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SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND. 
education and partial maintenance paid for them, they would 
of course, on “ the bare subsistence ” principle, lose in wages. 
I, however, am inclined to think that Mr. Hyndman’s proposal 
might be temporarily adopted in the case of the very poor with 
a balance of advantage. The chief danger would be the 
weakening of the parents’ sense of responsibility for the proper 
bringing up of their children ; but, seeing how very weak this 
sense of responsibility, in the class in question, already is, and, 
under existing conditions, necessarily must be, I believe that 
the danger alluded to would be out-balanced by the great gain 
of having a new generation rising up amongst us better taught 
and better fed than their fathers, and having therefore a higher 
“ standard of comfort.” As to the eight hours normal working 
day, this is of course a perfectly legitimate object for working 
men to combine for, and it would no doubt be extremely 
beneficial if it did not result in driving trade from the country. 
To obviate this, the rule should be made an international one. 
Until that can be secured, a legislative remedy might be worse 
than the disease. 
It is unnecessary to examine the lemaining “ stepping 
stones.” Were the consummation ever so devoutly to be wished 
—which it is not—there is a preliminary question to be asked : 
Is the nation or are the workers prepared to usher in any new 
régime at the cost of wholesale plunder and rapine—plunder 
and rapine, too, not only of the rich and of the much-abused 
middle classes, but of hundreds of thousands—nay, millions— 
of the so-called “wage slaves” themselves? The working men 
who have invested their hard-won savings in Building Societies, 
in Savings Banks, in Friendly Societies of all kinds, or who 
have sums standing to their credit in the Co-operative Stores, 
will find themselves expropriated equally with the Rothschilds. 
The small proprietor, the tenant farmer who has invested 
capital in his holding, must go the way of the Duke of 
Westminster. Every one who has anything to lose must lose 
it, and be no better off under the new régime than if he had 
been an idle beggar all his days. To put it on no higher 
ground, will all these consent to the suggested confiscation ? 
Apart, however, from the great and indelible moral wrong,