The Civic Federation of New York, an influential body which aims, in various ways, at harmonising apparently divergent industrial interests in America, having decided on supplementing its other activities by a campaign of political and economic education, invited me, at the beginning of the year 1907, to initiate a scientific discussion of socialism in a series of lectures or speeches, to be delivered under the auspices of certain of the great Universities in the United States.

This invitation I accepted, but, the project being a new one, some difficulty arose as to the manner in which it might best be carried out--whether the speeches or lectures should in each case be new, dealing with some fresh aspect of the subject, or whether they should be arranged in a single series to be repeated without substantial alteration in each of the cities visited by me.

The latter plan was ultimately adopted, as tending to render the discussion of the subject more generally comprehensible to each local audience.

A series of five lectures, substantially the same, was accordingly delivered by me in New York, Cambridge, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.

But whilst this plan secured continuity of treatment, it secured it at the expense of comprehensiveness.