"To carry out this volume I must partly lay aside some MSS. which I had previously begun, and before writing it I should like to hear your opinion on the subject. The provisional title of one for which I have accumulated materials and ideas for some time is 'The Proletariate: the Power of the Future.' It has been my lot to see a great deal of the Labour Question, not only agricultural, but also urban." Really? Urban? Where, how, and in what period of his life did he get his urban experience? Was it on the streets of Swindon, that great centre of life and thought? "And it seems to me that all politics are slowly resolving into this one great point." He means that the condition of the people all over the world is rapidly becoming the dominant question. He was right; but he spoke ten years too soon. "Religion, society, institutions of every kind are affected. No doubt you saw the extraordinary account in the _Times_ recently of the burial of a Socialist in Germany, and the marked progress of their doctrines. There are several books on wages, capital and labour, etc., but it seems to me that most thinkers and writers treat the subject on grounds too narrow. Of wages I propose to say very little. My idea is to point out how proletarian influences are at work everywhere under the surface. The Church, the Chapel, the Houses of Parliament, legislation, society, at home; abroad, the same. Note the Nihilism in Russia, and the railway insurrection in the United States lately. Everywhere the masses are heaving and fermenting. In our own rural districts I clearly foresee changes in the future through the education now beginning of the cottagers. Personally, I have little feeling, and my book will be absolutely free of party politics. I look at it much as I should dissect and analyze a given period in the history of ancient Rome." Nothing came of this proposal, and, indeed, one feels that Jefferies was not the man to write such a book. Of the people in other countries he knew nothing but what he read in the papers; of the people at home he knew only the agricultural portion; and though he had read a great many books he was in no sense an historical student. But he was still young, and it still seemed to him, as to all young writers, that he could write a book upon any subject which it interested him to read about in the papers or elsewhere.