n
a fashion of their own. Reasoning does not avail against hunger and
privation. I am forced to own that, for my part, the awful problem of
poverty seems insoluble by any logical agent; but the man of the mob
does not now care for logic than ever he did before, and he has
advisers who state to him the problems of life and society with
passionate rhetoric which eludes reason.

The whole world hangs together, and Chicago may be called a mere
suburb of London. English people did not understand the true history
of the genesis of poverty until the developments of society in America
showed us with terrific rapidity the historical development of our own
poverty. The fearful state of things in American cities was brought
about in a very few years, whereas the gradual extension of our
poverty-stricken classes has been going on for centuries. To us
poverty, besides being a horror, was more or less of a mystery; but
America exhibited the development of the gruesome monster with lurid
distinctness. In the old countries the men who first were able to
seize the land gradually sublet portions either for money or warlike
service; the growth of manufactures occupied a thousand years before
it reached its present extent; and with the rising of manufacturing
centres came enormous new populations which were finally obliged to
barter their labour for next to nothing--and thus we have the
appalling and desolating spectacle of our slums. All that took place
in America with the swiftness of a series of stage-scenes; so that men
now living have watched the inception and growth of all the most
harrowing forms of poverty and the vices arising from poverty. And now
the cry is, "Go back to the Land--the Land for the Nation!" Matters
have reached a strange pass when such a political watchword should be
chosen by thousands in grave and stolid England, and we shall be
obliged to compromise in the end with those by whom the cry is raised.
I believe that a compromise may be arranged in time, but the leaders
of the poor will have to teach their followers wisdom, self-restraint,
and even a little unselfishness, impossible as the teaching of that
last may seem to be. We have begun a great labour war, in which
battles are being lost and won by opposing sides around us every day.
The fighting was very terrible at the beginning; but we shall be
forced at last to adopt a system of truces, and then the question "Are
we wealthy?" may find its answer. At this mo