Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/496

ÆT. 49] and Maurice. It seemed now as if the spirit were once more in the ascendant. "The era of administration has come" was a phrase much in the mouths of economic writers. The Irish legislation of successive Governments had already, in the judgment of dispassionate observers, committed one, if not both, of the two great political parties to what might be properly called a Socialist programme. The International, though as an organized force it had been broken up in 1872, had even in its dispersion scattered widely the seeds of a cosmopolitan revolt against the domination of capital and of the middle classes. Its doctrines had to some extent permeated the leading English Trades Unions. Intelligent London artisans had in large numbers familiarized themselves with the doctrines of Karl Marx and the more recent theories of Henry George. At meetings of working men there were shouts for Revolution. The repressive measures taken in France and Austria after the Commune, and in Germany by Bismarck some years later, had incidentally filled London with foreign refugees, whose influence spread silently in many directions. The position may be summed up in Morris's own words by saying that there was no longer, among the mass of the working class in London, any decided hostility to Socialism, and that the working man who took an interest in politics was generally in favour of Socialist tendencies so far as he understood them.

In 1881 an effort had been set on foot to organize the various Radical clubs of working men in different parts of London, and to give the organization a definite bias in favour of what were becoming known as Socialistic principles. The result was the formation of a body known as the Democratic Federation. Its programme was, broadly speaking, that of the political