268 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
published in the London Daily Chronicle. There Mr. Shaw gives the following interesting paragraph :
His literary judgment leads him astray when socialism is the topic. For example, in the futile joint-socialist manifesto drafted by Morris in 1893, and reduced in committee by himself, Mr. H. M. Hyndman, and the present writer, Mr. Mackail detects the hand of Mr. Sidney Webb ! He declares that " it fairly represents the moderate and practical views which Morris held in the last years of his life." As a matter of fact, it contains, under cover of certain plausible sentiments, no views at all ; and though this is exactly what "mod- erate and practical" usually mean in England, it was not in the least what they meant to Morris.
However, even if some of his decisions are thus challenged, Mr. Mackail has shgwn skilled judgment and discernment.
Morris, through his sixty years of record, proved himself an unwonted worker, and developed a compelling and ennobling theory and religion of work, while both by deed and by writing he related himself to the development of popular social philosophy. It is in this view of his life that his biography must be noticed in a journal of sociology. These special social energies we may consider for our con- venience under (i) personal traits and anecdotes; (2) his association with the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings; (3) the con- duct of his business; (4) his relation to the socialist movement ; (5) his social writings.
I. Early in his college associations there was a dream of forming a brotherhood, with some ideal of renunciation and sacrifice, which preceded and yet lent its influence to the later formed band which had learned that service is better than sacrifice. Of this period the biog- rapher says :
By the end of that year (1854) the religious struggle which seemed likely for a while to land both Morris and Burne- Jones in the Roman church was practically over, and with this clearing of the air social ideals rose to a more important place. Price and Faulkner brought to Oxford actual knowledge of the inhuman conditions of human life in the great industrial areas; their special enthusiasms were for sanitation, for factory acts, for the bare ele- ments of a possible life among the mass of their fellow-citizens. At Birming- ham school a considerable section of the upper boys were awake to the crying evils of the period ; social reform was a common topic of conversa- tion. The surroundings impressed indelibly on those who lived in them the ground truth that all true freedom, all living art, all real morality, even among the limited class who are raised out of the common level by wealth
