Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/236

 232 Morris to enrich both Socialism and English literature by poems, lectures and essays published in its paper, the Commonweal. The Federation was haughtily dogmatic and intransigeant; it occasionally broke out into open hostility against the trade union movement; it never appealed to the average British mind though it had a faith and an energy which ought to have moved mountains. It ran three candidates for Parliament in 1885, and they polled in Kennington and Hampstead 27 and 82 votes respectively, whilst Mr. John Burns who fought West Nottingham polled 598 votes. As the years went on, the Federation was seen to be occupying a corner all by itself in our public life, and was isolated from every section, except the narrow dogmatic one, that was open to Socialist influence. The Fabian Society, on the other hand, settled down to purely educational work. It preached its doctrines with remarkable brilliancy, but it adopted "Permeate" rather than "Organise" as its watchword.

Something had to be done to secure an advance, and this was all the more imperative because leader after leader amongst the trade unions had become converted to Socialism, and the annual battles at the Trade Union Congresses between the old school and the new were showing quite plainly that the new school was in the ascendant (although numerically in a great but lessening minority) and that none of the younger men of influence were ranging themselves with the old guard. The