Quotes from book
Merrie England

Name: Merrie England
Author: Robert Blatchford

Merrie England is an influential collection of essays on socialism by Robert Blatchford under the pseudonym "Nunquam", published in 1893. The first issue by Nunquam was priced at one shilling. It sold over two million copies worldwide. It was said that for every one convert to socialism made by Karl Marx's Das Kapital there were a hundred converts made by “Merrie England” – though even this may be an underestimate.The book received rebuttals including:

“To say that we could not work without capital is as true as to say that we could not mow without a scythe. To say that we could not work without a capitalist is as false as to say that we could not mow a meadow unless all the scythes belonged to one man. Nay, it is as false as to say that we could not mow unless all the scythes belonged to one man and he took a third of the harvest as payment for the loan of them.”

Robert Blatchford book Merrie England

Merrie England (1893) Chapter XXIII, Luxury, p. 182 ( 1894 printing https://archive.org/details/merrieengland00blatiala)