Some years ago, anxious to settle, if possible, the vexed question of the origin and first use of the word "Socialism," the present writer devoted a good deal of time to an investigation of the subject, spending much of it in a careful survey of all the early nineteenth-century radical literature. It soon appeared that the generally accepted account of its introduction, by the French writer, L. Reybaud, in 1840, was wrong. Indeed, when once fairly started on the investigation, it seemed rather surprising that the account should have been accepted, practically without challenge, for so long. Finally the conclusion was reached that an anonymous writer in an English paper was the first to use the word in print, the date being August 24, 1833.[5] Since that time an investigation of a commendably thorough nature has been made by three students of the University of Wisconsin,[6] with the result that they have been unable to find any earlier use of the word. It is somewhat disappointing that after thus tracing the word back to what may well be its first appearance in print, it should be impossible to identify its creator. The letter in which the term is first used is signed "A Socialist," and it is quite evident that the writer uses it as a synonym for the commonly used term "Owenite," by which the disciples of Robert Owen were known. It is most probable that Owen himself had used the word, and, to some extent, made it popular; and that the writer of the letter had heard "our dear social father," as Owen was called, use it, either in some of his speeches or in conversation. This is the more likely as Owen was fond of inventing new words. At any rate, one of Owen's associates, now dead, told the present writer that Owen often specifically claimed to have used the word at least ten years before it was adopted by any other writer. The word gradually became more familiar in England. Throughout the years 1835-1836, in the pages of Owen's paper, _The New Moral World_, there are many instances of the word occurring. The French writer, Reybaud, in his "Reformateurs Modernes," published in 1840, made the term equally familiar to the reading public of Continental Europe. By him it was used to designate the teachings not merely of Owen and his followers, but those of all social reformers and visionaries--Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Louis Blanc, and others. By an easy transition, it soon came into general use as designating all altruistic visions, theories, and experiments, from the "Republic" of Plato onward through the centuries.