Again, the general state of mind of the Radical on the land question is hardly such as to make a Socialist hilarious. It is true your “progressive” will cheer Henry George, and is sympathetically inclined to nationalisation (itself a “blessed word”); but he is not at all sure that nationalisation, free land, and peasant proprietorship, are not three names for one and the same proposal. And, so far as the effective members of the Liberal party are concerned, there is no question at all that the second and third of these “solutions” find much more favor than the first. In fact, in this matter of the land, the method of dealing with which is of the very propædeutics of Socialism, the Radical who goes for “free sale” or for peasant ownership, is a less potent revolutionary force than the Tory himself; for this latter only seeks to maintain in land the state of things which the Ring and Trust maker is working to bring about in capital[102]--and on the part which _he_ is playing in economic evolution we are all agreed. From such dangers as these the progress of Democracy is, by itself, powerless to save us; for although always and everywhere Democracy holds Socialism in its womb, the birth may be indefinitely delayed by stupidity on one side and acuteness on the other. I have gone at some length into an analysis of the possible artificial hindrances to Socialism, because, owing to the amiability and politeness shown us by the Radical left wing during the last twelve months; to the successes which Radical votes have given to some of our candidates at School Board and other elections; and to the friendly patronage bestowed upon us by certain “advanced” journals, some of our brightest, and otherwise most clear-sighted, spirits have begun to base high hopes upon what they call “the permeation” of the Liberal party. These of our brothers have a way of telling us that the transition to Socialism will be so gradual as to be imperceptible, and that there will never come a day when we shall be able to say “now we have a Socialist State.” They are fond of likening the simpler among us who disagree with them as to the extreme protraction of the process, to children who having been told that when it rains a cloud falls, looks disappointedly out of the window on a wet day, unconscious that the cloud is falling before their eyes in the shape of drops of water. To these cautious souls I reply that although there is much truth in their contention that the process will be gradual, we shall be able to say that we have a Socialist State on the day on which no man or group of men holds, over the means of production, property rights by which the labor of the producers can be subjected to exploitation; and that while their picturesque metaphor is a happy as well as a poetic conceit, it depends upon the political acumen of the present and next generation of Socialist men whether the “cloud” shall fall in refreshing Socialist