in the pursuit of food and shelter.

The figures are appalling: 1,800,000 people in London live on the poverty
line and below it, and 1,000,000 live with one week's wages between them
and pauperism. In all England and Wales, eighteen per cent. of the whole
population are driven to the parish for relief, and in London, according
to the statistics of the London County Council, twenty-one per cent. of
the whole population are driven to the parish for relief. Between being
driven to the parish for relief and being an out-and-out pauper there is
a great difference, yet London supports 123,000 paupers, quite a city of
folk in themselves. One in every four in London dies on public charity,
while 939 out of every 1000 in the United Kingdom die in poverty;
8,000,000 simply struggle on the ragged edge of starvation, and
20,000,000 more are not comfortable in the simple and clean sense of the
word.

It is interesting to go more into detail concerning the London people who
die on charity.

In 1886, and up to 1893, the percentage of pauperism to population was
less in London than in all England; but since 1893, and for every
succeeding year, the percentage of pauperism to population has been
greater in London than in all England. Yet, from the Registrar-General's
Report for 1886, the following figures are taken:-

Out of 81,951 deaths in London (1884):-

In workhouses 9,909
In hospitals 6,559
In lunatic asylums 278
Total in public refuges 16,746

Commenting on these figures, a Fabian writer says: "Considering that
comparatively few of these are children, it is probable that one in every
three London adults will be driven into one of these refuges to die, and
the proportion in the case of the manual labour class must of course be
still larger."

These figures serve somewhat to indicate the proximity of the average
worker to pauperism. Various things make pauperism. An advertisement,
for instance, such as this, appearing in yesterday morning's paper:-

"Clerk wanted, with knowledge of shorthand, typewriting, and invoicing:
wages ten shillings ($2.50) a week. Apply by letter," &c.

And in to-day's paper I read of a clerk, thirty-five years of age and an
inmate of a London workhouse, brought before a magistrate for
non-performance of task. He claimed that he had done his various tasks
since he had been an inmate; but when the master set him to breaking
stones, his hands blistered, and h