Mr. Chiozza Money, in his “Riches and Poverty” approaching the subject from another side, justifies the conclusion. He shows that a population amounting to 39,000,000 persons is dependent on incomes of less than £160 a year—say 60s. a week, and absorbs £935,000,000 of the national income; that 4,100,000 persons depend on incomes between £160 and £700 per annum, and absorb £275,000,000 of the national income; and that the comparatively small number of 1,400,000 dependent on incomes over £700 a year absorb the mighty sum of £634,000,000. In other words, more than one-third of the entire income of the United Kingdom is enjoyed by one-thirtieth of its people.
In the light of these facts it is not incredible that 30 per cent of the population live in the grip of actual poverty. “The United Kingdom contains,” it may be said in truth and shame, “a great multitude of poor people veneered with a thin layer of the comfortable and rich.”[[2]]
The broad fact which stands out of these figures is that, when 21s. 8d. is taken as the sum necessary so that an average family may keep body and soul together, 12,000,000 people must give up in despair, and many other millions, depending on wages of 30s. or even 40s. a week, live anxious days. And this despair or anxiety is not on account of life, in all its multitudinous aspects, but only as to the maintenance of simple physical efficiency.
[2] These and other figures are put together very lucidly by Mr. Will Reason in a little shilling book, “Poverty” published by Headly Bros., which I commend to all as a good introduction to the subject.
Let us, says Mr. Rowntree, clearly understand what physical efficiency means. A family living upon the scale allowed for in this estimate must never spend a penny on railway fare or omnibus. They must never go into the country unless they walk. They must never purchase a halfpenny newspaper or buy a ticket for a popular concert. They must write no letters to absent children, for they cannot afford to pay the postage. They must never contribute anything to their church or chapel or give any help to a neighbour which costs them money. They cannot save nor can they join sick clubs or trade unions, because they cannot pay the necessary subscriptions. The children must have no pocket-money for dolls, marbles, and sweets. The father must smoke no tobacco and must drink no beer. The mother must never buy any pretty clothes for herself or for her children. Should a child fall ill, it must be attended by the parish doctor; should it die, it must be buried by the parish. Finally, the wage-earner must never be absent from his work for a single day.
A few parents of heroic mould may have succeeded in bringing up children to healthy and useful manhood and womanhood on small wages. Tales of such are repeated in select circles, but these families generally belong to a generation less open to temptation than the present. There are now few, very few, parents who, with an uncertain wage of 30s. a week, never spend a penny for the sake of pleasure, taste, or friendship. The result is that their own or their children’s physical health and well-being are sacrificed. The boys are rejected when they offer themselves as soldiers, the infant mortality is high, and the girls unprotected are more ready to become the victims of vice. The saddest of all experiences of life among the poor is the gradual declension of respectable families into the ranks of the destitute, when loss of work finds them without resources in body or skill.
It is the poverty of the great multitude of the working people and not the destitution of the very poor which is the force of the present discontent. This is not realized even by Mrs. George Kerr, whose book, “The Path of Social Progress,” seems to me one of the best of those lately published on the subject. She speaks of Dr. Chalmers as having advocated a policy “which still holds the field,” and is the “only scheme which actually did diminish poverty”. But this policy aimed at diminishing a poverty which was practically destitution, and its method was to strengthen the people in habits which would enable them to live independent lives on wages of 20s. a week. Mrs. Kerr herself talks of the importance of a wife averaging her husband’s wages, so that if her husband as a painter earns 36s. a week for four months the family expenditure ought to be limited within 18s. a week, and she evidently condemns as waste the purchase of a perambulator or bicycle. The methods she advocates by which character may be raised and strengthened are admirable, and the lead given by Dr. Chalmers cannot be too closely followed, but they have reference to destitution and not to the poverty from which working people suffer whose wages reach a more or less uncertain 30s. or 40s. a week.
Destitution, in the crusade against which philanthropists and Poor Law reformers are so well engaged, does not indeed affect the present discontent, except in so far as the presence of the destitute is a warning to the workman of his possible fate. A mechanic is, perhaps, earning 30s. a week, or even more; he, by great frugality on his own part, or by almost miraculous management on his wife’s part, just succeeds in keeping his family in health; he sees the destitute in their wretchedness, he hears of many who are herded in the prison-like workhouses, and he feels that if he loses his work, if illness overtakes him or his wife, their fate must be his fate. The destitute may be a burden to the nation, but they are also a danger, in so far as they by their examples rouse a dangerous mood in thousands of workpeople whose wages hardly lift them out of the reach of poverty, and give them no opportunity by saving to make the future secure.
The cure of destitution, necessary though it be on humane and economic grounds, is not the remedy for the present discontent. If all people incapable of earning a living were cared for under the best conditions, if by careful selection according to the straitest sect of the eugenists all the people engaged in work were fit for their work, if by better education and more scientific physical training every child were fully developed, or if by moral and religious impulse all citizens were to become frugal and self-restrained, there would still be the poverty which is the source of danger so long as the share of the national income which comes to the workers is so small. The greatest need of the greatest number is a larger income.
It is, I think, fair to say that on their present income the majority of our people can neither enjoy themselves rationally nor give an intelligent vote as joint governors of the nation. They have not the freedom which takes pride in self-government.