Mr. Miller of
Edinburgh, was summoned to spend three days in discussing the question,
"Has the increase of products of industry within the last hundred years
tended most to the benefit of capitalists and employers or to that of
the working classes, whether artisans, labourers or others? And in what
relative proportions in any given period?"

The second day was devoted to "Remedies," and the third to the
question, "Would the more general distribution of capital or land or the
State management of capital or land promote or impair the production of
wealth and the welfare of the community?" The Fabian Society appointed
two delegates, J.G. Stapleton and Hubert Bland, but Bernard Shaw
apparently took the place of the latter.

It met on January 28th, at the Prince's Hall, Piccadilly. Mr. Arthur J.
Balfour read a paper in which he made an observation worth recording:
"As will be readily believed, I am no Socialist, but to compare the work
of such men as Mr. (Henry) George with that of such men, for instance,
as Karl Marx, either in respect of its intellectual force, its
consistency, its command of reasoning in general, or of economic
reasoning in particular, seems to me absurd."

The Conference was the first occasion in which the Fabian Society
emerged from its drawing-room obscurity, and the speech of Bernard Shaw
on the third day was probably the first he delivered before an audience
of more than local importance. One passage made an impression on his
friends and probably on the public. "It was," he said, "the desire of
the President that nothing should be said that might give pain to
particular classes. He was about to refer to a modern class, the
burglars, but if there was a burglar present he begged him to believe
that he cast no reflection upon his profession, and that he was not
unmindful of his great skill and enterprise: his risks--so much greater
than those of the most speculative capitalist, extending as they did to
risk of liberty and life--his abstinence; or finally of the great number
of people to whom he gave employment, including criminal attorneys,
policemen, turnkeys, builders of gaols, and it might be the hangman. He
did not wish to hurt the feelings of shareholders ... or of landlords
... any more than he wished to pain burglars. He would merely point out
that all three inflicted on the community an injury of precisely the
same nature."[11]

It may be added that Mr. Shaw was patted on the back by a subse