[57] "Infantile Mortality," by Dr G. F. McCleary.
[58] "The Hygienics of Milk," "Edinburgh Medical Journal," 1898.
[59] In a speech delivered to the students of the Crystal Palace Company's School of Practical Engineering in 1905 the following advice was given. I quote from the newspaper report: "Students should cultivate the art of making friends through life. Wherever they were they should try to make good friends, for such friends were always useful when one wanted to obtain employment. Half the battle was won in applying for a situation if the applicant had a friend on the board."
Excellent! "Be artful, sweet youth, and let who will be clever."
CHAPTER XIX
THE AGED POOR
IN "Riches and Poverty," edition 1905, I passed at this point to the consideration of the cruellest phase of Poverty, the poverty of the aged. Since 1905 Mr Asquith has given us an Old Age Pension Act, and it is happily unnecessary to repeat in full the pleas which were advanced in these pages in 1905. It is well, however, again to record the known facts with regard to poverty in old age.
If we did not know our country, and had never encountered its poor in the flesh, in what condition could we expect to find the aged labourer in view of the terrible extent of the Error of Distribution? It is not alone that the majority of our people have the slenderest incomes. To narrow wages is in most cases added uncertainty of employment, the greatest enemy of thrift, while the period during which the average workman draws the full rate of wages recognized in his trade has ever been short, and tends with the increased strenuousness of modern industry to grow shorter.
There are about 2,100,000 persons aged 65 and upwards, in the United Kingdom, but these are not divided between rich and poor in the proportions shown in the frontispiece. We have to remember that the poor are slain by their poverty. In the "comfortable" and "rich" classes the span of life is much greater than in the case of the poor. It is impossible to say precisely how the 2,100,000 persons are divided in point of income, but probably, some 1,750,000 of them belong to the classes whose incomes are below the income tax exemption limit. As to a considerable proportion of them we have the clearest evidence of grinding poverty.
In 1890 Mr Thomas Burt, M.P., moved for a parliamentary return showing the number of paupers of 60 years of age and upwards, distinguishing indoor from outdoor relief. It appears from this return that the total number of paupers over 60 years of age in receipt of relief on August 1st, 1890 (excluding lunatics in asylums, vagrants and persons who were only in receipt of relief constructively by reason of relief being given to wives or children), was 286,867.