly what elements of discord lay below the surface even then. Now matters are much more serious, inasmuch as the depression threatens to be more grievous and of longer duration. In the meantime, also, the number of the labour journals has multiplied exceedingly, and such newspapers as Truth of San Francisco, the papers of the same name in New York and Chicago, the Voice of the People of New York, the Volks Zeitung, &c., have a wide and an increasing circulation throughout the working population of the United States. What, however, is most essential to Europe is, that there is a growing feeling among the leaders of all sections that international action on the part of the labourers is essential.

Already the organised Socialist bodies are stretching their hands across the Atlantic to their fellow-labourers in Europe, anxious to make common cause with them in an economical movement which shall shorten the hours of labour, regulate production and exchange, so as to remove the existing anarchy, put an end to recurrent crises, secure the workers the fruits of their industry, and eventually give them final control over the entire field of production and commercethe power over the labourers being thus taken out of the hands of the capitalist class in all countries. The difficulties in the way of the realisation of such a programme arise from the fact, which perhaps even Marx scarcely acknowledged

in public to the extent that he ought to have done, that the different civilised countries have arrived at widely different stages in the social and economical growth. How many generations, calculated according to the past rate of progress, separate semi-Asiatic Russia, for instance, with its villagecommunities only now in process of disintegration,* from England with its enormous city proletariat and vast centralised industry? Common action seems almost impossible in such a case, though education may do much to abridge the transition period. And what is true of Russia and England is true in a less degree of the workers of other civilised countries. To my mind we have to base the first real socialistic combination upon the common interests and affinities of the great Celto-Teutonic peoples in America, in Australia, in these islands, and possibly in Germany, ready to accept assistance and help from any other quarter, and prepared to organise this power upon a democratic basis for the industrial welfare of all portions of the federation, but determined to organise independently if others have mere anarchy in view. It is impossible to pursue the subject further at present. I am aware that, as it is, I have given but a meagre sketch of the great movement of the peoples which has been and is going on; but to have omitted a survey (however incomplete) of international movements altogether would have been to neglect a most important feature in the historical development of Socialism.

* The condition of Russia with her people just rising from barbarism below, and all the corruption of western civilisation at the top, is indeed a study. There, east and west, Asia and Europe meet, and the ideas of both continents ferment together. Russia in contact with Germany on the one side and with China on the other, is in a strange position indeed, apart from internal difficulties.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE FUTURE.

IN considering the future in any branch of human knowledge, it is absolutely necessary to base all attempts at prognostication upon the most careful records of past events. This is true of every field of inquiry, and specially true, though not always so clearly admitted, in regard to the most complicated field of all, that of human society. The study of social and economical problems is now seen to be as hopeless when divorced from sound historical methods as anatomy or surgery which took no account of lower forms of life on the work of previous generations. Not many centuries have elapsed since any man who said he could predict the return of a comet or calculate the recurrence of an eclipse would have been set down as a magician or a maniac. The elaborate diagnosis which will to-day enable a first-rate pathologist to state precisely the course of physical, and through physical of mental disease in a manner surprising even to the educated, is due to as carefully recorded observations as those which have guided the astronomer to his irrefragable conclusion. Rigid accuracy, so far as possible, in the tabulation of facts, guided all the while by scientific imagination, has taken the place of the slip-shod guess-work of old time led astray by theological crazes. The same with the study of the movements and relations of mankind in civilised society to-day. Just in so far

as we can trace the evolution through the long ages of social development, precisely to that extent may we fairly hope to forecast correctly the next stages of our growth.*

And this is precisely the object of all historical research. The mere facts that men did thus and so in periods long gone by have no practical or scientific bearing upon us, the men of to-day, save that they may lead to a wiser understanding of our present society, and point out the road to an earlier improvement in the conditions of existence for the race. Mankind are modified by their surroundings from generation to generation; but just as the individual man can to some extent, at least, modify his own character and change his own surroundings, so within far wider limits can a complete human society mould the character and modify the surroundings of the next and coming generations. It is with a view to learn how, taking the fullest

That this scientific method should now be generally adapted by Socialists we owe above all other men to Karl Marx, who himself, however, was too great a man to claim that absolute originality which some of his followers are foolish enough to assert on his behalf. Marx is the Darwin of modern sociology, and it is not a little remarkable that though in the "Misere de la Philosophie" in 1847, and in earlier writings, as well as in the famous Communist Manifesto which he wrote in conjunction with Engels, he puts forward his theories, the groundwork of his greatest work, "Zur Kritik der politischen (Ekonomie," appeared in the same year as the "Origin of Species."

+ The truly remarkable experiment which the Jesuits made in the development of social life among the inhabitants of Paraguay seems to me never to have received sufficient attention. Robert Owen's experiment at New Lanark in unfavourable circumstances has been already referred to. What may be done by man in the way of developing hereditary qualities in the higher animals is, of course, a matter of common knowledge. In India we can see clearly that skill in handicraft becomes distinctly hereditary. What the animal man in association may develop into, it is, of course, absurd to imagine, but the power of development as a society is, so far as I can see, illimitable.