by its admirers. A critical examination of the theory
of surplus value would require much difficult and
abstract discussion of pure economic theory without
having much bearing upon the practical truth or
falsehood of Socialism; it has therefore seemed impossible
within the limits of the present volume. To
my mind the best parts of the book are those which
deal with economic facts, of which Marx's knowledge
was encyclopaedic. It was by these facts that
he hoped to instil into his disciples that firm and
undying hatred that should make them soldiers to
the death in the class war. The facts which he
accumulates are such as are practically unknown to
the vast majority of those who live comfortable lives.
They are very terrible facts, and the economic system
which generates them must be acknowledged to be
a very terrible system. A few examples of his choice
of facts will serve to explain the bitterness of many
Socialists:--


Mr. Broughton Charlton, county magistrate, declared,
as chairman of a meeting held at the Assembly Rooms,
Nottingham, on the 14th January, 1860, ``that there was
an amount of privation and suffering among that portion
of the population connected with the lace trade, unknown
in other parts of the kingdom, indeed, in the civilized
world. . . . Children of nine or ten years are dragged
from their squalid beds at two, three, or four o clock in
the morning and compelled to work for a bare subsistence