And one and all, they join in teaching a fundamental lie.They do not know it is a lie, but their ignorance does not make it more of a truth.And the lie they preach is 'thrift.' An instance will demonstrate it.In overcrowded London, the struggle for a chance to work is keen, and because of this struggle wages sink to the lowest means of subsistence.To be thrifty means for a worker to spend less than his income- in other words, to live on less.This is equivalent to a lowering of the standard of living.In the competition for a chance to work, the man with a lower standard of living will underbid the man with a higher standard.And a small group 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 $5.25 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 work, they will follow Dr.
Barnardo's lead, only on a scale as large as the nation is large.They won't cram yearnings for the Beautiful and True and Good down the throat of the woman making violets for three farthings a gross, but they will make somebody get off her back.and quit cramming himself till, like the Romans, he must go to a bath and sweat it out.And to their consternation, they will find that they will have to get off that woman's back themselves, as well as the backs of a few other women and children they did not dream they were riding upon.
