Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/644

ÆT. 56] you a good bunch. The pink martagon lilies have been very fine. Raspberries any amount, but none to eat for a fortnight at least: no strawberries yet."

In July Morris was one of the English delegates to an international Congress of Socialists held in Paris to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. The proceedings there did not re-inspire him with confidence in the prospects of the cause or the wisdom of its leaders. He left Paris before the sittings of the Congress were concluded, and so escaped the final scenes of confused recrimination among the various sects which ended in the violent expulsion of the dissentient minority. The great London dock strike of the following August and September was hailed by him with a greater hope: for here at least there was an instance of labour organizing itself for a definite end, and being supported in the struggle by a powerful minority, if not an actual preponderance, of educated opinion. The end in question was indeed a particular one, yet it involved issues of immense width. Almost for the first time in the social history of England the organized trades took their part definitely on the side of unskilled and unorganized labour, and the principle of a minimum payment for human work began to emerge. The "docker's tanner" of 1889 was the germ more fully developed in the famous "living wage" of 1893.

Morris was at Kelmscott when the strike began; but on returning to London he at once realized its importance. "I went straight to the League," he writes on the 31st of August, "and found our people there in a great state of excitement about the strike, the importance of which I had not at all understood in the country: only you see we are two days late for news at Kelmscott. However I thought that perhaps