of such thrifty workers in any overcrowded industry will
permanently lower the wages of that industry. And the thrifty ones will
no longer be thrifty, for their income will have been reduced till it
balances their expenditure.

In short, thrift negates thrift. If every worker in England should heed
the preachers of thrift and cut expenditure in half, the condition of
there being more men to work than there is work to do would swiftly cut
wages in half. And then none of the workers of England would be thrifty,
for they would be living up to their diminished incomes. The
short-sighted thrift-preachers would naturally be astounded at the
outcome. The measure of their failure would be precisely the measure of
the success of their propaganda. And, anyway, it is sheer bosh and
nonsense to preach thrift to the 1,800,000 London workers who are divided
into families which have a total income of less than 21s. per week, one
quarter to one half of which must be paid for rent.

Concerning the futility of the people who try to help, I wish to make one
notable, noble exception, namely, the Dr. Barnardo Homes. Dr. Barnardo
is a child-catcher. First, he catches them when they are young, before
they are set, hardened, in the vicious social mould; and then he sends
them away to grow up and be formed in another and better social mould. Up
to date he has sent out of the country 13,340 boys, most of them to
Canada, and not one in fifty has failed. A splendid record, when it is
considered that these lads are waifs and strays, homeless and parentless,
jerked out from the very bottom of the Abyss, and forty-nine out of fifty
of them made into men.

Every twenty-four hours in the year Dr. Barnardo snatches nine waifs from
the streets; so the enormous field he has to work in may be comprehended.
The people who try to help have something to learn from him. He does not
play with palliatives. He traces social viciousness and misery to their
sources. He removes the progeny of the gutter-folk from their
pestilential environment, and gives them a healthy, wholesome environment
in which to be pressed and prodded and moulded into men.

When the people who try to help cease their playing and dabbling with day
nurseries and Japanese art exhibits and go back and learn their West End
and the sociology of Christ, they will be in better shape to buckle down
to the work they ought to be doing in the world. And if they do buckle
down to the wor