That brought Morris into touch with workingmen, a very dangerous thing; because under our present social system it is better for a gentleman to stay in his own class, and not find out what is happening to the workers. Morris was drawn into politics--beginning, curiously enough, with an effort to save old churches and other buildings from being “restored” according to modern taste. Before long we find him evolved into one of the leading Victorian rebels, a founder of the Social-Democratic Federation, speaking afternoons and evenings at soap-box meetings. The critics lamented this, just as they lamented the political career of John Milton: it seemed such a waste of time for a great poet and artist. But it was all a part of William Morris’s life; if he had not been the kind of man he was, he could not have produced the kind of art he did. In between all his other labors he wrote poetry; it flowed out of him freely, wonder tales of all sorts, having to do with those old times which he loved, and the beautiful things which he imagined happening there. It is very good narrative verse, and all young people ought to read “The Earthly Paradise”; also they ought to read “The Dream of John Ball,” and learn what happened to the social rebels in the old days. Morris’s most popular piece of prose writing is “News from Nowhere.” He had read Bellamy’s Utopia, “Looking Backward,” and he did not like it, because Bellamy was an American, and had organized and systematized the world. Nobody was going to organize and systematize William Morris; he set about to make his own Utopia, in which everything is placid and commonplace, healthy as the animals are healthy--but also abominably dull. Says Mrs. Ogi: “You are discussing one of the classics of your movement, and you know what the critics all say: the Socialists ought to begin by agreeing on what they want.” “I know,” says Ogi, “and I’m sorry to disappoint them. But there are many different kinds of people in the world, and some of each kind in our movement. I am a Socialist who believes in machinery, and has no interest in any world that does not develop machine power to the greatest possible extent. We are like people traveling through a tunnel; it is dark and smoky, and some want to turn back, but I want to go through to the other end.” “Morris and Ruskin said the other end was in hell.” “Yes, but I think their eyes were blinded by the smoke. What is wrong is not with machinery, but with the private ownership of machinery. There is no reason why machines should not make beautiful and substantial things, instead of making ugly and dishonest things--except the fact that machines are owned by people who have no interest except to make a profit out of the product. A thing is not less beautiful because there are millions of other things exactly like it in the world. That is just a snobbish notion, and Morris should have learned the lesson from any field of daisies.”