William Morris and the Early Days of the Socialist Movement/App1
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
I
THE 'COMMONWEAL'
MORRIS undertook the editorship of the Commonweal with great reluctance, and only because there was no one else who had the time or capacity for the work who could be entrusted with it. Besides, as he knew that he would have to be financially responsible for the paper, it was, of course rather important, in view of the laws of sedition and libel, that he should have control of its contents. He had stipulated that his editorship would chiefly be of a figure-head character, and that the bulk of the technical and drudgery work should be put on the shoulders of the sub-editor, who would be paid for his services.
Dr. Aveling was appointed sub-editor in the first instance, but was asked to resign after a year or so, and H.H. Sparling was appointed in his place. David Nicol became sub-editor in 1889.
The first number of the Commonweal appeared in February 1885, and the last number under Morris' editorship in August 1889. It was continued, as I have recorded elsewhere, as an Anarchist journal for one or two years afterwards, latterly as a monthly, but dwindled into obscurity.
The loss on running the Commonweal was always heavy, and had to be met by Morris out of his own purse. In one of his letters to me in 1888, I think, he estimated the circulation of the paper then at 2800 copies, and the weekly deficit at £4. In a later letter he says: 'I am now paying for the League (including Commonweal) at the rate of £500 a year, and I cannot afford it.'
The task of editorship, as I have said, from the outset was distasteful to him, not so much because, as is commonly supposed, he felt he had no aptitude for journalism, as because from the circumstances of the case it required him to give so much attention to the mere controversial side of party politics. I have not the least doubt that he would have made as good a shape at the craft of journalism as at the many other crafts which he so successfully took up, had the work enticed him. I can well imagine him collaborating in running a journal devoted to Socialism, or to art, or literature, or to any branch of work in which he was deeply interested, and proving himself first-rate as an editor or contributor. Those who know how invariably lively, instructive, and to the point were his remarks in conversation and in his letters on almost every subject that concerned the affairs of life will, I think, agree with me here. But in writing for the Commonweal, the official journal of the League, he was expected to write, week after week, about the tiresome and now quite obsolete incidents and controversies of Gladstone-Salisbury politics—a task into which he could put no heart.
Scanning his Commonweal notes to-day, one perceives that he is rarely himself in them, but is writing perfunctorily, dealing with matters which he thought it was the duty of the editor of the Commonweal to say. Thus he is often laboriously censorious, and his notes make heavy and dull reading. The niceties, trickeries, and obvious gammon of so much of what was going on in the name of politics were unsuitable for treatment from the serious point of view with which he regarded the plight of the working-class, and the revolutionary struggle which he saw confronting the civilised world. But he was not always laboured or dull; and it was rare for him to write on any theme without saying something fresh and suggestive. Even when belabouring for the hundredth time Gladstone, Chamberlain, and Balfour, or rating as if by rote some capitalist apologia by Professor Leone Levi or Sir Thomas Brassey, he seldom failed to introduce some phrase or turn of thought outside the range of ordinary journalist allusion.
Such as it was, considering the limitations of its space, and the restrictions of its purpose, the Commonweal compared favourably with any other Socialist or propagandist journal of its day. There are to be found in it, I venture to think, more pages of matter interesting to read to-day than can be found in any similar contemporary publication. Alike in get-up and in the quality of its contributions, especially during the three years 1887-1889, when Morris was rid of the disturbing meddlings of Dr. Aveling (his then sub-editor) and before the Anarchist influences began to force themselves upon him, it will bear comparison proudly with either its weekly rival Justice, or with Our Corner, To-Day, or the Practical Socialist, monthly magazines which enjoyed the advantages of the collaboration of such experienced journalists as Annie Besant, Hubert Bland, Bernard Shaw, and other Fabian Fleet Street intellectuals. Nor should we fail to note that from the outset of his editorship of the Commonweal, as with all things to which he turned his hands, Morris sought as best he could with the means at his disposal to embody in his work right principles of conduct and of art. Thus he tried to make the paper in some degree a good example of typographical art, designing for it a simple but beautiful title block, and insisting upon good, readable type and consistency of headings and spacing throughout—eschewing all vulgarisations of display. Also he set his face like flint against any log-rolling or personal flattery in its columns, and against all commercial advertisements that would degrade the character of the paper, and against purveying merely 'spicy' or garish paragraphs. Also he aimed that the paper should be primarily educational in its character, and such as might give to everyone who looked at it, whether workman or intellectual, a due impression of the high seriousness and greatness of the Socialist aims, and proof that Socialism was not a mere form of political faction, but was concerned with all questions relating to the advance of the thought and life of the nation.
Imperfectly as he succeeded in these aims, it is well to remember that at least he made the best effort in his power to accomplish them. In this, as in all other things to which he set his mind or hands, he gave proof of the sincerity with which he held the principles he laid down for his own and others' guidance.