Читать книгу Practicable Socialism - S. A. Barnett - Страница 5

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1 Reprinted, by permission, from the National Review of July 1886.

It is useless to imagine that the nation is wealthier because in one column of the newspaper we read an account of a sumptuous ball or of the luxury of a City dinner if in another column there is the story of ‘death from starvation.’ It is folly, and worse than folly, to say that our nation is religious because we meet her thousands streaming out of the fashionable churches, so long as workhouse schools and institutions are the only homes open to her orphan children and homeless waifs. The nation does not consist of one class only; the nation is the whole, the wealthy and the wise, the poor and the ignorant. Statistics, however flattering, do not tell the whole truth about increased national prosperity, or about progress in development, if there is a pauper class constantly increasing, or a criminal class gaining its recruits from the victims of poverty.

The nation, like the individual, is set in the midst of many and great dangers, and, after the need of education and religion has been allowed, it will be agreed that all other defences are vain if it be impossible for the men and women and children of our vast city population to reach the normal standard of robustness.

The question then arises, Why cannot and does not each man, woman, and child attain to the normal standard of robustness? The answers to this question would depend as much on the answerer as they do in the game of ‘Old Soldier.’ The teetotallers would reply that drink was the cause, but against this sweeping assertion I should like to give my testimony, and it has been my privilege to live in close friendship and neighbourhood of the working classes for nearly half my life. Much has been said about the drinking habits of the poor, and the rich have too often sheltered themselves from the recognition of the duties which their wealth has imposed on them by the declaration that the poor are unhelpable while they drink as they do. But the working classes, as a rule, do not drink. There are, undoubtedly, thousands of men, and, alas! unhappy women too, who seek the pleasure, or the oblivion, to be obtained by alcohol; but drunkenness is not the rule among the working classes, and, while honouring the work of the teetotallers, who give themselves up to the reclamation of the drunken, I cannot agree with them in their answer to the question. Drink is not the main cause why the national defence to be found in robust health is in such a defective condition.

Land reformers, socialists, co-operators, democrats would, in their turn, each provide an answer to our question; but, if examined, the root of each would be the same—in one word, it is Poverty, and this means scarcity of food.

Let us now go into the kitchen and try and provide, with such knowledge as dietetic science has given us, for a healthily hungry family of eight children and father and mother. We must calculate that the man requires 20oz. of solid food per day, i.e. 16oz. of carbonaceous or strength-giving food and 4oz. of nitrogenous or flesh-forming food. (The army regulations allow 25oz. a day, and our soldiers are recently declared on high authority to be underfed.) The woman should eat 12oz. of carbonaceous and 3oz. of nitrogenous food; though if she is doing much rough, hard work, such as all the cooking, cleaning, washing of a family of eight children necessitate, she would probably need another ounce per day of the flesh-repairing foods. For the children, whose ages may vary from four to thirteen, it would be as well to estimate that they would each require 8oz. of carbonaceous and 2oz. of nitrogenous food per day: in all, 92 of carbonaceous and 23oz. of nitrogenous foods per day.[2]

2To those who have had experience of children’s appetites it may seem as if their daily food had been under-estimated. A growing lad of eleven or twelve will often eat more than his mother, but the eight children, being of various ages, will probably eat together about this quantity, and it is better, perhaps, to under- than over-state their requirements.

For the breakfast of the family we will provide oatmeal porridge with a pennyworth of treacle and another pennyworth of tinned milk. For dinner they can have Irish stew, with 1¼lb. of meat among the ten, a pennyworth of rice, and an addition of twopennyworth of bread to obtain the necessary quantity of strength-giving nutriment. For tea we can manage coffee and bread, but with no butter and not even sugar for the children; and yet, simple fare as this is, it will have cost 2s.5d. to feed the whole family and to obtain for them a sufficient quantity of strength-giving food, and even at this expenditure they have not been able to get that amount of nitrogenous food which is necessary for the maintenance of robust health.

A little table of exact cost and quantities might not be uninteresting:—

Quantity of Food	Cost	Carbon- aceous	Nitro- genous
Breakfast—Oatmeal Porridge.	s. d.	oz.	oz.
1¼ lb. Oatmeal	2½	14	3
1½ pint Tinned Milk	1½	2¼	1
½ lb. Treacle	1½	7	—
Dinner—Irish Stew.
1¼ lb. Meat	8	3½	3½
4 lb. Potatoes	2½	14	2
1¼ lb. Onions	1	5½	1¼
A few Carrots	1	¼	—
½ lb. Rice	1	7	½
1½ lb. Bread	2¼	13½	2¼
Tea—Bread and Coffee.
2½ lb. Bread	3¾	22½	3¾
2½ oz. Coffee	2½	¼	¼
1½ pint Tinned Milk	1½	2¼	1
Total	2 5	92	18½

But note that the requisite quantities for the whole family are 92oz. of carbonaceous and 23oz. of nitrogenous substances.

Another day we might provide them with cocoa and bread for breakfast; lentil soup and toasted cheese for dinner; and rice pudding and bread for tea; but this fare presupposes a certain knowledge of cooking, which but few of the poor possess, as well as an acquaintance with the dietetic properties of food, which, at present, is far removed from even the most intelligent. This day’s fare compares favourably with yesterday’s meals in the matter of cost, being 2½d. cheaper, but it does not provide enough carbonaceous food, though it does not fall far short of the necessary 23oz. of nitrogenous substances.

Quantity of Food	Cost	Carbon- aceous	Nitro- genous
Breakfast—Bread and Cocoa.	s. d.	oz.	oz.
2½ lb. Bread	3¾	22½	3¾
1½ oz. Cocoa	1½	¾	¼
1 pint Tinned Milk	1	1¼	½
2 oz. Sugar	½	1½	—
Dinner—Lentil Soup, Toasted Cheese.
1½ lb. Lentils	3	15	6
1 lb. Cheese	8	4½	5½
1½ lb. Bread	2¼	13½	2¼
Tea—Rice Pudding and Bread.
¾ lb. Rice	1½	10½	¾
1½ pint Tinned Milk	1½	2¼	1
2 oz. Sugar	¼	1½	—
1½ lb. Bread	2¼	13½	2¼
Total	2 1½	86½	22¼

And how drear and uninteresting is this food compared to that on which people of another class normally live! No refreshing cups of afternoon tea; no pleasant fruit to give interest to the meal. Nothing but dull, keep-me-alive sort of food, and not enough of that to fulfil all Nature’s requirements.

But let us take another day’s meals, which can consist of hominy, milk, and sugar for breakfast; potato soup and apple-and-sago pudding for dinner; and fish and bread for tea; when fish is plentiful enough to be obtained at 3d. a pound, and when apples are to be got at 1½d. a pound, which economical housekeepers know is not often the case in London.

Quantity of Food	Cost	Carbon- aceous	Nitro- genous
Breakfast—Hominy, Milk, Sugar.	s. d.	oz.	oz.
1½ lb. Hominy	¾	17¼	3¼
3¼ pints Tinned Milk	3¼	4½	2¼
6 oz. Sugar	1	4¼	—
Dinner—Potato Soup and Apple-and-Sago Pudding.
5 lbs. Potatoes	3½	17½	2½
1½ pint Tinned Milk	1½	2¼	1
3 oz. Rice	¾	2¼	¼
3 oz. Dripping	1½		—
2½ lb. Apples	3¾	5	1½
6 oz. Sago	¾	3¼	¾
6 oz. Sugar	1	4	—
Tea—Fish and Bread.
2½ lb. Fish	7½	1¼	7½
2 lb. Bread	3	18	3
1½ pint Tinned Milk	1½	2¼	1
3 oz. Sugar	½	2	—
Total	2 5	86	23½

Again, however, we have spent 2s.5d. on food, and even now have not got quite sufficient strength-giving or carbonaceous food.

An average of 2s.4d. spent daily on food makes a total of 16s.4d. at the week’s end, leaving the labourer earning his 1l. a week 3s.8d. with which to pay rent (and decent accommodation of two rooms in London cannot be had for less than 5s.6d. or 6s. a week); to obtain schooling and lighting; to buy coals, clothes, and boots; to bear the expense of breakages and necessary replacements; to subscribe to a club against sickness or death; and to meet the doctor’s bills for the children’s illnesses or the wife’s confinements. How is it possible? Can 3s.8d. do so much? No, it cannot; and so food is stinted. The children have to put up with less than they need; the mother ‘goes without sooner than let the children suffer,’ and thus the new baby is born weakly and but half-nourished; the children develop greediness in their never-satisfied and but partly fed frames; and the father, too often insufficiently sustained, seeks alcohol, which, anyhow, seems to ‘pick him up and hold him together,’ though his teetotal mates assure him it is only a delusion.

And this is no fancy picture. I have now in my mind one Wilkins, a steady, rough, honest, sober labourer, fairly intelligent, and the father of thirteen children. The two eldest, girls of fourteen and fifteen, are already out at service; but the eleven younger, being under age, are still kept at school and supported by their father. He earns 1l. regularly. They rent the whole house at 12s. a week, and, letting off part, stand themselves at a weekly rent of 5s. for three small rooms. Less than that, as the mother says, ‘I could not nohow do with, what with all the washing for such a heavy family, and bathing the little ones, and him coming home tired of an evening, and needing a place to sit down in.’ The wife is a decent body, but rough and uncultured; and as she is ignorant of the proper proportions of nitrogenous and carbonaceous substance necessary for the preservation of healthy life, as well as of the kinds of food in which they can be best found, she feeds her family even less nutritiously than she could do if she were better informed. Still the whole wage could only feed them if it were all expended ever so wisely, leaving no margin for the requirements already mentioned.

Take Mrs. Marshall’s family and circumstances. Mrs. Marshall is, to all intents and purposes, a widow, her husband being in an asylum. She herself is a superior woman, tall and handsome, and with clean dapper ways and a slight hardness of manner that comes from bitter disappointment and hopeless struggling. She has four children, two of whom have been taken by the Poor Law authorities into their district schools—a better plan than giving out-door relief, but, at the same time, one that has the disadvantage of removing the little ones from the home influence of a very good mother. Mrs. Marshall herself, after vainly trying to get work, was taken as a scrubber at a public institution, where she earns 9s. a week and her dinner. She works from six in the morning till five at night, and then returns to her fireless, cheerless room to find her two children back from school and ready for their chief meal; for during her absence their breakfast and dinner can only have consisted of bread and cold scraps. We will not dwell on the hardship of having to turn to and light the fire, tidy the room, and prepare the meal after having already done ten hours’ scrubbing or washing. The financial question is now before us, and to that we will confine our thoughts. Out of her 9s. a week Mrs. Marshall pays 3s.3d. for rent; 2d. for schooling; 1s. for light and firing (and this does not allow of the children having a morning fire before they go to school); 9d. she puts by for boots and clothing; and imagine what it must be to dress, so as to keep warm, three people on 1l.19s. a year! and 6d. she pays for her bits of washing, for she cannot do them herself after all her heavy daily work. (Pause, though, for a moment to consider how Mrs. Marshall’s washerwoman must work when she does three changes of linen, aprons, sheets, and a table-cloth for 6d. a week.)

Deduct from the 9s. weekly wage—

	s. d.
Rent	33
Schooling	2
Firing	10
Clothes	9
Washing	6
	58

and 3s.4d. is left with which to provide breakfast and tea for a hard-working woman for seven days in the week, dinner for Sunday, and three meals daily for two growing children of ten and eleven. We have seen how, even with economy, knowledge, strength, and time, proper food cannot be obtained for less than 1d. or 1¼d. a meal, and this would make a weekly total of 5s.11¼d. 3s.4d., with no time, with little knowledge, and only the remnants of strength, which has been used up in earning the 3s.4d., is all Mrs. Marshall has with which to meet these requirements.

And how do the rich look on these facts? ‘Well! nine shillings a week is very fair wage for an unskilled working woman,’ was the remark I heard after I had told these facts to mine host at a country house, where we were eating the usual regulation dinner—soup, fish, entrée, joint, game, sweets, and hot-house fruits, said with the complacency of satisfaction which follows a glass of good wine. ‘Yes, about the cost of your one dinner’s wine!’ replied one of the guests; but then he was probably one of those ill-balanced people who judge people by what they are rather than by what they have, and he may have thought that the sad, lone woman, with her noble virtues of industry, patience, and self-sacrificing love, had, despite her hard manners, more right to the good things of this world than the suave old man owning fourteen acres of lawn on which no children ever played, and stating, without shame, first, the fact that he used eighty-two tons of coal yearly to warm his own sitting-rooms, and then the opinion that 9s. a week was fair wage on which to support a good woman and bring up two children.

While this wage is considered a ‘fair wage,’ the children must remain half-nourished, and grow up incapable of honest toil and valuable effort. While this wage is accepted as a right and normal thing, it is useless to think that the nation will be guided through dangers by means of heavy subscriptions to schools, to hospitals, and sick-asylums. Robust health is impossible; so disease easily finds a home, and teachers vainly try to develop brains ill supplied with blood. By the doorway of semi-starvation disease is invited to enter and find a home among the masses of our wage-earning people.

Before me are the dietary tables of the Whitechapel Workhouse—an institution which stands (thanks to the self-devotion of its able Clerk) high on the list for careful management and economical administration. There are congregated the aged and infirm paupers, and among them are some of Nature’s gentlefolk, the old and tired, who, having learnt a few of life’s greatest lessons in their long walk through life, ought to be giving them to the young and untried, instead of wearying out their last days in the dull monotony of a useless and regulated existence. Their dietary table allows them for breakfast and supper one pint of tea (made of one ounce to a gallon of water) and five ounces of bread and a tiny bit of butter. For dinner they have meat three times a week, pea-soup and bread twice, suet pudding once, and Irish stew on the other day. For the sake of comparison I will make a food table of this diet, based on the same calculations of food value as those that have been previously made for the family.

Quantity of Food.	Carbon- aceous	Nitro- genous.
Breakfast and Supper—Tea, Bread, and Butter.	oz.	oz.
10 oz. Bread	5½	¾
½ oz. Butter	½	—
½ oz. Sugar	½	—
⅛ pint Milk	less than ¼	—
Dinner—Meat and Potatoes.
4 oz. Meat (cooked)	1	1
8 oz. Potatoes	1¼	¼
2 oz. Bread	1	¼
Total	10½	2¼

Here we see that the total allowance comes only to 10½oz. of carbonaceous food and 2¼oz. of nitrogenous food, against the estimated quantity of 16oz. carbonaceous and 4oz. nitrogenous, which is the necessary allowance for ordinary people, and against the 25oz. carbonaceous and 5oz. nitrogenous, which is the regulation diet of the Royal Engineers during peace. It is true that these old folk do not need so much food, for their bodies have ceased to grow and develop, and in aged persons the wear of the frame does not require such replenishment as is the case with young and middle-aged people; but even with this partial diet we find that the cost of maintaining each of these old people is, for food alone, 3s.11d. per head per week.

Here, then, we have a fact on which a calculation is easy to make, and which, when made, forces us to see that the workman cannot keep his family as well as the pauper is kept. Even on this simple fare it would cost him close on 8s. a week to support himself so as to give him the strength to earn his daily bread; while, if we imagine his family to consist of a wife and six children, we find that his weekly food-bills would amount to 1l.8s., calculating his requirements on the same basis as in the previous instances.

If we take, therefore, the case of a skilled workman earning his 2l. a week, we still find that, even when adequately fed (and keep in mind the plainness and unattractiveness of the diet), he has only 12s. a week to supply all other necessaries and out of which to lay by, not only against old age and sickness, but against that ‘rainy day’ and ‘out of work from slackness’ which so often occur for weeks together in the weather chart of our artisan population.

Or take another case, that of Mr. and Mrs. Stoneman, excellent folk: the wife, a woman of such force and originality of character, such patience and sweet persistency, as would make her an ornament in any class; the husband an honest, steady man, not, perhaps, so clever as his wife, but loving and admiring her none the less for that. They have six children: the two eldest at work; the youngest a sweet tiny thing, as spotlessly clean as water and care can keep it in this mud-coloured atmosphere of Whitechapel. Her husband earns 23s. a week, excepting when bad illness, lasting sometimes six and eight weeks, reduces his wages to nothing; and then the sick man, his wife, and four children have to live, pay rent, firing, and ‘doctor’s stuff’ on the club-money of 14s. a week, for the boys’ earnings can only support themselves.

Which of us would consider that he could supply food and sick-luxuries for even one person on 14s. a week, the sum fixed by the rich as board wages for an unneeded man-servant?

On the face of it this family is perhaps exceptionally well-off, for the two big lads in it earn, the one 5s. the other 7s. a week, which brings the united weekly wage up to 35s. a week. Mrs. Stoneman is a friend of mine, and, in response to my request, she weighed all the food at every meal, and here is the result.

At the time, however, that this was done Mrs. Stoneman’s children had been sent by the Children’s Country Holiday Fund into the country for a fortnight’s holiday. We must therefore suppose the family to consist only of six, and the necessary quantity of food to sustain them in good healthy working condition would be 76oz. of carbonaceous food and 19oz. of nitrogenous food.

Sunday Meals.

Quantity of Food	Cost	Strength- giving.	Flesh- repairing
Breakfast—Bread and Butter and Fish.	s. d.	oz.	oz.
1¼ lb. Bread	2	11¼	1¾
1½ oz. Butter	1½	1	—
1 Haddock	3	—	—
½ oz. Tea	¾	—	—
2½ oz. Sugar	¼	2	¼
½ pint Tinned Milk	½	¾	¼
Dinner—Beef and Vegetables, Apple Pudding.
1 lb. 3 oz. Beef	1 5	3¼	3¼
3 lb. 10 oz. Potatoes	2½	12¾	1¾
1 lb. Beans	2	—	—
3 oz. Bread	¼	1½	—
⅔ lb. Flour	3	8	¾
¼ lb. Lard	2	3	—
1 lb. Apples	2	2	1
1⅓ oz. Sugar	¼	1	—
Tea—Bread and Butter.
¾ lb. Bread	1¼	6¾	2¼
2 oz. Butter	2	1½	—
½ oz. Tea	¼	—	—
2½ oz. Sugar	¼	2	—
½ pint Tinned Milk	½	¾	¼
Supper—Bread and Cheese.
1 lb. Bread	1½	9	1½
¼ lb. Cheese	4	1	1¼
Total	3 11½	67¾	14¼

Wednesday Meals

Quantity of Food	Cost	Strength- giving.	Flesh- repairing
Breakfast—Bread and Butter.	s. d.	oz.	oz.
2 lb. Bread	3	18	3
3¼ oz. Butter	3¼	3	—
¼ oz. Tea	½	—	—
2 oz. Sugar	½	1¾	—
½ pint Tinned Milk	½	¾	¼
Dinner—Bacon Pudding.
1 lb. Bacon	6	3	3
2 lb. Potatoes	1¾	7	1
¾ lb. Flour	2	9	¾
2 oz. Suet	1	1½	—
Tea—Bread and Butter.
3 lb. Bread	4½	21	4½
2½ oz. Butter	2½	2	—
½ oz. Tea	1	—	—
2½ oz. Sugar	¾	2	—
½ pint Tinned Milk	½	¾	¼
Supper—Bread and Cheese.
¾ lb. Bread	1	6¾	2¼
3 oz. Cheese	1½	¾	1
Total	2 6¼	77¼	16

Saturday Meals.

Quantity of Food	Cost	Strength- giving.	Flesh- repairing
Breakfast—Bread and Butter.	s. d.	oz.	oz.
1½ lb. Bread	2¼	13½	2¼
3 oz. Butter	3	2¾	—
3½ oz. Sugar	1	3	—
1 pint Tinned Milk	1½	1¾	¾
Dinner—Bread and Cheese and Coffee.
¾ lb. Bread	1	6¾	2¼
½ lb. Cheese	4	2¼	2¾
1 pint Milk, Coffee	1½	1¾	¾
Tea—Bread and Butter and Fish.
2 lb. 4 oz. Bread	3¼	20½	3¾
2½ oz. Butter	2½	2	—
2 Herrings	2	—	—
2½ oz. Sugar	¾	2	—
½ pint Tinned Milk	½	1	½
Supper—Bread and Cheese.
14 oz. Bread	1¼	8½	1
¼ lb. Cheese	2	1	1¼
Total	2 2½	66¾	15¼

This is the food-table of one of the best of managers. It could not well be simpler, and yet we see that it fails every day, sometimes to the extent of one-third, in providing sufficient nitrogenous or flesh-repairing food; but even so the cost for the three days makes a total of 8s.8½d., or, say, on an average, 3s. a day. Thus it took 1l.1s. a week to feed this family simply and wholesomely at a time when two of its hungry members of eight and eleven were away. The weekly rent to house it in two rooms takes 5s.7d.; to educate the school-going members, 7d. a week must be paid; to keep the fire and lights going (and this, of course, is more expensive than if the fuel could be got in in large quantities) demands 2s.6d. a week; and to provide washing materials another 1s. must be deducted.

When these outgoings are met there remains but 4s.4d. with which to provide the food of the two then absent children, to pay club subscriptions for three people (because each of the working members is in a sick-club and burial club), to procure boots, clothes, and to lay by against the days of illness, slackness, and old age.

Now these are the facts which, summed up in a sentence, amount to this, that while wages are at the present rate the large mass of our people cannot get enough food to maintain them in robust health, and bodily health is here alone considered.

No mention has been made of the food a man requires to keep his whole nature in robust health; of the books, the means of culture, the opportunities of social intercourse, which are as necessary for his mental health and development as food and drink are for his bodily. No account has been taken of all that each human being needs to keep his spiritual nature alive. The quiet times in the country or by the sea, the knowledge of Nature’s mysteries, the opportunities for the cultivation of natural affection. ‘Yes, it is seven years since me and my daughter met,’ I heard a gentle old lady of sixty-nine say the other day, one of God’s aristocracy, the upper class in virtue and unselfishness. ‘You see, she lives a pretty step from here, and moving about is not to be thought of when money is so scarce.’

The body’s needs are the most exacting; they make themselves felt with daily recurring persistency, and, while they remain unsatisfied, it is hard to give time or thought to the mental needs or the spiritual requirements; but if our nation is to be wise and righteous, as well as healthy and strong, they must be considered. A fair wage must allow a man, not only to adequately feed himself and his family, but also to provide the means of mental cultivation and spiritual development. Indeed, some humanitarians assert that it should be sufficient to give him a home wherein he may rest from noise, with books, pictures, and society; and there are those who go so far as to suggest that it should be sufficient to enable him to learn the larger lessons which travellers gain from other nations, as well as the teaching which the great dumb teachers wait to impart to ‘those with ears to hear’ of fraternity, purity, and eternal hope.

Why is it that our wage-earners cannot get this? Why is it that, as we indulge in such dreams, they sound impossible and almost impracticable, though no reader of this Review will add undesirable? Is it because our nation has not fought Ignorance, with pointed weapons, and by its knights of proved prowess and valour? Or is it because our rulers have not recognised the Greed of certain classes or individuals as a national evil, and struggled against it with the strength of unity? It cannot be the want of money in our land which causes so many to be half-fed and cry silently from want of strength to make a noise. As we stand at Hyde Park Corner, or wander in among the miles of streets of ‘gentlemen’s residences’ in the West End, our hearts are gladdened at the sight of the wealth that is in our land; but they would be glad with a deeper gladness if Wilkins was not getting slowly brutalised by his struggle, if there were a chance of Alice and Johnnie Marshall growing up as Nature meant them to grow, or if clever Mrs. Stoneman’s patient efforts could be crowned with success. Money in plenty is in our midst, but cruel, blinding Poverty keeps her company, and our nation cannot boast herself of her wealth while half her people are but partly fed, and too poor to use their minds or to aspire after holiness.

By the optimist we may be told that all mention of charitable aid has been omitted; that in such a case as that of Wilkins, or of Mrs. Marshall, there would be aid from the philanthropic; that old clothes would do something to replenish the wardrobe, otherwise to be kept supplied by 1l.19s. a year; and that scraps and broken victuals find their way from most back-doors into the homes of the poor. But, though this may be true when the poor are scattered among the rich, it is not true of that neighbourhood which I know best, where through miles of streets the income of each resident does not exceed thirty shillings a week, and where the four-roomed houses (as a rule, let out to two or three families) are unrelieved by a single house inhabited by only one family, or where they ‘keeps a servant.’

The advocates of children’s penny dinners may take these facts as a strong argument in favour of their scheme, and feel that in this simple method is the solution of the difficulty. But those who so think cannot have considered the question in all its bearings. If feeding the children enables us to limit the power of disease, it does so by putting fresh weapons into the hands of the Greed of certain classes or individuals, which is so ill-curbed and ineffectively conquered as to be nothing loth to take advantage of every opportunity of working its cruel will.

If the children are fed at school it enables the mother to go out to work. The supply of female labour is thus increased, and married women can offer their work at lower wages than widows or single ones, because their labour is only supplementary to that of their husbands. The consequence is that wages go down, because more women are in the labour market than are needed, and those get the work who will take it for the least remuneration. Thus, though Mrs. Harris may get work, her children being ‘now fed by the ladies round at the school,’ she does so at the expense of lowering Jane Metcalf’s wages; and, as Jane is working to help her widowed mother to keep the four younger children off the parish, the only result is that Tommie and Lizzie and the two baby Metcalfs get worse food, and Jane finds life harder, and sometimes sees temptation through magnifying-glasses.

Besides these economic results which must inevitably follow the plan of feeding the children on any large scale, there are others which ensue from the lightening of parental responsibility, and these everyone who knows the poor can foresee without the gift of prophecy; the idle father is made more idle, the gossiping mother less controlled, and from the drunken parent is taken the last feeble bond which binds him to sobriety and its hopeful consequences. But perhaps as important as any of these results is the evil which follows the taking the children from the home influence. In our English love of home is one of our hopes for the future; and not the least conspicuous as a moral training-ground is the family dinner-table. There the mother can teach the little lessons of good manners and neat ways, and the larger truths of unselfishness and thoughtfulness. There the whole family can meet, and from the talks over meals, during the time which, as things now are, is perhaps the only leisure of the busy mechanic, may grow that sympathy between the older and younger people which must refresh and gladden both. No; it is not by any charitable effort that this poverty must be fought. A national want must be met by a national effort, and the thought of the political economist, which has hitherto been devoted to the question of production and accumulation of wealth, must now turn its attention to the problem of its right use and distribution, recognising that ‘the wise use of wealth in developing a complete human life is of incomparably the greater moment both to men and nations.’ While more than half the English people are unable to live their best life or reach their true standard of humanity, it is useless to congratulate ourselves on our national supremacy or class our nation as wealthy.

Some economists will reply that these sad conditions are but the result of our freedom; that the boasted ‘liberty’ in our land must result in the few strong making themselves stronger, and in the many weak suffering from their weakness. But is this necessarily so? Is this the only result to be expected from human beings having the power to act as they please? Are not love, goodwill, and social instincts as truly parts of human character as greed, selfishness, and sulkiness; and may we not believe that human nature is great enough to care to use its freedom for the good of all? Men have done noble things to obtain this freedom. They have loved her with the ardour of a lover’s love, with the patience of a silver wedded life; and now that they have her, is she only to be used to injure the weak, and to make life cruel and almost impossible to the large majority? ‘What is the right use of freedom?’ The ancient answer was, ‘To love God.’ And can we love God whom we have not seen when we love not our brother whom we have seen?