Any one who wants a detailed picture of the manner in which the State might obtain control of the means of production and organize industry to the exclusion of the private capitalist, can find it in a book called The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropist, by Robert Tressall, published in April 1914 by Grant Richards. It is a tragic and very interesting book, and is said to have been written by a Socialistic house-painter, who died soon after writing it. It describes the experiences of an educated working man, with high ideals of work and life, employed by a very third-rate firm of builders and decorators among a crowd of jeering and illiterate companions, whom he tried to stimulate to accept his own views on Socialism, as being the only remedy for the evils under which he and they suffered. In the last chapter this idealist, finding himself threatened with deadly disease, decides that the
