The Future of Parties.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXVI, Issue 1323, 28 August 1894, Page 7

The Future of Parties.

In an article on “The Future of Parties ” in The Fortnightly Review for June, Mr Robert Wallace, M.P., in referring to political parties in England, says:—“ There are many signs that a great conflict is approaching on the central social question, and existing parties, with Governments actual or possible, will have to make up their minds what to do in the matter.

Socialism is undoubtedly a growing creed, attracting the attention and belief not only of less well-informed people, but of persons of the highest intelligence and culture. Probably in a few years it will come, not into a universal, but a very widespread acceptation. ' Socialism ’or * Collectivism ’ is often used in a vague sense for any interference of the State in the way of controlling or serving the individual. . . . But Socialism in the

sense in which it is going to be politically formidable, and as set forth by its responsible propagandists, is a very clear and well-defined scheme indeed. It means the annihilation of private capital, the management of all industrial production and distribution by the State, when Government shall be the sole farmer, manufacturer, carrier, and storekeeper, and we shall all be turned into civil servants under the control of the Ministry of the

day. ... I see some of the centres, Liberal as well as Tory, are disposed to make light of the Socialist evangel. They speak of the ‘ Socialistic craze,’ and describe it as mostly a matter of noise raised by a few featherheads, which will not ‘catch on.’ 1 humbly differ from that view. I tiling that given a little time Socialism will take hold and become a power to be recokoned with. It may not spread like wildfire, but it may like the rising tide. It has done so on the Continent, and although the misery of the necessitous is greater there than with us there is enough similarity and solidarity throughout European industrialism to make the same thing probable here.”