228	ENGLISH    SAGA
idle, hopeless hunger, the rot of body and soul and the dread of
the workhouse at the end of that bitter road.
It was to those whom this dreary heritage inspired to bitter
anger that the new socialism made its initial appeal. Behind the
solid structure of Trade Unionism and the brittle fagade of the
intelligentsia fermented the spirit and fervour of a new religion.
During the quarter of a century that preceded the first world
war, Socialism was preached through the crowded cities of Britain
as Methodism had been preached in the eighteenth century and
Puritanism in the seventeenth—as a Salvationist crusade. Into
the drab lives and starved minds of the industrial masses came a
new message of hope and righteousness, uttered on evangelist
platforms by ardent believers with red ties and flashing eyes:
that poverty and injustice could be abolished by state action.
The little handful of the elect who gathered in the north-country
market square after some crushing electoral defeat to sing
Carpenter's Labour Hymn, "England, arise! the long, long niglit
is over," was like the grain of seed which grew into a great tree.
Among the younger generation of the workers there were
many who read more seriously. Henry George's Progress and
Poverty sold in thousands, and Blatchford's Merrie England\
published at 6d. in 1894, in tens of thousands. The latter's humble
Clarion^ issued under many difficulties, made proselytes wherever
the factory chimneys and slated roofs marked the abode of the
toiling masses. For humbler minds the new gospel was preached
in its simplest and most appealing form. The bloated capitalist
with his white top-hat, his gold watch-chain and his money-
bags, was the Devil who sucked the blood of the workers. The
upright young Socialist" with his Union ticket and his Fabian
pamphlet in his pocket was the pioneer of a new and better world,
ready for martyrdom if need be but never for compromise with
the evil spirit of greed which kept the virtuous proletariat in
chains. In a more sophisticated way this point of view was
broadly adopted by a whole generation of middle-class writers
and artists who, appalled by the accumulating evils of laissez-
faire industrialism, carried the message of Socialism into their
art. Generous youth at Oxford and Cambridge and newer centres
of learning thrilled at the gospel of apocalyptic hope: the school-
masters, journalists, clergymen and civil servants of the future
went out to their labour consciously or unconsciously imbued
with the teaching of Socialists of genius like Shaw and Wells.