am Brassworkers in their pamphlet. "In their stead leading
doctors and specialists (with very few exceptions) are at the service
of the working man or woman."

"Yes," said a leading doctor to me when I quoted this; "we get about
three half-pence for a consultation, and we find them the most
impossible people in the community to satisfy. As they get medical
advice for nothing they run from one doctor to another, and consult a
dozen about some simple ailment that a student could set right. We all
suffer from them." So that is the other side of the question.

But Berlin certainly manages its Submerged Tenth both more humanely
and more wisely than we manage ours. It begins, as one thinks any
civilised country must, by separating those who will not work from
those who cannot. The able-bodied beggar, the drunkard, and other
vagrants are sent to a house of correction and made to work. The
respectable poor are not driven to herd with these people in Germany.
They receive shelter and assistance at institutions reserved for the
deserving. In one of these old married people who cannot support
themselves are allowed to spend the evening of their lives together.
Anyone desiring to know more about the charitable institutions of
Berlin will find a most interesting account of them in the pamphlet
written by the Birmingham Brassworkers, and published by P.S. King &
Son. The bias of the authors is so strongly German that when you have
read to the end you begin to lean in the opposite direction, and look
for the things we manage better over here. "In 1900," they say, "there
was such a shortage of houses (in Berlin) that 1500 families had to be
sheltered in the Municipal Refuge for Homeless People." That is surely
a worse state of affairs than in London. But when you walk through
London or a London suburb in winter, and are pestered at every
crossing and corner by able-bodied young beggars of both sexes, you
begin to agree with the brassworkers. Berlin is clear of beggars and
crossing-sweepers all the year round, and you know that as far as
possible they are classified and treated according to their deserts.
It is not possible for the individual bent on his own business to know
at a glance whether he will encourage vice by giving alms or behave
brutally to a deserving case by withholding them. The decision should
never be forced upon him as it is in England every day of his life.

CHAPTER XXVI

BERLIN

Once upon a time a Germ