WCP7018

[1]

Parkstone, Dorset.

August 11th. 1889.

My dear Girdlestone

We are getting pretty straight & are making the acquaintance of some nice people, though I fear none of our extreme views. I am glad you like "Poverty & the State." I think its altogether admirable, & have written to the author to say so. But, I wonder how you — a Socialist — can write so coolly & say so little about "Looking Backward"? I am simply enchanted with it! and what [illeg.] [2] is more, am converted to Socialism! I have read many books advocating Socialism before, but none grappled with the real difficulties of the problem as Bellamy¹ does, & none gave a solution which appeared to me either possible or practicable or hardly even desirable. I never seemed to wish to live in other writer's Socialistic worlds. There was too little individuality, too little freedom, too little privacy, and too little variety ^{in them.} But I long for Bellamy's world, & feel that I could be happy in [3] it. "Looking Backward" is a great work — a work of genius if ever there was one, & is certain to bring about, some day, the state of society it so admirable depicts. I heard that members of Associations have already been formed in America, to study its principles, & diffuse its teachings. How admirably he shows the savings of a true socialistic organism, enabling each individual, with half a life of hard but enjoyable work, to provide for the whole in a condition of comfort & luxury that only a few now enjoy. How beautifully he depicts the high level of knowledge from which [4] D^r. Leete² answers all the objections of Mr West³, as a man answers the weak difficulties of a child! I should like to see the book sold at 2^d & distributed by millions, and taught & lectured on in every college & institution in the country. But that I see the enormous difficulty of moving the upper & ruling classes, ^{and even the lower,} I would cease advocating even my favorite child — Land Nationalisation — as trifling with a great subject, — but I fear we must here pass through the stages of Mills' associations & our Land reform before the people will have acquired the rudimentary freedom & comforts & knowledge,