It is, however, possible to give some account of the organisation and
activities for the year ending in March, 1889, since the first printed
Annual Report covers that period. It is a four-page quarto document,
only a few copies of which are preserved. Of the Society itself but
little is recorded--a list of lectures and the bare statement that the
autumn series were to be published: the fact that 6500 Fabian Tracts had
been distributed and a second edition of 5000 "Facts for Socialists"
printed: that 32 members had been elected and 6 had withdrawn--the total
is not given--and that the deficit in the Society's funds had been
reduced.
A favourite saying of Sidney Webb's is that the activity of the Fabian
Society is the sum of the activities of its members. His report as
Secretary of the work of the "Lecture Committee" states that a lecture
list with 33 names had been printed, and returns made by 31 lecturers
recorded 721 lectures during the year. Six courses of lectures on
Economics accounted for 52 of these. The "Essays" series of lectures was
redelivered by special request in a room lent by King's College,
Cambridge, and also at Leicester. Most of the other lectures were given
at London Radical Working Men's Clubs, then and for some years later a
much bigger factor in politics than they have been in the twentieth
century.
But an almost contemporary account of the life of Bernard Shaw, probably
the most active of the leaders, because the least fettered by his
occupation, is given in Tract 41 under the heading:
"HOW TO TRAIN FOR PUBLIC LIFE.
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