"Facts for Socialists" was the work of Sidney Webb. No other member
possessed anything like his knowledge of economics and statistics. It
is, as its title implies, simply a mass of quotations from standard
works on Political Economy, strung together in order to prove that the
bulk of the wealth annually produced goes to a small fraction of the
community in return either for small services or for none at all, and
that the poverty of the masses results, not as the individualists argue,
from deficiencies of individual character, but, as John Stuart Mill had
declared, from the excessive share of the national dividend that falls
to the owners of land and capital.
* * * * *
After the settlement, by a compromise in structure, of the conflict
between the anarchists and the collectivists, the Society entered a
period of calm, and the Executive issued a circular complaining of the
apathy of the members. Probably this is the first of the innumerable
occasions on which it has been said that the Society had passed its
prime. Moreover, the Executive Committee were blamed for "some habits"
which had "a discouraging effect" on the rest of the Society, and it was
resolved, for the first, but not the last time, to appoint a Committee
to revise the Basis. The Committee consisted of the Executive and eight
added members, amongst whom may be mentioned Walter Crane, the Rev.
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