he "upper" classes are no more excusable than the "lower." They
waste their means on keeping up appearances, and in feeding folly,
dissipation, and vice.

No one can reproach the English workman with want of industry. He works
harder and more skilfully than the workman of any other country; and he
might be more comfortable and independent in his circumstances, were he
as prudent as he is laborious. But improvidence is unhappily the defect
of the class. Even the best-paid English workmen, though earning more
money than the average of professional men, still for the most part
belong to the poorer classes because of their thoughtlessness. In
prosperous times they are not accustomed to make provision for adverse
times; and when a period of social pressure occurs, they are rarely
found more than a few weeks ahead of positive want.

Hence, the skilled workman, unless trained in good habits, may exhibit
no higher a life than that of the mere animal; and the earning of
increased wages will only furnish him with increased means for indulging
in the gratification of his grosser appetites. Mr. Chadwick says, that
during the Cotton Famine, "families trooped into the relief rooms in the
most abject condition, whose previous aggregate wages exceeded the
income of many curates,--as had the wages of many of the individual
workmen."[1] In a time of prosperity, working-people feast, and in a
time of adversity they "clem." Their earnings, to use their own phrase,
"come in at the spigot and go out at the bunghole." When prosperity
comes to an end, and they are paid off, they rely upon chance and
providence--the providence of the Improvident!

[Footnote 1: _Address on Economy and Trade._ By EDWIN CHADWICK, C.B., p.
22.]

Though trade has invariably its cycles of good and bad years, like the
lean and fat kine in Pharaoh's dream--its bursts of prosperity, followed
by glut, panic, and distress--the thoughtless and spendthrift take no
heed of experience, and make no better provision for the future.
Improvidence seems to be one of the most incorrigible of faults. "There
are whole neighbourhoods in the manufacturing districts," says Mr. Baker
in a recent Report, "where not only are there no savings worth
mentioning, but where, within a fortnight of being out of work, the
workers themselves are starving for want of the merest necessaries." Not
a strike takes place, but immediately the workmen are plunged in
destitution; their furniture and wat