Christmas morning, and although snow was falling and the
atmosphere was terribly raw, his wife left the house in search
of a doctor. The nearest practitioner declined to leave the
house without being paid his fee; a second imposed the same
condition, and the woman then went to the police station. As
the horse ambulance was out, they could not help her, and she
tried other doctors. In all the poor woman called on eight,
and the only one who did not decline to get up without his fee
was down with influenza. Eventually a local chemist was
persuaded to see the man, and he ordered his removal to the
hospital."

That is the story. You note the charge of "inhumanity" in the very
first line, and in much subsequent press comment there was the same
note. Apparently every one expects a doctor to be ready at any point
in the day or night to attend anybody for nothing. Most Socialists are
disposed to agree with the spirit of that expectation. A practising
doctor should be in lifelong perpetual war against pain and disease,
just as a campaigning soldier is continually alert and serving. But
existing conditions will not permit that. Existing conditions require
the doctor to get his fee at any cost; if he goes about doing work for
nothing, they punish him with shabbiness and incapacitating need, they
forbid his marriage or doom his wife and children to poverty and
unhappiness. A doctor _must_ make money whatever else he does or does
not do; he _must_ secure his fees. He is a private adventurer,
competing in a crowded market for gain, and keeping his energies
perforce for those who can pay best for them. To expect him to behave
like a public servant whose income and outlook are secure, or like a
priest whose church will never let him want or starve, is ridiculous.
If you put him on a footing with the greengrocer and coal merchant,
you must expect him to behave like a tradesman. Why should the press
blame the poor doctor of a poor neighbourhood because a moneyless man
goes short of medical attendance, when it does not for one moment
blame Mr. J. D. Rockefeller because a poor man goes short of oil, or
the Duke of Devonshire because tramps need lodgings in Eastbourne? One
never reads this sort of paragraph:--

"A case of commercial inhumanity is reported from Birmingham.
A poor man named Tompkins was seriously hungry early on
Christmas morning, and although snow was falling and th