People who would not dream of
calling themselves Socialists, much less contributing to the funds of a
Socialist Society, become enthusiastically interested in separate parts
of its program as soon as it has a program, provided these parts are
presented on their own merits and not as approaches to Socialism. Indeed
many who regard Socialism as a menace to society are so anxious to find
and support alternatives to it, that they will endow expensive
Socialistic investigations and subscribe to elaborate Socialistic
schemes of reform under the impression that nothing that is thoughtful,
practical, well informed, and constitutional can possibly have any
connection with the Red Spectre which stands in their imagination for
Socialism. To such people the Minority Report, a document obviously the
work of highly skilled and disinterested political thinkers and experts,
would recommend itself as the constitutional basis of a Society for the
Prevention of Destitution: that is, of the condition which not only
smites the conscientious rich with a compunction that no special
pleading by arm-chair economists can allay, but which offers a hotbed to
the sowers of Socialism. Add to these the considerable number of
convinced or half-convinced Socialists who for various reasons are not
in a position to make a definite profession of Socialism without great
inconvenience, real or imaginary, to themselves, and it will be plain
that Mrs.
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