t of the period
described in the previous chapter. The Conservative Party was in power,
Liberalism, which had lost its great leader, and a year or two later
lost also his successor, Lord Rosebery, was in so hopeless a minority
that its return to power in the near future seemed to be and was
impossible. It had been easy to permeate the Liberals, because most of
our members were or had been connected with their party. It was
impossible to permeate Conservatism on similar lines, both because we
were not in touch with their organisation and because Conservatives in
general regarded our proposals with complete aversion. It was a time,
therefore, for educational rather than political activity, and to this
the Society devoted the greater part of its energies. Its work in this
field took various forms, some of which may be briefly described.

[Illustration: _From a photograph by Emery Walker_

G. BERNARD SHAW, IN 1889]

* * * * *

We had started a lending library in boxes for our local societies, and
as these died away we offered the use of it to working-class
organisations, and indeed to any organisation of readers or students.
Books were purchased from special funds, a collection of some 5000
volumes was ultimately formed, and for the last twenty years the Society
has kept in circulation anything up to 200 boxes of books on Socialism,
economics, history and social problems, which are lent for ten shillings
a year to Co-operative Societies, Trade Unions, Socialist Societies, and
miscellaneous organisations. The books are intended to be educational
rather than directly propagandist, and each box is made up to suit the
taste, expressed or inferred, of the subscriber. Quarterly exchanges are
allowed, but the twenty or thirty books in a box usually last a society
for a year. It is a remarkable fact that although boxes are lent freely
to such slight organisations as reading classes, and are sent even to
remote mining villages in Wales or Scotland, not a single box has ever
been lost. Delays are frequent: books of course are often missing, but
sooner or later every box sent out has been returned to the Society.

Another method of securing the circulation of good books on social
subjects has been frequently used. We prepare a list of recent and
important publications treating of social problems and request each
member to report how many of them are in the Public Library of his
district, and further