The name was thus first applied in England to Owen’s theory of social reconstruction, and in France to those also of Saint-Simon and Fourier. The best usage has always connected it with the views of these men, and with the cognate opinions which have since appeared. But the word is used with a great variety of meaning, not only in popular speech and by politicians, but even by economists and learned critics of socialism. There is a growing tendency to regard as socialistic any interference with property undertaken by society on behalf of the poor, the limitation of the principle of _laissez-faire_ in favour of the suffering classes, radical social reform which disturbs the present system of private property as regulated by free competition. It is probable enough that the word will be permanently used to express the change in practice and opinion indicated by these phrases, as a general name for the strong reaction that has now set in against the overstrained individualism and one-sided freedom which date from the end of the eighteenth century. The application is neither precise nor accurate; but it is use and wont that determine the meaning of words, and this seems to be the tendency of use and wont. Even economic writers differ greatly in the meaning they attach to the word. As socialism has been most powerful and most studied on the Continent, it may be interesting to compare the definitions given by some leading French and German economists. The great German economist Roscher defines it as including ‘those tendencies which demand a greater regard for the common weal than consists with human nature.’[2] Adolf Held says that ‘we may define as socialistic every tendency which demands the subordination of the individual will to the community.’[3] Janet more precisely defines it as follows: ‘We call socialism every doctrine which teaches that the State has a right to correct the inequality of wealth which exists among men, and to legally establish the balance by taking from those who have too much in order to give to those who have not enough, and that in a permanent manner, and not in such and such a particular case—a famine, for instance, a public calamity, etc.’[4] Laveleye explains it thus: ‘In the first place, every socialistic doctrine aims at introducing greater equality in social conditions; and in the second place, at realising those reforms by the law or the State.’[5] Von Scheel simply defines it as the ‘economic philosophy of the suffering classes.’[6]