ted was there any settlement
made by the employers, and from a list that is of immense interest I
take just a few cases as showing how little the life of the average
workingman is valued at:

_Nature of Injury._ _Settlement_

Spine injured $ 20 and doctor
Legs broken 300
Death 100
Death 65
Two ribs broken 20
Paralysis 12
Brain affected 60
Fingers amputated 50

The reports showed that about half of the accidents occurred to men
under forty years of age, in the very prime of life. The wages were
determined in 241 cases and it was shown that about 25 per cent. were
earning less than $10 a week and 60 per cent. were earning less than
$15 a week. Even without the accidents occurring to them these workers
and their families must be miserably poor, the accidents only plunging
them deeper into the frightful abyss of despair, of wasting life and
torturous struggle.

No, my friend, it is not true that the poverty of the poor is due to
their sins, thriftlessness and intemperance. I want you to remember
that it is not the wicked Socialist agitators only who say this. I
could fill a book for you with the conclusions of very conservative
men, all of them opposed to Socialism, whose studies have forced them
to this conclusion.

There was a Royal Commission appointed in England some years ago to
consider the problem of the Aged Poor and how to deal with it. Of that
Royal Commission Lord Aberdare was chairman--and he was a most
implacable enemy of Socialism. The Commission reported in 1895: "We
are confirmed in our view by the evidence we have received that ... as
regards the great bulk of the working classes, during their lives,
they are fairly provident, fairly thrifty, fairly industrious and
fairly temperate." But they could not add that, as a result of these
virtues, they were also fairly well-to-do! The Right Honorable Joseph
Chamberlain, another enemy of Socialism, signed with several others a
Minority Report, but they agreed "that the imputation that old age
pauperism is mainly due to drink, idleness, improvidence, and the like
abuses applies to but a very small proportion of the working
population."

Very similar was the report of a Select Committee of the House of
Commons, appointed to consider the best means o