nse of responsibility for the "well to do." It is decidedly the more
comfortable view, for it at once flatters the pride of the rich by
representing poverty as an evidence of incompetency, salves his
conscience when pricked by the contrast of the misery around him, and
assists him to secure his material interests by adopting an attitude of
stern repression towards large industrial or political agitations in the
interests of labour, on the ground that "these are wrong ways of
tackling the question."

Sec. 2. "Unemployment" and the Vices of the Poor.--The question is this,
Can the poor be moralized, and will that cure Poverty? To discuss this
question with the fullness it deserves is here impossible, but the
following considerations will furnish some data for an answer--

In the first place, it is very difficult to ascertain to what extent
drink, vice, idleness, and other personal defects are actually
responsible for poverty in individual cases. There is, however, reason
to believe that the bulk of cases of extreme poverty and destitution
cannot be traced to these personal vices, but, on the other hand, that
they are attributable to industrial causes for which the sufferer is not
responsible. The following is the result of a careful analysis of 4000
cases of "very poor" undertaken by Mr. Charles Booth. These are grouped
as follows according to the apparent causes of distress--

4 per cent, are "loafers."
14 " " are attributed to drink and thriftlessness.
27 " " are due to illness, large families, or other misfortunes.
55 " " are assigned to "questions of employment."

Here, in the lowest class of city poor, moral defects are the direct
cause of distress in only 18 per cent. of the cases, though doubtless
they may have acted as contributory or indirect causes in a larger
number.

In the classes just above the "very poor," 68 per cent. of poverty is
attributed to "questions of employment," and only 13 per cent. to drink
and thriftlessness. In the lowest parts of Whitechapel drink figures
very slightly, affecting only 4 per cent. of the very poor, and 1 per
cent. of the poor, according to Mr. Booth. Even applied to a higher
grade of labour, a close investigation of facts discloses a grossly
exaggerated notion of the sums spent in drink by city workers in receipt
of good wages. A careful inquiry into the expenditure of a body of three
hundred Amalgamated Engineers during a period of two years,