re of the crucifixion of
Jesus and hung it against the wall. He had never heard of Jesus, so
the story goes, and his wife had to explain the meaning of the
picture. She told the story in her simple way, laying much stress upon
the fact that "the wicked Jews" had killed Jesus. But she forgot to
say that it all happened about two thousand years ago.

Now, it happened not long after that the miner saw a Jew peddler come
to the door of his cottage. The thought of the awful suffering of
Jesus and his own Welsh hatred of oppression sufficed to fill him with
resentment toward the poor peddler. He at once began to beat the
unfortunate fellow in a terribly savage manner. When the peddler,
between gasps, demanded to know why he had been so ill-treated, the
miner dragged him into his kitchen and pointed to the picture of the
crucifixion. "See what you did to that poor man, our Lord!" he
thundered. To which the Jew very naturally responded: "But, my friend,
that was not me. That was two thousand years ago!" The reply seemed to
daze the miner for a moment. Then he said: "Two thousand years! Two
thousand years! Why, I only heard of it last week!"

It is just as silly to attack the Socialism of to-day for the ideas
held by the earlier utopian Socialists as beating that poor Jew
peddler was.

Now then, friend Jonathan, turn back and read the second of the
passages I have placed at the head of this letter. It is from the
writings of one of the greatest of modern Socialists, the man who was
the great political leader of the Socialist movement in Germany,
Wilhelm Liebknecht.

You will notice that he says the transition to Socialism is going on
all the time; that we are not to attain Socialism at one bound; that
it is useless to attempt to paint pictures of the future; that we can
forecast an immediate programme and aid the Socialist birth. These
statements are quite in harmony with the outline of the Socialist
philosophy of the evolution of society contained in my last letter.

So, if you ask me to tell you just what the world will be like when
all people call themselves Socialists except a few reformers and
"fanatics," earnest pioneers of further changes, I must answer you
that I do not know. How they will dress, what sort of pictures artists
will paint, what sort of poems poets will write, or what sort of
novels men and women will read, I do not know. What the income of each
family will be I cannot tell you, any more than I can te