The Nursery belongs to another class. When a society, formed as many societies are, of quite young people, has existed over twenty years, the second generation begins to be adult, and wants to be quit of its parents. Moreover the young desire, naturally, to hear themselves talk, whilst the others usually prefer the older and more famous personages. So a number of younger members eagerly took up a plan which originated in the circle of the Bland family, for forming a group confined to the young in years or in membership in order to escape the overmastering presence of the elderly and experienced. Sometimes they invite a senior to talk to them and to be heckled at leisure. More often they provide their own fare from amongst themselves. Naturally the Nursery is not exclusively devoted to economics and politics: picnics and dances also have their place. Some of the members eventually marry each other, and there is no better security for prolonged happiness in marriage than sympathy in regard to the larger issues of life. The Nursery has produced one tract, No. 132, "A Guide to Books for Socialists," described in the "Wells Report" as intended "to supplement or even replace that arid and indiscriminating catalogue, What to Read."
Last in date, but by no means least in importance of the Groups of this period, was the Women's Group, founded by Mrs. C.M. Wilson, who after nearly twenty years of nominal membership had resumed her active interest in the Society. The vigorous part taken by the women of the Society under the leadership of Mrs. Reeves in obtaining the only alteration yet made in the Basis has been already described. The Group was not formed till a year later, and at that time the Women's Suffrage movement, and especially the party led by Mrs. Pankhurst, had attracted universal attention. The early Suffrage movement was mainly Socialist in origin: most of the first leaders of the Women's Social and Political Union were or had been members either of the Fabian Society or of the I.L.P. and it may almost be said that all the women of the Society joined one or more of the Suffrage Societies which for the next seven years played so large a part in national politics. But besides the question of the vote, which is not peculiar to Socialism, there is a very large group of subjects of special interest to Socialist women, either practical problems of immediate politics relating to the wages and conditions of women's labour and the treatment of women by Education Acts, National Insurance Acts, and Factory Acts; or remoter and more theoretical problems, especially those connected with the question whether the wife in the ideal state is to be an independent wage-earner or the mistress and manager of an isolated home, dependent on her husband as breadwinner. Efficiently organised by Mrs. C.M. Wilson, until ill-health required her resignation of the secretaryship in 1914; by Mrs. Bernard Shaw, Mrs. Pember Reeves, Miss Murby, Miss Emma Brooke, and many others, including in later years Dr. Letitia Fairfield, the Group has had many of the characteristics of an independent society. It has its own office, latterly at 25 Tothill Street, rented from the parent Society, with its own paid assistant secretary, and it has issued for private circulation its own publications. In 1913 it prepared a volume of essays on "Women Workers in Seven Professions," which was edited by Professor Edith Morley and published by George Routledge and Sons. It has prepared five tracts for the Society, published in the general list, under a sub-title, "The Women's Group Series," and it has taken an active part, both independently and in co-operation with other bodies, in the political movements specially affecting women, which have been so numerous in recent years.