business political economy of the day alone concerned itself; he was the first to argue that Society should use its legislative powers as a means of selfprotection against a Capitalism blinded by the profits of to-day to the resulting costs of to-morrow, and that when Society did so, strange as it might appear to a class living and thinking in a deep rut of material interests, the Capitalism so curbed would have benefits conferred upon it.* Thus far, it was Owen the philanthropist who was at work discovering that, apart from its own sanctions, philanthropy was business, and that humane consideration in industry so concerned the State that it should be made the motive for protective legislation. These were movements which could be received hospitably by Capitalism, for though they were opposed to certain of its ideas and operations, Owen was demonstrating that these forms of waste were not only not essential but were, as a matter of fact, inefficient, and, therefore, unprofitable to industry. They were, in consequence, not the beginnings of movements towards a higher order than Capitalism, though they so developed, but movements for reform within Capitalism itself— movements to make Capitalism wise-movements to recruit as allies to the creeds of political economy, ethics and humanity, which at the time had been ruled out as aliens when the science of wealth in production and distribution was under consideration.

But Owen was steadily moving upwards to con

* It is said that when Owen was being shown over some mills in Leeds, their proprietor said to him that if his workpeople were only careful to avoid waste, his profits would be increased by £4,000 a year. Why," was Owen's remark, don't you give them £2,000 a year to do it? You would then be richer by £2,000."

clusions which were widening his horizon and revealing to him policies of greater consequence than those which showed how the inhuman mistakes of Capitalism need not in its own interests, and could not in those of Society, be continued. Owen was not perhaps an easy man to get on with. The Scottish word "self-opinionated" describes a mental condition with which the keen reformers of all ages have been unduly endowed, and which has made co-operation difficult between them and their sympathisers. The quality is perhaps required to give the persistency necessary for pioneering work. But, had he been the most easy to get on with of men, he would not have been acceptable to his fellow manufacturers, because his views were not theirs, and became theirs less and less. They were impatient to pursue immediate interests whilst he was guided by a far-reaching policy. Moreover, he roused prejudices amongst the socially respectable by heretical opinions regarding religion. Those who have no faith are always the swiftest and the most vociferous in condemning and excommunicating those who say they have none. To read of this part of Owen's life is to feel the heartbreak of being entangled in the fine steel meshes of an enfolding net, is to see greatness baffled by the myriad arrows shot by the crowds of Lilliputian warriors gathered at the bugle call of Church and State and angry interest. Vision is always baffled by darkness and its calm irritated. There seems a malign fatefulness about it all. The effect upon Owen was to drive him on to new heresies and to engage him in activities where inevitable failure for the moment awaited him, hand in hand with enduring fame.

Then, as now when I write, the war had brought its harvest of poverty and civil discord and danger; then, as now, Governments were worried by the industrial outlook, and were meeting it with their backs to the wall and cordons of policemen and spies as their protectors. The promised boom in trade had not come; factories were still;

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ployment and high prices were the first fruits of our campaigns and our victories. Then, politicians thought of the Poor Law as they now think of doles and grants in aid, and Parliamentary commissions sat to consider how the bad times could be tided over. Owen wrote a memorandum which embodied a new system of constructive critical thought. He discussed in it the effects of war, and argued that the fundamental trouble of the existing Society was that machine labour and human labour were put in opposition to each other, that the former was the master of the latter, and that the only remedy was the co-operation of both under the control of the latter. Here was the business man's discovery formulated as a constructive idea, and this was as far ahead of St. Simonism as Darwinism was ahead of the ideas on evolution held by Lucretius. This was the first proclamation of scientific socialism as the stage of evolution beyond Capitalism. No better definition of Socialism can be given in general terms than that it aims at the organization of the material economic forces of Society and their control by the human forces; no better criticism of Capitalism can be given than that it aims at the organization of the human forces of Society and their control by the economic and material forces. In 1817, Owen defined the goal and the idea.

That is the first stage when the higher social organization was born in idea accurately stated.

Subsequent stages were concerned with methods of realization and with modified forms of expression-like the Owenite Community and the Labour Exchange-determined by experience and the thought prevailing at the time. Owen's own practical contributions were of the nature of schemes which ended in failure, but which contributed to the clarifying of thought and to the determination of new and more scientific methods. The advance of science later on, especially biological science, came to the aid of the new movement, after Owen had done his work and slept in his native Newtown. The Owenite experiments, from land settlements to labour exchanges, proved that Society must be dealt with as a whole and that no sections could live ideally within fences, and they also stimulated the creation of the co-operative movement.

POLITICS AND REVOLUTION

The second quarter of the nineteenth century was one of political strife between an unenfranchised democracy and its ruling classes, and its natural weapon was revolution, because it was outside of politics. The mainsprings of this were political and economic, the desire for liberty and political enfranchisement, and a kicking against the pricks of poverty. Alongside of the rougher and more impulsive mass movement was an intellectual movement, sometimes formally in alliance with it, sometimes only in sympathy or critical, giving a judgment that excused when it did not support the revolts from prevailing conditions in

the State and the workshop. Both condemned Capitalism as it then operated, both tore with fury its political economy gospel. The movement not only to check its excesses but to transform it grew in precision and volume. Its political economy in particular was assaulted both as to the scope of what was considered to be its subject matter and the conclusions which were embodied in it. A school of critics had arisen who, carrying the attack into the enemy's camp, condemned Capitalism from its own political economy, and, by examining the economic mechanism of Capitalism, not only showed its inevitable failure, but produced in terms of the sacred political economy itself a better mechanism.

EARLY SOCIALIST ECONOMISTS

Our own country was particularly rich in these critics.* Whenever communal turmoil takes place, the critical intelligence is liberated. Thus was it after the Civil War, and thus was it in the time with which I now deal. In the midst of the American and French Revolutions men like Paine and Godwin dreamt and wrote of political and social justice, and Dr. Ogilvie, of Aberdeen, fixed his attention upon the evil social consequences of land monopoly. Godwin, completing the argument of his "Political Justice," attacked the private ownership of property as being the origin of all social ill. Abolish that, secure men in subsistence, and humanity is free to pursue truth and become intellectual and just. The glow in the spirit of Godwin was too remote,

*For an account of them and their work, see The Right to the Whole Produce of Labour," by Anton Menger, with an Introduction and Bibliography by Professor Foxwell.