The intelligent woman's guide to socialism and capitalism

THE INTELLIGENT WOMAN’S GUIDE
                      TO SOCIALISM AND CAPITALISM


                            [Illustration]




                     THE INTELLIGENT WOMAN’S GUIDE
                      TO SOCIALISM AND CAPITALISM
                            BY BERNARD SHAW

                            [Illustration]

                    BRENTANO’S PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
                                 1928




                  COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY BRENTANO’S INC.

                     _First printing, June, 1928_

             MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                                  TO

                           MY SISTER-IN-LAW

                       MARY STEWART CHOLMONDELY

                THE INTELLIGENT WOMAN TO WHOSE QUESTION
                THIS BOOK IS THE BEST ANSWER I CAN MAKE




A FOREWORD FOR AMERICAN READERS


I have never been in America; therefore I am free from the delusion,
commonly entertained by the people who happen to have been born there,
that they know all about it, and that America is their country in the
same sense that Ireland is my country by birth, and England my country
by adoption and conquest. You, dear madam, are an American in the sense
that I am a European, except that the American States have a language
in common and are federated, and the European states are still on the
tower of Babel and are separated by tariff fortifications. When I hear
people asking why America does not join the League of Nations I have
to point out to them that America _is_ a League of Nations, and sealed
the covenant of her solidity as such by her blood more than sixty years
ago, whereas the affair at Geneva is not a League of Nations at all,
but only a so far unsuccessful attempt to coax Europe to form one at
the suggestion of a late American President, with the result that the
British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs makes occasional trips
to Geneva, and, on returning, reassures the British House of Commons by
declaring that in spite of all Woodrow-Wilsonic temptations to combine
with other nations he remains an Englishman first, last, and all the
time; that the British Empire comes before everything with him; and
that it is on this understanding and this alone that he consents to
discuss with foreigners any little matters in which he can oblige them
without detriment to the said reserved interests. And this attitude
seems to us in England so natural, so obvious, so completely a matter
of course, that the newspapers discuss the details of Mr Chamberlain’s
report of his trip without a word about the patriotic exordium which
reduces England’s membership of the League to absurdity.

Now your disadvantage in belonging to a league of nations instead of
to a nation is that if you belong to New York or Massachusetts, and
know anything beyond the two mile radius of which you are the centre,
you probably know much more of England, France, and Italy than you do
of Texas or Arizona, though you are expected, as an American, to know
all about America. Yet I never met an American who knew anything about
America except the bits she had actually set eyes on or felt with her
boots; and even of that she could hardly see the wood for the trees.
By comparison I may be said to know almost all about America. I am
far enough off to get a good general view, and, never having assumed,
as the natives do, that a knowledge of America is my intuitional
birthright, I have made enquiries, read books, availed myself of the
fact that I seem to be personally an irresistible magnet for every
wandering American, and even gathered something from the recklessly
confidential letters which every American lady who has done anything
unconventional feels obliged to write me as a testimony to the ruinous
efficacy of my books and plays. I could and should have drawn all the
instances in this book from American life were it not that America
is such a fool’s paradise that no American would have believed a
word of them, and I should have been held up, in exact proportion
to my accuracy and actuality, as a grossly ignorant and prejudiced
Britisher, defaming the happy West as ludicrously as the capitalist
West defames Russia. What I tell you of England you will believe. What
I could tell you of America might provoke you to call on me with a
gun. Also it would lead you to class me as a bitter enemy to America,
whereas I assure you that though I do not adore your country with the
passion professed by English visitors at public banquets when you have
overwhelmed them with your reckless hospitality, I give it a good deal
of my best attention as a very interesting if still very doubtful
experiment in civilization.

But this much I will permit myself to say. Do not imagine that because
at this moment certain classes of American workmen are buying bathtubs
and Ford cars, and investing in building societies and the like the
money that they formerly spent in the saloons, that America is doing
as well as can be expected.