Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/56

 a common economic heresy, “Over-saving,” as my economic studies led me along the Labour and Socialist paths, Robertson stood upon the whole by laisser-faire Liberalism, and a gradual breach came into our politics and economics.

It may seem at first sight rather difficult to link up the Scot J. M. Robertson with another Scot, Ramsay MacDonald, with whom I had a close personal contact during the same period. Both were men of fine presence and of imposing personality. MacDonald came into my life a year or two later than Robertson, as I remember from a remark made by a German governess, who spoke of MacDonald as “die zweite Schönheit.” A Labour Party was not then in being, the I.L.P. had not yet entered Parliament, and MacDonald’s earliest standing was that of an independent radical with Socialist sympathies. My relations with him took on a more impersonal form when we became associated in the production of a magazine entitled the Progressive Review, which ran a brief precarious life from 1896 to 1898. The title chosen for this magazine, taken in conjunction with the names of its chief supporters, editors, and writers, is an indication of the new alignment in the field of politics due to the intrusion of important economic issues which had long been waiting in the political background. William Clarke, then a writer for the Daily Chronicle and a member of the Fabian Executive, was the active editor, to whom I rendered such