§ 1.The National Income, and the Share of the Wage-earners.--To give
a clear meaning and a measure of poverty is the first requisite. Who are
the poor? The "poor law," on the one hand, assigns a meaning too narrow
for our purpose, confining the application of the name to "the destitute,"
who alone are recognized as fit subjects of legal relief. The common
speech of the comfortable classes, on the other hand, not infrequently
includes the whole of the wage-earning class under the title of "the
poor." As it is our purpose to deal with the pressure of poverty as a
painful social disease, it is evident that the latter meaning is unduly
wide. The "poor," whose condition is forcing "the social problem" upon the
reluctant minds of the "educated" classes, include only the lower strata
of the vast wage-earning class.
But since dependence upon wages for the support of life will be found
closely related to the question of poverty, it is convenient to throw some
preliminary light on the measure of poverty, by figures bearing on the
general industrial condition of the wage-earning class. To measure poverty
we must first measure wealth. What is the national income, and how is it
divided? will naturally arise as the first questions. Now although the
data for accurate measurement of the national income are somewhat slender,
there is no very wide discrepancy in the results reached by the most
skilful statisticians. For practical purposes we may regard the sum of
£1,800,000,000 as fairly representing the national income. But when we put
the further question, "How is this income divided among the various
classes of the community?" we have to face wider discrepancies of
judgment. The difficulties which beset a fair calculation of interest and
profits, have introduced unconsciously a partisan element into the
discussion. Certain authorities, evidently swayed by a desire to make the
best of the present condition of the working-classes, have reached a low
estimate of interest and profits, and a high estimate of wages; while
others, actuated by a desire to emphasize the power of the capitalist
classes, have minimized the share which goes as wages. At the outset of
our inquiry, it might seem well to avoid such debatable ground. But the
importance of the subject will not permit it to be thus shirked. The
following calculation presents what is, in fact, a compromise of various
views, and can only claim to be a rough approximation to the truth.
Taking the four ordinary divisions: Rent, as payment for the use of land,
for agriculture, housing, mines, etc.; Interest for the use of business
capital; Profit as wages of management and superintendence; and Wages, the
weekly earnings of the working-classes, we find that the national income
can be thus fairly apportioned--
| Rent | £200,000,000. |
| Interest | £450,000,000. |
| Profits | £450,000,000. |
| Wages | £650,000,000.[1] |
| Total | £1750,000,000. |
Professor Leone Levi reckoned the number of working-class families as
5,600,000, and their total income £470,000,000 in the year 1884.[2] If we
now divide the larger money, minus £650,000,000, among a number of
families proportionate to the increase of the population, viz. 6,900,000,
we shall find that the average yearly income of a working-class family
comes to about £94, or a weekly earnings of about 36s. This figure is of
necessity a speculative one, and is probably in excess of the actual
average income of a working family.
This, then, we may regard as the first halting-place in our inquiry. But
in looking at the average money income of a wage-earning family, there are
several further considerations which vitally affect the measurement of the
pressure of poverty.
First, there is the fact, that out of an estimated population of some
42,000,000, only 12,000,000, or about three out of every ten persons in
the richest country of Europe, belong to a class which is able to live in
decent comfort, free from the pressing cares of a close economy. The other
seven are of necessity confined to a standard of life little, if at all,
above the line of bare necessaries.
Secondly, the careful figures collected by these statisticians show that
the national income equally divided throughout the community would yield
an average income, per family, of about £182 per annum. A comparison of
this sum with the average working-class income of £94, brings home the
extent of inequality in the distribution of the national income. While it
indicates that any approximation towards equality of incomes would not
bring affluence, at anyrate on the present scale of national productivity,
it serves also to refute the frequent assertions that poverty is
unavoidable because Great Britain is not rich enough to furnish a
comfortable livelihood for everyone.
§ 2. Gradations of Working-class Incomes.--But though it is true that
an income of 36s. a week for an ordinary family leaves but a small margin
for "superfluities," it will be evident that if every family possessed
this sum, we should have little of the worst evils of poverty. If we would
understand the extent of the disease, we must seek it in the inequality of
incomes among the labouring classes themselves. No family need be reduced
to suffering on 36s. a week. But unfortunately the differences of income
among the working-classes are proportionately nearly as great as among the
well-to-do classes. It is not merely the difference between the wages of
skilled and unskilled labour; the 50s. per week of the high-class
engineer, or typographer, and the 1s. 2d. per diem of the sandwich-man, or
the difference between the wages of men and women workers. There is a more
important cause of difference than these. When the average income of a
working family is named, it must not be supposed that this represents the
wage of the father of the family alone. Each family contains about 21/4
workers on an average. This is a fact, the significance of which is
obvious. In some families, the father and mother, and one or two of the
children, will be contributors to the weekly income; in other cases, the
burden of maintaining a large family may be thrown entirely on the
shoulders of a single worker, perhaps the widowed mother. If we reckon
that the average wage of a working man is about 24s., that of a working
woman 15s., we realize the strain which the loss of the male bread-winner
throws on the survivor.
In looking at the gradations of income among the working-classes, it must
be borne in mind that as you go lower down in the standard of living, each
drop in money income represents a far more than proportionate increase of
the pressure of poverty. Halve the income of a rich man, you oblige him to
retrench; he must give up his yacht, his carriage, or other luxuries; but
such retrenchment, though it may wound his pride, will not cause him great
personal discomfort. But halve the income of a well-paid mechanic, and you
reduce him and his family at once to the verge of starvation. A drop from
25s. to 12s. 6d. a week involves a vastly greater sacrifice than a drop
from £500 to £250 a year. A working-class family, however comfortably it
may live with a full contingent of regular workers, is almost always
liable, by sickness, death, or loss of employment, to be reduced in a few
weeks to a position of penury.
§ 3. Measurement of East London Poverty.--This brief account of the
inequality of incomes has brought us by successive steps down to the real
object of our inquiry, the amount and the intensity of poverty. For it is
not inequality of income, but actual suffering, which moves the heart of
humanity. What do we know of the numbers and the life of those who lie
below the average, and form the lower orders of the working-classes?
Some years ago the civilized world was startled by the Bitter Cry of
Outcast London, and much trouble has been taken of late to gauge the
poverty of London. A host of active missionaries are now at work, engaged
in religious, moral, and sanitary teaching, in charitable relief, or in
industrial organization. But perhaps the most valuable work has been that
which has had no such directly practical object in view, but has engaged
itself in the collection of trustworthy information. Mr Charles Booth's
book, The Labour and Life of the People, has an importance far in
advance of that considerable attention which it has received. Its
essential value is not merely that it supplies, for the first time, a
large and carefully collected fund of facts for the formation of sound
opinions and the explosion of fallacies, but that it lays down lines of a
new branch of social study, in the pursuit of which the most delicate
intellectual interests will be identified with a close and absorbing
devotion to the practical issues of life.
In the study of poverty, the work of Mr. Booth and his collaborators may
truly rank as an epoch-making work.
For the purpose we have immediately before us, the measurement of poverty,
the figures supplied in this book are invaluable. Considerations of space
will compel us to confine our attention to such figures as will serve to
mark the extent and meaning of city poverty in London. But though, as will
be seen, the industrial causes of London poverty are in some respects
peculiar, there is every reason to believe that the extent and nature of
poverty does not widely differ in all large centres of population.
The area which Mr. Booth places under microscopic observation covers
Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, St. George's in the East, Stepney,
Mile End, Old Town, Poplar, Hackney, and comprises a population 891,539.
Of these no less than 316,000, or 35 per cent, belong to families whose
weekly earnings amount to less than 21s. This 35 per cent, compose the
"poor," according to the estimate of Mr. Booth, and it will be worth while
to note the social elements which constitute this class. The "poor" are
divided into four classes or strata, marked A, B, C, D. At the bottom
comes A, a body of some 11,000, or 11/4 per cent, of hopeless, helpless city
savages, who can only be said by courtesy to belong to the
"working-classes" "Their life is the life of savages, with vicissitudes of
extreme hardship and occasional excess. Their food is of the coarsest
description, and their only luxury is drink. It is not easy to say how
they live; the living is picked up, and what is got is frequently shared;
when they cannot find 3d. for their night's lodging, unless favourably
known to the deputy, they are turned out at night into the street, to
return to the common kitchen in the morning. From these come the battered
figures who slouch through the streets, and play the beggar or the bully,
or help to foul the record of the unemployed; these are the worst class of
corner-men, who hang round the doors of public-houses, the young men who
spring forward on any chance to earn a copper, the ready materials for
disorder when occasion serves. They render no useful service; they create
no wealth; more often they destroy it."[3]
Next comes B, a thicker stratum of some 100,000, or 11½ per cent., largely
composed of shiftless, broken-down men, widows, deserted women, and their
families, dependent upon casual earnings, less than 18s. per week, and
most of them incapable of regular, effective work. Most of the social
wreckage of city life is deposited in this stratum, which presents the
problem of poverty in its most perplexed and darkest form. For this class
hangs as a burden on the shoulders of the more capable classes which stand
just above it. Mr. Booth writes of it--
"It may not be too much to say that if the whole of class B were swept out
of existence, all the work they do could be done, together with their own
work, by the men, women, and children of classes C and D; that all they
earn and spend might be earned, and could very easily be spent, by the
classes above them; that these classes, and especially class C, would be
immensely better off, while no class, nor any industry, would suffer in
the least." Class C consists of 75,000, or 8 per cent., subsisting on
intermittent earnings of from 18s. to 21s. for a moderate-sized family.
Low-skilled labourers, poorer artizans, street-sellers, small shopkeepers,
largely constitute this class, the curse of whose life is not so much low
wages as irregularity of employment, and the moral and physical
degradation caused thereby. Above these, forming the top stratum of
"poor," comes a large class, numbering 129,000, or 14½ per cent.,
dependent upon small regular earnings of from 18s. to 21s., including many
dock-and water-side labourers, factory and warehouse hands, car-men,
messengers, porters, &c. "What they have comes in regularly, and except in
times of sickness in the family, actual want rarely presses, unless the
wife drinks."
"As a general rule these men have a hard struggle, but they are, as a
body, decent, steady men, paying their way and bringing up their children
respectably" (p. 50).
Mr Booth, in confining the title "poor" to this 35 per cent. of the
population of East London, takes, perhaps for sufficient reasons, a
somewhat narrow interpretation of the term. For in the same district no
less than 377,000, or over 42 per cent. of the inhabitants, live upon
earnings varying from 21s. to 30s. per week. So long as the father is in
regular work, and his family is not too large, a fair amount of material
comfort may doubtless be secured by those who approach the maximum. But
such an income leaves little margin for saving, and innumerable forms of
mishaps will bring such families down beneath the line of poverty. Though
the East End contains more poverty than some other parts of London the
difference is less than commonly supposed. Mr Booth estimated that of the
total population of the metropolis 30.7 per cent. were living in poverty.
The figure for York is placed by Mr Seebohm Rowntree[4] at the slightly
lower figure of 27.84. These figures (in both cases exclusive of the
population of the workhouses and other public or private institutions) may
be taken as fairly representative of life in English industrial cities. A
recent investigation of an ordinary agricultural village in
Bedfordshire[5] discloses a larger amount of poverty--no less than 34.3
per cent. of the population falling below the income necessary for
physical efficiency.
§ 4. Prices for the Poor.--These figures relating to money income do
not bring home to us the evil of poverty. It is not enough to know what
the weekly earnings of a poor family are, we must inquire what they can
buy with them. Among the city poor, the evil of low wages is intensified
by high prices. In general, the poorer the family the higher the prices it
must pay for the necessaries of life. Rent is naturally the first item in
the poor man's budget. Here it is evident that the poor pay in proportion
to their poverty. The average rent in many large districts of East London
is 4s. for one room, 7s. for two. In the crowded parts of Central London
the figures stand still higher; 6s. is said to be a moderate price for a
single room.[6] Mr. Marchant Williams, an Inspector of Schools for the
London School Board, finds that 86 per cent. of the dwellers in certain
poor districts of London pay more than one-fifth of their income in rent;
46 per cent. paying from one-half to one-quarter; 42 per cent. paying from
one-quarter to one-fifth; and only 12 per cent. paying less than one-fifth
of their weekly wage.[7] The poor from their circumstances cannot pay
wholesale prices for their shelter, but must buy at high retail prices by
the week; they are forced to live near their work (workmen's trains are
for the aristocracy of labour), and thus compete keenly for rooms in the
centres of industry; more important still, the value of central ground for
factories, shops, and ware-houses raises to famine price the habitable
premises. It is notorious that overcrowded, insanitary "slum" property is
the most paying form of house property to its owners. The part played by
rent in the problems of poverty can scarcely be over-estimated. Attempts
to mitigate the evil by erecting model dwellings have scarcely touched the
lower classes of wage-earners. The labourer prefers a room in a small
house to an intrinsically better accommodation in a barrack-like building.
Other than pecuniary motives enter in. The "touchiness of the lower class"
causes them to be offended by the very sanitary regulations designed for
their benefit.
But "shelter" is not the only thing for which the poor pay high.
Astounding facts are adduced as to the prices paid by the poor for common
articles of consumption, especially for vegetables, dairy produce,
groceries, and coal. The price of fresh vegetables, such as carrots,
parsnips, &c., in East London is not infrequently ten times the price at
which the same articles can be purchased wholesale from the growers.[8]
Hence arises the popular cry against the wicked middleman who stands
between producer and consumer, and takes the bulk of the profit. There is
much want of thought shown in this railing against the iniquities of the
middleman. It is true that a large portion of the price paid by the poor
goes to the retail distributor, but we should remember that the labour of
distribution under present conditions and with existing machinery is very
great. We have no reason to believe that the small retailers who sell to
the poor die millionaires. The poor, partly of necessity, partly by habit,
make their purchases in minute quantities. A single family has been known
to make seventy-two distinct purchases of tea within seven weeks, and the
average purchases of a number of poor families for the same period
amounted to twenty-seven. Their groceries are bought largely by the ounce,
their meat or fish by the half-penn'orth, their coal by the cwt., or even
by the lb. Undoubtedly they pay for these morsels a price which, if duly
multiplied, represents a much higher sum than their wealthier neighbours
pay for a much better article. But the small shopkeeper has a high rent to
pay; he has a large number of competitors, so that the total of his
business is not great; the actual labour of dispensing many minute
portions is large; he is often himself a poor man, and must make a large
profit on a small turn-over in order to keep going; he is not infrequently
kept waiting for his money, for the amount of credit small shopkeepers
will give to regular customers is astonishing. For all these, and many
other reasons, it is easy to see that the poor man must pay high prices.
Even his luxuries, his beer and tobacco, he purchases at exorbitant rates.
It is sometimes held sufficient to reply that the poor are thoughtless and
extravagant. And no doubt this is so. But it must also be remembered that
the industrial conditions under which these people live, necessitate a
hand-to-mouth existence, and themselves furnish an education in
improvidence.
§ 5. Housing and Food Supply of the Poor.--Once more, out of a low
income the poor pay high prices for a bad article. The low physical
condition of the poorest city workers, the high rate of mortality,
especially among children, is due largely to the quality of the food,
drink, and shelter which they buy. On the quality of the rooms for which
they pay high rent it is unnecessary to dwell. Ill-constructed,
unrepaired, overcrowded, destitute of ventilation and of proper sanitary
arrangements, the mass of low class city tenements finds few apologists.
The Royal Commission on Housing of the Working Classes thus deals with the
question of overcrowding--
"The evils of overcrowding, especially in London, are still a public
scandal, and are becoming in certain localities a worse scandal than they
ever were. Among adults, overcrowding causes a vast amount of suffering
which could be calculated by no bills of mortality, however accurate. The
general deterioration in the health of the people is a worse feature of
overcrowding even than the encouragement by it of infectious disease. It
has the effect of reducing their stamina, and thus producing consumption
and diseases arising from general debility of the system whereby life is
shortened." "In Liverpool, nearly one-fifth of the squalid houses where
the poor live in the closest quarters are reported to be always infected,
that is to say, the seat of infectious diseases."
To apply the name of "home" to these dens is a sheer abuse of words. What
grateful memories of tender childhood, what healthy durable associations,
what sound habits of life can grow among these unwholesome and insecure
shelters?
The city poor are a wandering tribe. The lack of fixed local habitation is
an evil common to all classes of city dwellers. But among the lower
working-classes "flitting" is a chronic condition. The School Board
visitor's book showed that in a representative district of Bethnal Green,
out of 1204 families, no less than 530 had removed within a twelvemonth,
although such an account would not include the lowest and most "shifty"
class of all. Between November 1885 and July 1886 it was found that 20 per
cent. of the London electorate had changed residence. To what extent the
uncertain conditions of employment impose upon the poor this changing
habitation cannot be yet determined; but the absence of the educative
influence of a fixed abode is one of the most demoralizing influences in
the life of the poor. The reversion to a nomad condition is a retrograde
step in civilization the importance of which can hardly be exaggerated.
When we bear in mind that these houses are also the workshop of large
numbers of the poor, and know how the work done in the crowded, tainted
air of these dens brings as an inevitable portion of its wage, physical
feebleness, disease, and an early death, we recognize the paramount
importance of that aspect of the problem of poverty which is termed "The
Housing of the Poor."
So much for the quality of the shelter for which the poor pay high
prices. Turn to their food. In the poorest parts of London it is scarcely
possible for the poor to buy pure food. Unfortunately the prime
necessaries of life are the very things which lend themselves most easily
to successful adulteration. Bread, sugar, tea, oil are notorious subjects
of deception. Butter, in spite of the Margarine Act, it is believed, the
poor can seldom get. But the systematic poisoning of alcoholic liquors
permitted under a licensing System is the most flagrant example of the
evil. There is some evidence to show that the poorer class of workmen do
not consume a very large quantity of strong drink. But the vile character
of the liquor sold to them acts on an ill-fed, unwholesome body as a
poisonous irritant. We are told that "the East End dram-drinker has
developed a new taste; it is for fusil-oil. It has even been said that
ripe old whisky ten years old, drank in equal quantities, would probably
import a tone of sobriety to the densely-populated quarters of East
London."[9]
§ 6. Irregularity of work.--One more aspect of city poverty demands a
word. Low wages are responsible in large measure for the evils with which
we have dealt. In the life of the lower grades of labour there is a worse
thing than low wages--that is irregular employment. The causes of such
irregularity, partly inherent in the nature of the work, partly the
results of trade fluctuations, will appear later. In gauging poverty we
are only concerned with the fact. This irregularity of work is not in its
first aspect so much a deficiency of work, but rather a maladjustment
While on the one hand we see large classes of workers who are habitually
overworked, men and women, tailors or shirt-makers in Whitechapel, 'bus
men, shop-assistants, even railway-servants, toiling twelve, fourteen,
fifteen, or even in some cases eighteen hours a day, we see at the same
time and in the same place numbers of men and women seeking work and
finding none. Thus are linked together the twin maladies of over-work and
the unemployed. It is possible that among the comfortable classes there
are still to be found those who believe that the unemployed consist only
of the wilfully idle and worthless residuum parading a false grievance to
secure sympathy and pecuniary aid, and who hold that if a man really wants
to work he can always do so. This idle theory is contradicted by abundant
facts. The official figures published by the Board of Trade gives the
average percentage of unemployed in the Trade Unions of the skilled trades
as follows. To the general average we have appended for comparison the
average for the shipbuilding and boiler-making trades, so as to illustrate
the violence of the oscillations in a fluctuating trade:--
| General per cent. | Ship-building, etc. |
|---|
| 1884 | 7.15 | 20.8 |
| 1885 | 8.55 | 22.2 |
| 1886 | 9.55 | 21.6 |
| 1887 | 7.15 | 16.7 |
| 1888 | 4.15 | 7.3 |
| 1889 | 2.05 | 2.0 |
| 1890 | 2.10 | 3.4 |
| 1891 | 3.40 | 5.7 |
| 1892 | 6.20 | 10.9 |
| 1893 | 7.70 | 17.0 |
| 1894 | 7.70 | 16.2 |
| 1895 | 6.05 | 13.0 |
| 1896 | 3.50 | 9.5 |
| 1897 | 3.65 | 8.6 |
| 1898 | 3.15 | 4.7 |
| 1899 | 2.40 | 2.1 |
| 1900 | 2.85 | 2.3 |
| 1901 | 3.80 | 3.6 |
| 1902 | 4.60 | 8.3 |
| 1903 | 5.30 | 11.7 |
These figures make it quite evident that the permanent causes of irregular
employment, e.g., weather in the building and riverside trades, season in
the dressmaking and confectionery trades, and the other factors of leakage
and displacement which throw out of work from time to time numbers of
workers, are, taken in the aggregate, responsible only for a small
proportion of the unemployment in the staple trades of the country.
The significance of such figures as these can scarcely be over-estimated.
Although it might fairly be urged that the lowest dip in trade depression
truly represented the injury inflicted on the labouring-classes by trade
fluctuations, we will omit the year 1886, and take 1887 as a
representative period of ordinary trade depression. The figures quoted
above are supported by Trade Union statistics, which show that in that
year among the strongest Trade Unions in the country, consisting of the
picked men in each trade, no less than 71 in every 1000, or over 7 per
cent., were continuously out of work. That this was due to their inability
to get work, and not to their unwillingness to do it, is placed beyond
doubt by the fact that they were, during this period of enforced idleness,
supported by allowances paid by their comrades. Indeed, the fact that in
1890 the mass of unemployed was almost absorbed, disposes once for all of
the allegation that the unemployed in times of depression consist of
idlers who do not choose to work. Turning to the year 1887, there is every
reason to believe that where 7 per cent, are unemployed in the picked,
skilled industries of a country, where the normal supply of labour is
actually limited by Union regulations, the proportion in unskilled or less
organized industries is much larger. It is probable that 12 per cent, is
not an excessive figure to take as the representative of the average
proportion of unemployed. In the recent official returns of wages in
textile industries, it is admitted that 10 per cent, should be taken off
from the nominal wages for irregularity of employment. Moreover, it is
true (with certain exceptions) that the lower you go down in the ranks of
labour and of wages, the more irregular is the employment. To the pressure
of this evil among the very poor in East London notice has already been
drawn. We have seen how Mr. Booth finds one whole stratum of 100,000
people, who from an industrial point of view are worse than worthless. We
have no reason to conclude that East London is much worse in this respect
than other centres of population, and the irregularity of country
employment is increasing every year. Are we to conclude then that of the
thirteen millions composing the "working-classes" in this country, nearly
two millions are liable at any time to figure as waste or surplus labour?
It looks like it. We are told that the movements of modern industry
necessitate the existence of a considerable margin supply of labour. The
figures quoted above bear out this statement. But a knowledge of the cause
does not make the fact more tolerable. We are not at present concerned
with the requirements of the industrial machine, but with the quantity of
hopeless, helpless misery these requirements indicate. The fact that under
existing conditions the unemployed seem inevitable should afford the
strongest motive for a change in these conditions. Modern life has no more
tragical figure than the gaunt, hungry labourer wandering about the
crowded centres of industry and wealth, begging in vain for permission to
share in that industry, and to contribute to that wealth; asking in return
not the comforts and luxuries of civilized life, but the rough food and
shelter for himself and family, which would be practically secured to him
in the rudest form of savage society.
Occasionally one of these sensational stories breaks into the light of
day, through the public press, and shocks society at large, until it
relapses into the consoling thought that such cases are exceptional. But
those acquainted closely with the condition of our great cities know that
there are thousands of such silent tragedies being played around us. In
England the recorded deaths from starvation are vastly more numerous than
in any other country. In 1880 the number for England is given as 101. In
1902 the number for London alone is 34. This is, of course, no adequate
measure of the facts. For every recorded case there will be a hundred
unrecorded cases where starvation is the practical immediate cause of
death. The death-rate of children in the poorer districts of London is
found to be nearly three times that which obtains among the richer
neighbourhoods. Contemporary history has no darker page than that which
records not the death-rate of children, but the conditions of child-life
in our great cities. In setting down such facts and figures as may assist
readers to adequately realize the nature and extent of poverty, it has
seemed best to deal exclusively with the material aspects of poverty,
which admit of some exactitude of measurement. The ugly and degrading
surroundings of a life of poverty, the brutalizing influences of the
unceasing struggle for bare subsistence, the utter absence of reasonable
hope of improvement; in short, the whole subjective side of poverty is not
less terrible because it defies statistics.
§ 7. Figures and Facts of Pauperism.--Since destitution is the lowest
form of poverty, it is right to append to this statement of the facts of
poverty some account of pauperism. Although chiefly owing to a stricter
and wiser administration of the Poor Law in relation to outdoor relief,
the number of paupers has steadily and considerably decreased, both in
proportion to the population and absolutely, the number of those unable to
support themselves is still deplorably large. In 1881 no less than one in
ten of the total recorded deaths took place in workhouses, public
hospitals, and lunatic asylums. In London the proportion is much greater
and has increased during recent years. In 1901 out of 78,229 deaths in
London, 13,009 took place in workhouses, 10,643 in public hospitals, and
349 in public asylums, making a total of 24,001. Comparing these figures
with the total number of deaths, we find that in the richest city of the
world 32.5 per cent., or one in three of the inhabitants, dies dependent
on public charity. This estimate does not include those in receipt of
outdoor relief. Moreover, it is an estimate which includes all classes.
The proportion, taking the working-classes alone, must be even higher.
Turning from pauper deaths to pauper lives, the condition of the poor,
though improved, is far from satisfactory. The agricultural labourer in
many parts of England still looks to the poorhouse as a natural and
necessary asylum for old age. Even the diminution effected in outdoor
relief is not evidence of a corresponding decrease in the pressure of
want. The diminution is chiefly due to increased strictness in the
application of the Poor Law, a policy which in a few cases such as
Whitechapel, Stepney, St. George-in-the-East, has succeeded in the
practical extermination of the outdoor pauper. This is doubtless a wise
policy, but it supplies no evidence of decrease in poverty. It would be
possible by increased strictness of conditions to annihilate outdoor
pauperism throughout the country at a single blow, and to reduce the
number of indoor paupers by making workhouse life unendurable. But such a
course would obviously furnish no satisfactory evidence of the decline of
poverty, or even of destitution. Moreover, in regarding the decline of
pauperism, we must not forget to take into account the enormous recent
growth of charitable institutions and funds which now perform more
effectually and more humanely much of the relief work which formerly
devolved upon the Poor Law. The income of charitable London institutions
engaged in promoting the physical well-being of the people amounted in
1902-3 to about four and a half millions. The relief afforded by Friendly
Societies and Trade Unions to sick and out-of-work members, furnishes a
more satisfactory evidence of the growth of providence and independence
among all but the lowest classes of workers.
The improvement exhibited in figures of pauperism is entirely confined to
outdoor relief. The number of workers who, by reason of old age or other
infirmity, are compelled to take refuge in the poorhouses, bears a larger
proportion to the total population than it did a generation ago. In 1876-7
the mean number of indoor paupers for England and Wales was 130,337, or
5.4 per 1000 of the population; in 1902-3 the number had risen to 203,604,
or 6.2 per 1000 of the population. This rise of indoor pauperism has
indeed been coincident with a larger decline of outdoor pauperism through
this same period. But the growth of thrift in the working-classes, the
increase of the machinery of charity, the rise of the average of
wages--these causes have been wholly inoperative to check the growth of
indoor pauperism. Nor, if one may trust so competent an authority as Mr
Fowle, is this explained by any tendency of increased strictness in the
administration of outdoor relief, to drive would-be recipients of outdoor
relief into the workhouse.
The figures of London pauperism yield still more strange results. Here,
though the percentage of paupers to population has shown a steady decline,
the process has been so much slower than in the country that there has
been no actual fall in the number of paupers. Throughout the whole period
from 1861 to 1896 the numbers have remained about stationary, after which
they show a considerable rise. The alarming feature in this table is the
rapid rise of indoor pauperism, far more rapid than the growth of London's
population. From 1861-2 the number of indoor paupers has grown by steady
increase from 26,667 to 61,432 in 1902-3, or from a ratio of 9.5 to one of
13.4 per 1000. While the proportion of outdoor paupers per 1000 is little
more than half that of the country as a whole, the proportion of indoor
paupers is more than twice as great. Roughly speaking, London, with less
than one-sixth of the population of the country, contains nearly one-third
of the indoor pauperism. This fact alone throws some light upon the nature
of city life. A close analysis of metropolitan workhouses discloses the
fact that the aged, infirm, and children composed the vast majority of
inmates. A very small percentage was found to be capable of actual work.
About one-third of the paupers are children, about one-tenth lunatics,
about one-half are aged, infirm, or sick. This leaves one-fifteenth as the
proportion of able-bodied male and female adults. As a commentary on the
administration of the Poor Law, these figures are eminently satisfactory,
for they prove that people who can support themselves do not in fact
obtain from public relief. But the picture has its dark side. It shows
that a very large proportion of our workers, when their labour-power has
been drained out of them, instead of obtaining a well-earned honourable
rest, are obliged to seek refuge in that asylum which they and their class
hate and despise. Whereas only 5 per cent of the population under 60 years
are paupers, the proportion is 40 per cent in the case of those over 70.
Taking the working-class only out of a population of 952,000 above the age
of 65, no fewer than 402,000, or over 42 per cent, obtained relief in
1892. In London 22½ per cent of the aged poor are indoor paupers. The
hardness of the battle of life is attested by this number of old men, and
old women, who in spite of a hard-working life are compelled to end their
days as the recipients of public charity.
§ 8. The Diminution of Poverty in the last half century.--In order to
realize the true importance of our subject, it is necessary not only to
have some measurement of the extent and nature of poverty, but to furnish
ourselves with some answer to the question, Is this poverty increasing or
diminishing? Until a few years ago it was customary not only for platform
agitators, but for thoughtful writers on the subject, to assume that "the
rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer." This formula
was ripening into a popular creed when a number of statistical inquiries
choked it. Prof. Leone Levi, Mr. Giffen, and a number of careful
investigators, showed a vast improvement in the industrial condition of
the working-classes during the last half century. It was pointed out that
money wages had risen considerably in all kinds of employment; that prices
had generally fallen, so that the rise in real wages was even greater;
that they worked shorter hours; consumed more and better food; lived
longer lives; committed fewer crimes; and lastly, saved more money. The
general accuracy of these statements is beyond question. The industrial
conditions of the working-classes as a whole shows a great advance during
the last half century. Although the evidence upon this point is by no
means conclusive, it seems probable that the income of the wage-earning
classes as an aggregate is growing even more rapidly than that of the
capitalist classes. Income-tax returns indicate that the proportion of the
population living on an acknowledged income of more than £150 a year is
much larger than it was a generation ago. In 1851 the income-tax-paying
population amounted to 1,500,000; in 1879-80 the number had risen to
4,700,000. At the same time the average of these incomes showed a
considerable fall, for while in 1851 the gross income assessed was
£272,000,000, in 1879-80 it had only risen to £577,000,000.
Though the method of assessing companies as if they were single persons
renders it impossible to obtain accurate information in recent years as to
the number of persons enjoying incomes of various sizes, a comparison made
by Mr Mulhall of incomes in 1867 and 1895 indicates that, while the lower
middle-class is growing rapidly, the number of the rich is growing still
more rapidly. While incomes of £100 to £300 have grown by a little more
than 50 per cent., those from £300 to £1000 have nearly doubled, those
between £1000 and £5000 have more than doubled, and incomes over £5000
have more than trebled.
But though such comparisons justify the conclusion that the upper grades
of skilled labour have made considerable advances, and that the lower
grades of regular unskilled labourers have to a less degree shared in this
advance, they do not warrant the optimist conclusion often drawn from
them, that poverty is a disease which left alone will cure itself, and
which, in point of fact, is curing itself rapidly. Before we consent to
accept the evidence of improvement in the average condition of the
labouring classes during the last half century as sufficient evidence to
justify this opinion we ought to pay regard to the following
considerations--
1. It should be remembered that a comparison between England of the
present day with England in the decade 1830-1840 is eminently favourable
to a theory of progress. The period from 1790 to 1840 was the most
miserable epoch in the history of the English working-classes. Much of the
gain must be rightly regarded rather as a recovery from sickness, than as
a growth in normal health. If the decade 1730-1740, for example, were to
be taken instead, the progress of the wage-earner, especially in southern
England, would be by no means so obvious. The southern agricultural
labourer and the whole body of low-skilled workers were probably in most
respects as well off a century and a half ago as they are to-day.
2. The great fall of prices, due to cheapening of production and of
transport during the last twenty years, benefits the poor far less than
the rich. For, while the prices of most comforts and luxuries have fallen
very greatly, the same is not true of most necessaries. The gain to the
workers is chiefly confined to food prices, which have fallen some 40 per
cent since 1880. Taking the retail prices of foods consumed by London
working-class families we find that since 1880 the price of flour has
fallen about 60 per cent., bread falling a little more than half that
amount; the prices of beef and mutton have fallen nearly to the same
extent as flour, though bacon stands in 1903 just about where it stood in
1880. Sugar exhibits a deep drop until 1898, rising afterwards in
consequence of the war tax and the Sugar Convention; tea shows a not
considerable drop. Other groceries, such as coffee and cocoa, and certain
vegetables are cheaper. A careful inquiry into clothing shows a trifling
fall of price for articles of the same quality, while the introduction of
cheaper qualities has enabled workers to effect some saving here. Against
these must be set a slight rise in price of dairy produce, a considerable
rise in fuel, and a large rise in rent. A recent estimate of the Board of
Trade, having regard to food, rent, clothing, fuel, and lighting as chief
ingredients of working-class expenditure, indicates that 100 shillings
will in 1900 do the work for which 120 shillings were required in 1880.
The great fall of prices has been in the period 1880-1895, since then
prices all round (except in clothing) show a considerable rise.
In turning from the working-classes as a whole to the poor, it becomes
evident that the most substantial benefit they have received from falling
prices is cheap bread. Cheap groceries and lighting are also gains, though
it must be remembered that the modes of purchase to which the very poor
are driven to have recourse minimize these gains. On clothes the poor
spend a very small proportion of their incomes, the very poor virtually
nothing. In the case of the lowest classes of the towns, it is probable
that the rise in rents offsets all the advantages of cheapened prices for
other commodities.
The importance of the bearing of this fact is obvious. Even were it
clearly proved that the wages of the working-classes were increasing
faster in proportion than the incomes of the wealthier classes, it would
not be thereby shown that the standard of comfort in the former was rising
as fast as the standard of comfort in the latter. If we confine the term
"poor" to the lower grades of wage-earners, it would probably be correct
to say that the riches of the rich had increased at a more rapid rate than
that at which the poverty of the poor had diminished. Thus the width of
the gap between riches and poverty would be absolutely greater than
before. But, after all, such absolute measurements as these are uncertain,
and have little other than a rhetorical value. What is important to
recognize is this, that though the proportion of the very poor to the
whole population has somewhat diminished, never in the whole history of
England, excepting during the disastrous period at the beginning of this
century, has the absolute number of the very poor been so great as it is
now. Moreover, the massing of the poor in large centres of population,
producing larger areas of solid poverty, presents new dangers and new
difficulties in the application of remedial measures.
However we may estimate progress, one fact we must recognize, that the
bulk of our low-skilled workers do not yet possess a secure supply of the
necessaries of life. Few will feel inclined to dispute what Professor
Marshall says on this point--
"The necessaries for the efficiency of an ordinary agricultural or of an
unskilled town labourer and his family, in England, in this generation,
may be said to consist of a well-drained dwelling with several rooms, warm
clothing, with some changes of underclothing, pure water, a plentiful
supply of cereal food, with a moderate allowance of meat and milk, and a
little tea, &c.; some education, and some recreation; and lastly,
sufficient freedom for his wife from other work to enable her to perform
properly her maternal and her household duties. If in any district
unskilled labour is deprived of any of these things, its efficiency will
suffer in the same way as that of a horse which is not properly tended, or
a steam-engine which has an inadequate supply of coals."[10]
There is one final point of deep significance. So far we have endeavoured
to measure poverty by the application of a standard of actual material
comfort. But this, while furnishing a fair gauge of the deprivation
suffered by the poor, does not enable us to measure it as a social danger.
There is a depth of poverty, of misery, of ignorance, which is not
dangerous because it has no outlook, and is void of hope. Abate the
extreme stress of poverty, give the poor a glimpse of a more prosperous
life, teach them to know their power, and the danger of poverty increases.
This is what De Tocqueville meant when writing of France, before the
Revolution, he said, "According as prosperity began to dawn in France,
men's minds appeared to become more unquiet and disturbed; public
discontent was sharpened, hatred of all ancient institutions went on
increasing, till the nation was visibly on the verge of a revolution. One
might almost say that the French found their condition all the more
intolerable according as it became better."[11]
So in England the change of industrial conditions which has massed the
poor in great cities, the spread of knowledge by compulsory education,
cheap newspapers, libraries, and a thousand other vehicles of knowledge,
the possession and growing appreciation of political power, have made
poverty more self-conscious and the poor more discontented. By striving to
educate, intellectually, morally, sanitarily, the poor, we have made them
half-conscious of many needs they never recognized before. They were once
naked, and not ashamed, but we have taught them better. We have raised the
standard of the requirements of a decent human life, but we have not
increased to a corresponding degree their power to attain them. If by
poverty is meant the difference between felt wants and the power to
satisfy them, there is more poverty than ever. The income of the poor has
grown, but their desires and needs have grown more rapidly. Hence the
growth of a conscious class hatred, the "growing animosity of the poor
against the rich," which Mr. Barnett notes in the slums of Whitechapel.
The poor were once too stupid and too sodden for vigorous discontent, now
though their poverty may be less intense, it is more alive, and more
militant. The rate of improvement in the condition of the poor is not
quick enough to stem the current of popular discontent.
Nor is it the poor alone who are stricken with discontent. Clearer thought
and saner feelings are beginning to make it evident that in the march of
true civilization no one class can remain hopelessly behind. Hence the
problems of poverty are ever pressing more and more upon the
better-hearted, keener-sighted men and women of the more fortunate
classes; they feel that they have no right to be contented with the
condition of the poor. The demand that a life worth living shall be made
possible for all, and that the knowledge, wealth, and energy of a nation
shall be rightly devoted to no other end than this, is the true measure
of the moral growth of a civilized community. The following picture drawn
a few years ago by Mr. Frederick Harrison shows how far we yet fall short
of such a realization--"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 now behold; that
90 per cent, of the actual producers of wealth have no home that they can
call their own beyond the end of a 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 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."[12]