t by any means France, the city of London is England.
The frightful conditions which mark London an inferno likewise mark the
United Kingdom an inferno. The argument that the decentralisation of
London would ameliorate conditions is a vain thing and false. If the
6,000,000 people of London were separated into one hundred cities each
with a population of 60,000, misery would be decentralised but not
diminished. The sum of it would remain as large.

In this instance, Mr. B. S. Rowntree, by an exhaustive analysis, has
proved for the country town what Mr. Charles Booth has proved for the
metropolis, that fully one-fourth of the dwellers are condemned to a
poverty which destroys them physically and spiritually; that fully one-
fourth of the dwellers do not have enough to eat, are inadequately
clothed, sheltered, and warmed in a rigorous climate, and are doomed to a
moral degeneracy which puts them lower than the savage in cleanliness and
decency.

After listening to the wail of an old Irish peasant in Kerry, Robert
Blatchford asked him what he wanted. "The old man leaned upon his spade
and looked out across the black peat fields at the lowering skies. 'What
is it that I'm wantun?' he said; then in a deep plaintive tone he
continued, more to himself than to me, 'All our brave bhoys and dear
gurrls is away an' over the says, an' the agent has taken the pig off me,
an' the wet has spiled the praties, an' I'm an owld man, _an' I want the
Day av Judgment_.'"

The Day of Judgment! More than he want it. From all the land rises the
hunger wail, from Ghetto and countryside, from prison and casual ward,
from asylum and workhouse--the cry of the people who have not enough to
eat. Millions of people, men, women, children, little babes, the blind,
the deaf, the halt, the sick, vagabonds and toilers, prisoners and
paupers, the people of Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, who have not
enough to eat. And this, in face of the fact that five men can produce
bread for a thousand; that one workman can produce cotton cloth for 250
people, woollens for 300, and boots and shoes for 1000. It would seem
that 40,000,000 people are keeping a big house, and that they are keeping
it badly. The income is all right, but there is something criminally
wrong with the management. And who dares to say that it is not
criminally mismanaged, this big house, when five men can produce bread
for a thousand, and yet millions have not enough to eat?