With loathsome hypocrisy we repair a prince's palace for him, and let him live in it rent-free, without one word about the degradation involved in his thus living upon charity; while we refuse to 'pauperise' the toiler by erecting decent buildings in which he may live--not rent-free like the prince, but only paying a rent which shall cover the cost of erection and maintenance, instead of one which gives a yearly profit to a speculator.

And so, year after year, the misery grows, and every great city has on its womb a cancer; sapping its vitality, poisoning its life-blood.

Every great city is breeding in its slums a race which is reverting through the savage to the brute--a brute more dangerous in that degraded humanity has possibilities of evil in it beyond the reach of the mere wild beast.
If not for Love's sake, then for fear; if not for justice or for human pity, then for sheer desire of self-preservation; I appeal to the wise and to the wealthy to set their hands to the cure of social evil, ere stolidity gives place to passion and dull patience vanishes before fury, and they "'Learn at last, in some wild hour, how much the wretched dare.'" Because it was less hotly antagonistic to the Radicals than the two other Socialist organisations, I joined the Fabian Society, and worked hard with it as a speaker and lecturer.

Sidney Webb, G.Bernard Shaw, Hubert and Mrs.Bland, Graham Wallas--these were some of those who gave time, thought, incessant work to the popularising of Socialist thought, the spreading of sound economics, the effort to turn the workers' energy toward social rather than merely political reform.

We lectured at workmen's clubs wherever we could gain a hearing, till we leavened London Radicalism with Socialist thought, and by treating the Radical as the unevolved Socialist rather than as the anti-Socialist, we gradually won him over to Socialist views.