all, in which case the courage they undoubtedly did show in choosing a name that exposed them to much odium was entirely misplaced. What they did was in effect to establish, with the assistance of capital subscribed by richer friends, co-operative workshops of tailors, bootmakers, and a few other trades, where the physical conditions of labour were wholesome, and the profits were to be divided among the workmen after a moderate reservation of interest on capital. The whole movement was a reaction against revelations of sweating, which excited at least as much attention forty years ago as similar revelations to-day. I may perhaps mention that I had my clothes made at one of their shops, but boots and shoes are a more serious affair. There is no great hardship in being ill-dressed; but no one would rashly run the risk of being crippled in walking power. The shops, however, languished. Perhaps custom was not sustained. Then came stories of had management and of worse; and after a time the shops disappeared. The several schools of Socialists of to-day, who are sometimes said to be at enmity with one another, will perhaps agree in flouting the attempts of their immediate predecessors. I do not intend to dwell upon the peculiarities of the different social experiments that have been tried in our times, or are being tried in France and the United States. The volumes of M. Louis Reybaud are accessible and very pleasant reading as regards French reformers, and Mr. Nordhoff's studies of American communities are equally interesting. The late Mr. Sargant, of Birmingham, produced a book, Social Innovators and their Schemes, at once sympathetic and intelligent. Among Chambers' Papers for the People is one, Social Utopias, excellently written, both as regards form and substance, though now a little out of date. It is not necessary to go further, though the list might easily be extended. But, while not entering upon an examination of the several experiments that have been started in many countries, one characteristic must be noted separating them wholly from more recent proposals. They are all examples of small families separated from the world. Their founders may have hoped for, may even have looked forward to, a time when the authority of their ideas would have spread among the nations; but I do not know that they have often, if ever, formulated the working plans of the universe so reduced to their sway. This is, in my view, a serious criticism. To protest against the world by secession from it is one thing, to reconstruct it is another. It is easy to organize on the basis of a community of goods a household, a family, a village, but the process lends no help to
