4°

Swartbmore Xecture.

eighteenth century onwards the forerunner of theSocial Reform of our day. By this word I meanall the measures whereby the harshness anddefects of the capitalistic order are softened inthe interest of those classes whom this very ordercrushes to the earth. Such measures are, asProfessor Briefs figuratively puts it, " the RedCross behind the Capitalist front."

But the elements reminiscent of the earlyBaptists more than once burst the bounds ofSocial Reform. This is seen in John Betters,Quaker and Socialist, and in the Quaker circlethat worked so closely with Robert Owen , who ispenetrated with theism despite his hostility tothe churches. Like the German Baptists of anearlier day, these men condemned the world ofmammon, fattened on " the poor man's sweat."

Even in Marx a strain of Quaker thoughtsurvives beneath the surface of materialism andutilitarianism. It leads him to rate John Bellers more highly than any of his predecessors. TheMarx who otherwise only speaks of the " bour-geois economists " with contempt, called thisQuaker socialist " a real phenomenon in Politicaleconomy." 1

The fact that as far back as the eighteenthcentury socialistic proposals were being putforward from within the Quaker body meanssimply that there were men among them, strivingto realise an ideal of fellowship that shouldtranscend the capitalistic order, independent of

1 Karl Marx . Das Kapital. 2 Aufl. Bd I S. 515. 112,120, 127.