e of Society, with its unjustly rich and its unjustly
poor, with its palaces and its slums, its millionaires and its
paupers, be it ours to proclaim that there is a higher ideal in life
than that of being first in the race for wealth, most successful in
the scramble for gold. Be it ours to declare steadfastly that health,
comfort, leisure, culture, plenty for every individual are far more
desirable than breathless struggle for existence, furious trampling
down of the weak by the strong, huge fortunes accumulated out of the
toil of others, to be handed down to those who had done nothing to
earn them. Be it ours to maintain that the greatness of a nation
depends not on the number of its great proprietors, on the wealth of
its great capitalists, or the splendour of its great nobles, but on
the absence of poverty among its people, on the education and
refinement of its masses, on the universality of enjoyment in life....
Enough for each of work, of leisure, of joy; too little for none, too
much for none--such is the Social ideal. Better to strive after it
worthily and fail, than to die without striving for it at all."

Then I differentiated the methods of the Socialist and the Radical
Individualist, pleading for union among those who formed the wings of
the army of Labour, and urging union of all workers against the
idlers. For the weakness of the people has ever been in their
divisions, in the readiness of each section to turn its weapons
against other sections instead of against the common foe. All
privileged classes, when they are attacked, sink their differences and
present a serried front to their assailants; the people alone fight
with each other, while the battle between themselves and the
privileged is raging.

I strove, as so many others were striving, to sound in the ears of the
thoughtless and the careless the cry of the sufferings of the poor,
endeavouring to make articulate their misery. Thus in a description of
Edinburgh slums came the following: "I saw in a 'house' which was made
by boarding up part of a passage, which had no window, and in which it
was necessary to burn an oil lamp all day, thus adding to the burden
of the rent, a family of three--man, wife, and child--whose lot was
hardly 'of their own making.' The man was tall and bronzed, but he was
dying of heart disease; he could not do hard work, and he was too
clumsy for light work; so he sat there, after two days' fruitless
search, patiently nursin