Ignorance is a curse: it is a deadlier curse than poverty. Indeed, but for ignorance, poverty and wealth could not continue to exist side by side; for only ignorance permits the rich to uphold and the poor to endure the injustices and the criminal follies of British society, as now to our shame and grief they environ us, like some loathly vision beheld with horror under nightmare.
Is it needful to tell you more, Mr. Smith, you who are yourself a worker? Have you not witnessed, perhaps suffered, many of these evils?
Yes; perhaps you yourself have smarted under "the insolence of office, and the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes"; perhaps you have borne the tortures of long suspense as one of the unemployed; perhaps on some weary tramp after work you have learned what it is to be a stranger in your own land; perhaps you have seen some old veteran worker, long known to you, now broken in health and stricken in years, compelled to seek the shameful shelter of a workhouse; perhaps you have had comrades of your own or other trades, who have been laid low by sickness, sickness caused by exposure or overstrain, and have died what coroners' juries call "natural deaths," or, in plain English, have been killed by overwork; perhaps you have known widows and little children, left behind by those unfortunate men, and can remember how much succour and compassion they received in this Christian country; perhaps as you think of the grim prophecy that one worker in four must die in a workhouse, you may yourself, despite your strength and your skill, glance anxiously towards the future, as a bold sailor glances towards a stormy horizon.
Well, Mr. Smith, will you look through a book of mine called Dismal England, and there read how men and women and children of your class are treated in the workhouse, in the workhouse school, in the police court, in the chain works, on the canals, in the chemical hells, and in the poor and gloomy districts known as slums? I would quote some passages from Dismal England now, but space forbids.
Or, maybe, you would prefer the evidence of men of wealth and eminence who are not Socialists. If so, please read the testimony given in the next section.
Section C: Reliable Evidence
The Salvation Army see a great deal of the poor. Here is the evidence of General Booth—
444 persons are reported by the police to have attempted to commit suicide in London last year, and probably as many more succeeded in doing so. 200 persons died from starvation in the same period. We have in this one city about 100,000 paupers, 30,000 prostitutes, 33,000 homeless adults, and 35,000 wandering children of the slums. There is a standing army of out-of-works numbering 80,000, which is often increased in special periods of commercial depression or trade disputes to 100,000. 12,000 criminals are always inside Her Majesty's prisons, and about 15,000 are outside. 70,000 charges for petty offences are dealt with by the London magistrates every year. The best authorities estimate that 10,000 new criminals are manufactured per annum. We have tens of thousands of dwellings known to be overcrowded, unsanitary, or dangerous.
Here is the evidence of a man of letters, Mr. Frederic Harrison—
To me, at least, it would be enough to condemn modern society as hardly an advance on slavery or serfdom, if the permanent condition of industry were to be that which we behold, that 90 per cent. of the actual producers of wealth have no home that they can call their own beyond the end of the week; have no bit of soil, or so much as a room that belongs to them; have nothing of value of any kind except as much old furniture as will go in a cart; have the precarious chance of weekly wages which barely suffice to keep them in health; are housed for the most part in places that no man thinks fit for his horse; are separated by so narrow a margin from destitution, that a month of bad trade, sickness, or unexpected loss brings them face to face with hunger and pauperism.... This is the normal state of the average workman in town or country.