ABSTRACT
Metropolitan readers have the advantage of making themselves independent of the Press critic by getting face to face with the writers, stripping the veil of print from their personality, cross-examining, criticizing, calling them to account amid surroundings which inspire no awe, and before the most patient of audiences. The projection and co-ordination of these lectures is the work of any individual. The writers are all Social-Democrats, with a common conviction of the necessity of vesting the organization of industry and the material of production in a State identified with the whole people by complete Democracy. Every-thing that is usually implied by the authorship and editing of a book has in this case been done by the seven essayists, associated as the Executive Council of the Fabian Society ; and one of the essays could be what it is had the writer been a stranger to his six colleagues and to the Society.
