he latter may be
of higher importance; so with the progress of a class. We cannot go to
the lowest of our slum population and teach them to be clean, thrifty,
industrious, steady, moral, intellectual, and religious, until we have
first taught them how to secure for themselves the industrial conditions
of healthy physical life. Our poorest classes have neither the time, the
energy, or the desire to be clean, thrifty, intellectual, moral, or
religious. In our haste we forget that there is a proper and necessary
order in the awakening of desires. At present our "slum" population do
not desire to be moral and intellectual, or even to be particularly
clean. Therefore these higher goods must wait, so far as they are
dependent on the voluntary action of the poor. What these people do want
is better food, and more of it; warmer clothes; better and surer
shelter; and greater security of permanent employment on decent wages.
Until we can assist them to gratify these "lower" desires, we shall try
in vain to awaken "higher" ones. We must prepare the soil of a healthy
physical existence before we can hope to sow the moral seed so as to
bring forth fruit. Upon a sound physical foundation alone can we build a
high moral and spiritual civilization.

Moral and sanitary reformers have their proper sphere of action among
those portions of the working classes who have climbed the first rounds
in the ladder of civilization, and stand on tolerably firm conditions of
material comfort and security. They cannot hope at present to achieve
any great success among the poorest workers. The fact must not be
shirked that in preaching thrift, hygiene, morality, and religion to the
dwellers in the courts and alleys of our great cities, we are sowing
seed upon a barren ground. Certain isolated cases of success must not
blind us to this truth. Take, for example, thrift. It is not possible to
expect that large class of workers who depend upon irregular earnings of
less than 18s. a week to set by anything for a rainy day. The essence of
thrift is regularity, and regularity is to them impossible. Even
supposing their scant wage was regular, it is questionable whether they
would be justified in stinting the bodily necessities of their families
by setting aside a portion which could not in the long run suffice to
provide even a bare maintenance for old age or disablement. To say this
is not to impugn the value of thrift in maintaining a character of
dignity a