To expect men and women to become “Socialists” in times of trade depression, is to expect the survivors of Messina, stricken by earthquake and famine, to meditate with enthusiasm upon the future of the race. Socialism, founded on Poverty and Social Discontent, and finding there its argument for change, does not flourish in the heart of that poverty and hungry wretchedness. The Socialist uses the sweated women and starving children as material for inflaming to pity and anger. But he rarely obtains adherents from the husbands of the women or the fathers of the children thus broken at the basis of society. The unemployed leaders are a different class and type from the unemployed whom they shepherd and control. And the average citizen has not yet come entirely to trust the new gospel; is not yet convinced that its adherents will make a better job of it than the “boodlers” and “blood suckers” whom they denounce so fervently. No Socialist councillor has ever been convicted of municipal corruption: and Socialists are sometimes surprised that a party so pure in aim and disinterested in service should be so often rejected by the electorate. But purity of purpose and incorruptibility of standard are not yet regarded by the average citizen as being the most essential qualifications for local or national government. The “man in the street,” here and in America, would seem to be content--except in sudden hurricanes of revolt against too flagrant corruption--with a not too ostentatious standard of civic purity, if the men who are running the machine are men of substance, energy, and position. Miss Addams, from Hull House, has described the failure of the reform party to carry an election even against the most offensive “boodlers.” The people acknowledged the corruption, but were convinced that all the aldermen do it, and that the alderman of their particular ward was unique in being so generous to his clients. “To their simple minds he gets it from the rich, and so long as he gives some of it out to the poor, and, as a true Robin Hood, with open hand, they have no objection to offer.” The people are found to be ashamed to be represented by a bricklayer--the intelligent, clean-handed nominee of the reforming party. The “boodler” is elected “because he is a good friend and neighbour. He exemplifies and exaggerates the popular type of a good man. He has attained what his constituents secretly long for.” They become generally convinced that “the lecturers who were talking against corruption were only the cranks, not the solid business men who had discovered and built up Chicago.” The same difficulty faces all those reformers to-day, who, in a settled, orderly, and on the whole comfortable, society, exhibit a too violent agitation for reform. The “comrades” propagate the cause with a splendid devotion, arguing at street corners, descending like locusts at bye-elections, organising themselves cheerily into missionary bands with particular