As already mentioned, the Fabians are not a fighting body, but a solidly educational body. To them is due the bringing of socialism into the realm of political economy, and in so doing they have striven to harmonize it with English practical political methods. Besides this, they have done a vast amount of work in educating public opinion, not with the view to immediately converting the English nation to a belief in the changing of the present order into one wholly socialistic, but with a view to introducing socialistic treatment of the individual problems which arise in contemporary politics. [Illustration: JOHN BURNS] Their campaign of education was conducted so well that its effects were soon visible, not only in the modification of public opinion, but upon the workingmen themselves. The method was simple enough: "If any public, especially any social, question came to the front, the Fabian method was to make a careful independent study of the matter, and present to the public, in a penny pamphlet, a thoughtful statement of the case and some common sense, and incidentally socialistic, suggestions for a solution." Fabian ideas were thus introduced into the consciousness of the awakening trades unionists. It has been objected that the gain was much more for the trades unionists than for the Fabians. Their one-time eager pupils have, it is said, progressed beyond their masters, as a review of recent socialistic tendencies would divulge had we the time to follow them in this place. However that may be, the great fact remains that the Fabians have done more than any other branch of socialists to bridge over the distance between what the English writers call the middle-class idealist and the proletarian, with the result that the proletarian has begun to think for himself and to translate middle-class idealism into proletarian realism. Socialism, from being the watch word of the enthusiastic revolutionary, began to be discussed in every intelligent household and in every debating society. This enormous growth in public sentiment occurred during the session of the Unionist Parliament, 1886-92. When this Parliament opened there was hardly any socialist literature, and when it closed everybody was reading Bellamy and the "Fabian Essays," and Sir William Harcourt had made his memorable remark: "We are all socialists now."