15° 



The Review of Reviews. 



Aiiguet 1, 1906. 



Photograph by] Mr, Keir Hardie. M P. 



[E. B. Mills. 



succeeded cut-throat competition as the principle of 

 the social organism was one by Robert Owen, who 

 was a kind of Scottish John the Baptist of Social 

 Democracy. 



Voltaire's " Charles the Twelfth,' bought for a 

 penny in the New Cut, was the beginning of his 

 library, and from it he learnt the secret of physical 

 endurance, and indifference to cold. John Stuart 

 Mill made him a Socialist by his failure to refute the 

 arguments of the Socialists. Ruskin and Carlyle 

 completed what Owen had begun. Adam Smith's 

 '• Wealth of Nations '' he found buried in sand under 

 the foundations of an old engine shop at Akassa, on 

 the West Coast of Africa. His library at Battersea 

 is his workshop. It contains the best collection of 

 Socialist pamphlets in England. Many a volume 

 represents the sacrifice of a dinner. To buy Mal- 

 lock's " Is Life Worth Living ?' he did without a 

 new pair of boots. 



In later years he has been a faithful reader of 

 " The Review of Reviews." When this periodical 

 was founded, he wrote me ns follows: — 



Tour new ' Review " will be a boon to men of the 

 English-speaking race in new countries, who are unable 

 to pay for four or five magazines, but would be delighted 

 to receive a journal containing the best of all the articles 

 by good men. Such a " Review " to myself when in 

 Africa would have been a great boon, as it will be at 

 home. To a poor man like myself, the prices of magazines 

 are prohibitive, especially when there are no free libraries 

 in his neighbourhood. . 1 have at times bought the Nine- 

 teenth Century for an important article, and thereby 

 strained my resources- Beine unable to purchase the 

 Fortnightly of same month. I have looked at the first two 

 pages on a bookstall at Charine Cross, the next few at 



Waterloo, and finished the article at Victoria some days 

 later, compelled, of course, to buy a paper to justify me 

 staying the time at each. In your •' Review ' I would 

 have been able to read not only these two. but others, 

 thus preventing kleptomania, of which I alone am not 

 guilty. 



This year I wrote asking him if I might reprint 

 this letter, wishing, after fifteen years' test, to give 

 him an opportunity of modifying or altering or res- 

 cinding his tribute. His reply was very: much to 

 the point, and was couched in terms of oracular 

 brevity : " What I have said I have said, and adhere 

 to." 



In his youth he was a Church choir boy. He has 

 now no connection with any other religion than that 

 which Paine said was his, " To do good." 



J. KEIR HARDIE (Merthyr Tydvil). 



B. 1857, Scotland. Self-educated. Occ, Coal- 

 miner and Journalist. Rel., Evangelical Union 

 of Scotland. 



1 think mv mother's songs made the strongest im- 

 pression upon me. combined with the tales and romances 

 of mv grandmother, whose father had been out in the 

 rising of 1745. She was a typical woman of that period, 

 believing in ghosts, witches and warlocks, and also lull ot 

 the traditional historical lore of our country. The first 

 book I remember reading was Wilson's " Tales of the 

 Borders, " and these took hold of my imagination and 

 created within me a love of the tales and traditions of 

 Scotland, and. for that matter, of other countries, which 

 abides with me still. After going to work my oppor- 

 tunities for reading were very, very limited. There was 

 a very ancient library attached to the church of the 

 mining village in which we resided, and I have vivid recil- 

 lections ot reading Captain Cook's " Voyages ' in two 

 great bulky tomes, which awakened in me a sense ot 

 wonder at "the world's vastness, and gave me an interest 

 in native ra.ce6 which has not lessened as the years roll 

 on. The " Scottish Worthies, " recording the doings and 

 trials and the sufferings of the Covenanters, toge:her with 

 the chap-book Life of Sir William Wallace, made me a 

 hater of ofBcial tyranny and injustice, and very tolerant 

 of all who are fighting for conscience' sake, even where 

 my conscience does not approve of their object. All this 

 refers to bovhood, that is to say, before I was sixteen. 

 .\.bout that "age. or perhaps a year later, a friend sent 

 me "Sartor Eeaartus," and one of the most abiding re- 

 membrances of those days is the attic in which I used 

 to read bv the light onlv of mv collier's lamp whilst 

 going through Carlvle's most impressive book. I felt I 

 was "in the presence of some great power, the meaning 

 of which I could only dimly guess at. I mark the reading 

 of " Sartor," however, as a real turning point, and went 

 through the book three times in succession until the snir t 

 of it somewhat entered into me. Since then I have learned 

 much of the human failings and weaknesses of Carlyle, 

 but I still remain a worshipper at his shrine. He was, 

 indeed, to me in those days a hero, more particularly 

 when " P.ast and Present " and the " French Revolution 

 followed in the wake of " Sartor." About this period also 

 I read Boswell's Johnson, and made the acquaint- 

 ance through its pages -with the literary and social 

 life of his times. Some years later Henry George 

 came to Scotland, and I read " Progress and Po- 

 verty," which unlocked many ot the industrial and 

 economic difficulties which then beset the mind of the 

 worker trying to take an intelligent interest in his own 

 affairs, and led me. much to George's horror in later days 

 when we met personally, into Communism. I have left 

 out Burns' poems and the New Testament, which in a 

 sense were always with me, especially the former; I had 

 nearly reached man's estate before I read the latter, nor 

 did I" appreciate it fully until I had read Renan's ' Life 

 of Jesus." Each of the works named above left its mark 

 upon mv make-up, and still remain favourites, although, 

 like old friends, communion with them is no longer so easy 

 a? it was in days gone by. J. KEIR HAEDIE. 



JOHN WARD (Stoke-upon-Trent). 



B. 1866, Hampshire. Self-educated. Occ, Navvy 

 and Soldier. Rel., Church in youth, now Uni- 

 tarian. 



After the first three, John Ward the navvy is the 



