THERE is considerable evidence to justify the belief that a large proportion of the labouring classes of this country, particularly in the great industrial districts of the North, entertain seriously the illusions so persistently propagated by apostles of latter-day Socialism, and a grave situation is thereby created, alike for individual and for Commonwealth. By means of street-corner meetings, workshop conversations, letters and articles in the local newspapers, and other well-known ways, a great circulation has been given to the impression that the organization of Labour and the management of all the machinery of "production, distribution, and exchange" by the State, is not only highly desirable, but if the electors will assent, perfectly practicable within a very few years, and, in fact, is within an ace of realization ; and there is reason to fear that considerable bodies of working men all over the Kingdom are being seduced into the conviction that if they will only give the help of their countenance, their pence, and their votes to the Socialist Parties, they will, even within their own life time, lap at the wells of the Promised Land of Equal Labour, Equal Payment, and Equal Enjoyment. It is with what has been aptly called " the Socialism of the Streets " that I have concerned myself largely in the following pages : I know that the real leaders of the movement here in London are not so foolish as to share in the impression so widely created in the country by the missionary speeches of their colleagues and supporters, but this fact only strengthens the feeling of pity inspired by the earnestness and enthusiasm of the indifferently-informed dupes of the idea in the provinces. In view of the cruel disillusionment which acceptance or persistence in the belief in the imminence of a Millennium will entail upon many honest and worthy fellows, I feel acutely the necessity for the wholesale circulation of antidotes of various descriptions; and as a personal contribution, I venture to submit a Paper prepared specially for the consideration of the arti/.ans and labourers of Tyneside, the substance of it being delivered before the members of the Borough of Tynemouth Liberal and Kadical Club in November, 1894. This present Paper, prepared amid other claims on attention, makes no pretence to special information, nor to scientific treatment, nor to literary finish: it is .simply an attempt to indicate in a familiar and vivid way to the capable and shrewd working-men who constitute the bulk of the North-Country Constituencies the real meaning of Socialism as preached to-day, and to suggest the true line of the Path of Sense to all who seek to secure, for the benefit of existing generations, a juster distribution of the world's wealth and a wider experience of ennobling and sustaining happiness.
