And in giving the figures of the Socialist growth, it is worth while to point out that this is not merely a local movement, but a world movement; that the United States is one of the most backward of the civilised nations in respect to Socialism. In Australia the labour unions have adopted a full Socialist program, and the labour unions hold the balance of power. In England, they have just elected twenty-seven members of Parliament; they have now members in the Cabinet of France, and in Italy they have turned out ministries. In Belgium, the vote of the party is half a million, and in Austria it is nearly a million, while in Germany it has grown from thirty thousand in 1870, to five hundred and forty-nine thousand in 1884, one million, eight hundred and seventy-six thousand in 1893, three million and eight thousand in 1903 and three million two hundred and fifty thousand in 1907. The Socialists are electing representatives in Argentina and South Africa; in spite of government persecution, the movement is now growing rapidly in Japan. Including all languages, the Socialist journals number nearly seven hundred, and the Socialist vote of the world is figured at nearly eight million. Allowing for women, and for the disfranchised proletariat of such nations as Russia, Austria, and Italy, there are estimated to be thirty million class-conscious Socialists in the world. To overlook the significance of a movement such as this, is but to repeat upon a larger scale the error of half a century ago, and to pay with blood and anguish for blundering and indifference. The processes of time have their laws, which can be studied; and all the waste and ruin of history, which make its records scarcely to be read, are consequences of the fact that man has to be lashed to his goal through the darkness, instead of marching to it in the light. You take but a shallow view of the problems of our present time, if you do not realise that when thirty million people, in every corner of the civilised world, organise themselves into a political party, they do it because of some fundamental and tremendous motive, and that they will not be apt to abandon their efforts until they have accomplished some proportionately significant result. CHAPTER II INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION