about 25 per cent of the total
have been afflicted with sickness or acute domestic troubles. Or
perhaps they are 'knocked out' by shock, such as is brought on by the
loss of a dearly-loved wife or child, and have never been able to
recover from that crushing blow. The remainder are the victims of
advancing age and of the cruel commercial competition of our day. Thus
he said that the large business firms destroy and devour the small
shopkeepers, as a hawk devours sparrows; and these little people or
their employes, if they are past middle age, can find no other work.
Especially is this the case since the Employers' Liability Acts came
into operation, for now few will take on hands who are not young and
very strong, as older folk must naturally be more liable to sickness
and accident.

Again, he told me that it has become the custom in large businesses of
which the dividends are falling, to put in a man called an
'Organizer,' who is often an American.

This Organizer goes through the whole staff and mercilessly dismisses
the elderly or the least efficient, dividing up their work among those
who remain. So these discarded men fall to rise no more and drift to
the poorhouse or the Shelters or the jails, and finally into the river
or a pauper's grave. First, however, many spend what may be called a
period of probation on the streets, where they sleep at night under
arches or on stairways, or on the inhospitable flagstones and benches
of the Embankment, even in winter.

The Staff-Captain informed me that on one night during the previous
November he counted no less than 120 men, women, and children sleeping
in the wet on or in the neighbourhood of the Embankment. Think of
it--in this one place! Think of it, you whose women and children, to
say nothing of yourselves, do not sleep on the Embankment in the wet
in November. It may be answered that they might have gone to the
casual ward, where there are generally vacancies. I suppose that they
might, but so perverse are many of them that they do not. Indeed,
often they declare bluntly that they would rather go to prison than to
the casual ward, as in prison they are more kindly treated.

The reader may have noted as he drove along the Embankment or other
London thoroughfares at night in winter, long queues of people waiting
their turn to get something. What they are waiting for is a cup of
soup and, perhaps, an opportunity of sheltering till the dawn, which
soup and shelter a