Extreme poverty a consequence of extreme wealth—Pity or contempt for the poor—Money ideal strong among the poor—The different phases in making a fortune—The general tendency of society—Relations between rich and poor—Dis-sympathy and class hatred—The social problem.

Frederick the Great’s father, on the occasion of great court festivities used to lead his wife from the brilliant scene of gaiety to an adjoining chamber, where he made her lie down for a few moments in her own coffin, so as to give her a sharp reminder of the vanity and transitory nature of all human pleasure. An even more effective reminder for those who in London spend their money on a life of pure self-indulgence would be afforded by a walk at midnight along the Embankment from Westminster to Waterloo Bridge. No prearranged stage management is necessary for the sight they are to see. It is a long run, every night and all night, and has gone on ever since the Embankment was constructed. As they pass along they can see the seats packed closely with men and women leaning against one another in an exhausted or half-drunken slumber. They can see the ragged and filthy bundles of humanity lying round the parapet at the foot of Cleopatra’s Needle, or the rows of wretched caricatures of men and women lined along the wall under the shelter of the bridges. If they go late enough, there is a strange silence which at first gives the impression that the place is deserted. But it only means that these waifs and strays, these wretched outcasts, are enjoying the few hours’ reprieve given even to them by the blessed oblivion of sleep. The moon shines on them from over the river, but no melodrama can reproduce that scene; estimates are drawn up of their number, but no statistics can give an adequate analysis; books are written on their condition, but no language can describe it. A man who sees this squalid throng for the first time must be deeply impressed, but it strikes even more anyone who sees it constantly, and he must be less than human if he can pass without a poignant pang of shame. But nine out of ten of those who do pass along will tell you these wretches only have themselves to blame, and it would be better if they could be stowed away somewhere out of sight.

This, which is only one of many similar scenes throughout the country, is not described by way of presenting a dramatic contrast, but as an integral part of the problem of riches. These nocturnal spectres of the Embankment and the knots of bedraggled starvelings at the workhouse gates are the counterpart of the millionaire, the necessary concomitant to balance and complete the picture. The shameful waste of money one end produces a shameful waste of human life the other end. One species of parasite on the social body breeds another species of parasite. They are as much a part of the train of a rich man as his butlers and gamekeepers. They are the natural, though perhaps to him invisible, consequence of his misapplied and squandered thousands. The rich must take their full share of the responsibility, because the wealth represented by growing incomes is being increasingly ill-directed and wasted, and the inevitable outcome is to aggravate the problem of unemployment, to extend still further miserable conditions of living, and to nurture a neglected class devoid of moral and physical stamina, who fall out as incompetents and wastrels in the great struggle for existence. There are some who complain of any relief from the State being given to the unemployed poor as only encouraging their continued existence; but the maintenance of the unemployed rich by those who are instrumental in producing the national wealth is a far graver question. The unemployed pauper is a deplorable, but in each case a solitary and isolated outgrowth of circumstances too strong for him to resist. Whereas the unemployed capitalist is, on account of his riches, the centrifugal point of a whole set of dynamic forces of the gravest consequence. They radiate from him, vibrate far and wide into the vital concerns of others, and continue to operate harmfully so long as he attempts to manipulate his riches single-handed. He constitutes, therefore, a social danger.

This is no place to give a picture of poverty. It has been done often enough of late years and with faithful accuracy, so that society has no excuse for ignoring the real state of affairs, though in their stampede after money they have little time to give it a passing thought. To reflect about it and speak of it is to display foolish pessimism; to describe scenes of poverty is to be guilty of sentimentality and bad taste.

And what are the prevailing sentiments of the fat parasites towards their lean colleagues? Either pity or contempt. Their whole faith and all their actions naturally breed contempt for poverty, although they make some effort to conceal it. It is quite in consonance with a belief that money makes people refined, generous, dignified, gracious, subjects of reverence and models for emulation, and that those who have no resources cannot aspire to these notable qualities. But their pity, which is the mainspring to their so-called charity and is reserved more especially for the destitute, is misplaced, and would be better applied to themselves if only they could see the true position they fill in the general design of human society.

“Epargnez aux pauvres votre pitiÉ,” says Anatole France, “ils n’en ont que faire. Pourquoi la pitiÉ et non pas la justice? Vous Êtes en compte avec eux. RÉglez le compte. Ce n’est pas une affaire de sentiment. C’est une affaire Économique. Si ce que vous leur donnez gracieusement est pour prolonger leur pauvretÉ et votre richesse, ce don est inique et les larmes que vous y mÊlerez ne le rendront pas Équitable.... Vous faites l’aumÔne pour ne pas restituer. Vous donnez un peu pour garder beaucoup et vous vous fÉlicitez. Ainsi le tyran de Samos jeta son anneau À la mer. Mais la NÉmÉsis des dieux ne reÇut point cette offrande. Un pÊcheur rapporta au tyran son anneau dans le ventre d’un poisson. Et Polycrate fut dÉpouillÉ de toutes ses richesses.”

Together with the pity there is a lurking misgiving that they do owe the poor something, so, in blind ignorance and in fear of the full amount of their debt being demanded of them, they pay out driblets either with ostentation and self-congratulation or else trying almost pathetically, yet in vain, to pump into their gifts some of the sentiments which they conceive should be associated with pure charity.

As for those whose incomes fall below the limit, the money ideal affects them just as strongly as it does the rich themselves. There is more excuse because there is a greater want of education; there is more excuse also because, knowing from their own experience that money can keep off starvation and prevent the physical suffering produced by want, and knowing also that more money means more comforts and a wider scope for activity, they fall naturally into the error of believing that every progressive increase in money brings a proportionate increase in happiness. The large mass whose incomes are the wrong side of the limit are all of them in want in various degrees, and their desire for more money is therefore legitimate and only to be expected. The want of it they know by experience means misery, the possession of it they conclude must mean happiness. But they are seldom, if ever, taught that they can frustrate their own ends by pinning their whole faith on purely material acquisition; on the contrary, the general opinion round them leads them to suppose that money should rightly be the sole aim and object of their ambitions. The education, if it can be called by that name, which they receive from the cheap press presents them with inviting pictures of wealth, ease, and luxury. They read of men who have amassed great fortunes, of incidents in the careers of millionaires, of charitable gifts bestowed by the munificent rich, of the positions, success, titles, and fame achieved by men through money. Their eye falls on alluring advertisements for expensive goods. They are encouraged to bet and gamble, and to enter absurd competitions made attractive by the figures of a large sum of money being printed in bold type at the head of the newspaper column. Their appetite is whetted, their wants increase, they resolve to try and make more money by the swiftest means possible. Any ideal of service and any noble ambitions for achievement fade away, and are discarded as too laborious and difficult and as requiring too much effort and toil. If they have actually suffered in the lowest depths, if they have ever felt the sharp pinch of starvation, the more readily do they accept the doctrine preached to them so loudly and so persistently that to become rich is not only the highest, but the most practical and sensible ambition for a man to set himself.

Tantalising rewards lead a man on to hurry blindly along a path beset with traps and snares. On the various stages of his journey he loses some of the finer qualities with which he may have been originally endowed, but which he finds impediments and encumbrances in his progress towards the inviting but illusive goal. Here he drops caution, there self-respect, here consideration for others must be sacrificed; there, again, scrupulousness and even honesty must be cast aside. The man who “rises,” who “makes his pile,” who “succeeds,” goes up the ladder of wealth, the rungs of which are vanity and applause, mistaking it for the ladder of life, the rungs of which are service, sacrifice, and resolution. There are bags of gold at the top within sight; it matters not that some of the rungs are dangerously weak. Others have reached the top or near it, why should not he?

Every step forward is marked by outward signs and changes. The cottage with its simple adornments is exchanged for the villa with its walnut suites and art knickknacks; this is followed by a larger detached villa which requires several servants; the dogcart and groom-gardener are soon transformed into a motor-car and chauffeur; the male servant with livery adds the necessary importance; the butler becomes indispensable for the town residence, with a country seat as well for shooting and entertainment; and so on, more and more display until the ultimate goal is reached, with, strange to say, no real satisfaction or contentment. New friends are made on the road and old friends are dropped. Each advance signifies a fresh endeavour to live in the same style as those on the next higher level, with whom it becomes a duty to associate. Meanwhile the man’s powers of digestion and those of his family do not increase, nor does their mental equipment. Even his capacity for enjoyment he finds has its limits and appears to become further restricted. But he knows he will be judged, even as he has judged others, by the quantity and quality of his worldly possessions, and he follows obediently the model and example the rich have set up. There are some who see the emptiness of this course; there are some who have the character not to desire to alter the way of living to which they have been accustomed; but are there any who would condemn the accumulation of riches and resist the incessant temptations that are put in their way of making more?

When the poor man, with a bare living wage, fails to keep a decent home, drinks, or spends his money foolishly, he is ruthlessly condemned as thriftless and intemperate. But who is setting him the example of thrift and abstemiousness? Anyhow, not the rich man, to whom the very words are meaningless. If he drops out from incompetence, from weakness, or from viciousness, if destitution becomes his lot, his nature becomes crippled, his character warped, his mind embittered, and he finds himself dragged down lower still and trodden under by his fellow-men in their thoughtless and brutal stampede for lucre. Truly, “the destruction of the poor is their poverty.” The general pressure of the multitude is downward and destructive, not because there is any inherent depravity in their nature, either individually or collectively, but because of the narrow confines of the course into which they are driven and because of the oppression to which they are subjected. There is no time to stop, pick up, and shield those who have started on the journey with the hideous handicap of disease and incompetence created by degraded and disgraceful homes; these unfortunates must go to the wall, because the potential energy and pressure of society is not concentrated on the uplifting of the feeble and the recovery of the outcasts, but on the rush forward with the rich in the forefront as leaders—a desperate rush towards some seductive dream of prosperity, some purely selfish satisfaction of animal appetites and material pleasures. The slow and often discouraging expedients of relief, restoration, and help are passed over when success, conquest, and triumph are in sight.

A plutocracy may not ever actually govern the country; a greater calamity could hardly be conceived, but the rich are, nevertheless, our leaders, and every rich man is setting up a pattern which, without his being aware of it, perhaps hundreds of thousands are anxious to copy. The poor admire and like the rich, and the rich know it. In their humility, and sometimes envy, they watch them with awe as beings of another and more glorious world. They read of them in their novelettes; an atmosphere of splendour and romance surrounds them. They see them in their brilliant settings, they hear of their great doings, they know of the magnificence of their establishments, and as the chasm between them is still unbridged, they are spellbound by the fascination which only the mysterious and the unknowable can give. They see no connection whatsoever between the position of the rich and their own, nor do the rich themselves acknowledge that there is any. The ignorance of the rich about the poor is profound, but it is nothing to the ignorance of the poor about the rich. The chasm between the two is never spanned. Those who live with the rich approve their methods and are blind to sights they do not want to see. They are heedless and unconscious of the world of toil and privation, or only apprehend it occasionally when a beggar or tramp somehow manages to evade being tucked away out of sight and thrusts himself before their unwilling gaze. Even then they become accustomed to the sight of these unfortunates, whose existence they believe is due to the bad management of public authorities. And those who study the far side of the chasm are so much preoccupied and aghast at the tangled confusion that confronts them that they only have time to cast a glance of contempt at the self-indulgence and luxurious living which seems too distant to be real, too ridiculous and wicked to be quite true, and they refuse to regard it seriously as a component part of the various enigmas they are attempting to solve. Even economists, who are occupied with dissertations and discussions on production, consumption, and distribution, seldom turn their attention seriously to the moral impulses that cause, and the fashions and habits that control, the great accumulations of capital and the appalling waste which results. A writer, describing the state of the country in 1851,1 declared that the great social evil of the time was “the separation between the rich and poor, the dis-sympathy of classes, the mutual disgust which appears to threaten some sort of violent revolution in society at no very distant period.” But when he goes on to describe what he considers to be the desirable relationship, he says, “What one wants to see is a kind and cordial condescension on the one side, and an equally cordial but still respectful devotedness on the other.” Luckily there are now many more people than there were at that date who know this to be as ridiculous as it is impossible. But there are still, unfortunately, a good many whose ideas this singularly naÏve opinion faithfully represents.

This “dis-sympathy” will amount to something very much more like class hatred whenever the poor begin to open their eyes. It is a mistake to suppose that antagonism between classes is produced by the inflammatory speeches and writings of agitators. The masses herded into our towns to become miserably poor, unemployed and unemployable, rapidly lose all self-respect, and are too much stupefied and even brutalised by their condition to be alive to the injustice of our social system or to seek to attack those whom they suspect are responsible. They are dumb, cowed, and easily driven. “Sweat the poor,” says an anonymous writer in 1892, infuriated by the injustice of things, “sweat the poor and grind their faces and accumulate wealth—only let us have no cant about it.”2 It is the rich as a class who, by their manner of life, by their refusal to undertake most of the patent responsibilities of citizenship, by their squandering of the national capital, and by their determination to suck up from the labour of others sufficient to allow them to live in idleness themselves, it is they that help to find the fuel for the flame of class hatred, a flame which one day may burst out into a mighty conflagration.

A Canadian journalist, writing on his recent visit to this country, has declared that it was not “the statesmen or pro-consuls or heroes or scholars” or our great historic institutions that left the most abiding memories. “Frankly, the thing that impressed me most, the thing that stands out as the background of every reminiscence, was the bloodless, mirthless, hopeless face of the common crowd ... the social problem everywhere is appalling, almost to the point of despair. Wherever we went it forced itself upon us. The least dangerous aspect of it was that hollow-eyed procession of the homeless of London kept moving along the pavements by the police in the early dawn waiting for the opening of the soup kitchens.”3 And he speaks in the same way of Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow, and Edinburgh.

The last hundred years will be memorable as an era of almost miraculous advance in all that concerns material progress. And yet we have to admit, as the Report of the Poor Law Commission shows, that so far as pauperism and destitution are concerned our attempts at cure and prevention have completely failed. Here again we find the same fons et origo malorum. Every step forward in methods of production, in new inventions and improved machinery, is a tangible material gain for some one. But in the case of the pauper, be he veteran, invalid, incompetent, or child, there is nothing that can be transformed into immediate profit. There is no money in it. Therefore it has been impossible to rouse the public sympathy and interest. Fortunately many are now beginning to see that the prevention of neglect and waste in human life means wealth to the nation that cannot be estimated in sums of money. The problem of social reorganisation is one of the greatest complexity.

Drink and slum dwellings doubtless aggravate the evil and make bad worse. The land and our system of industrial organisation are the regulating forces that drive our population into these hideous social conditions. But it is time we traced back these forces to their source and examined their origin.

What is it that induces a great people to arrange their society on this uneconomic, wasteful, and life-destroying model? What common impulses inspire the class that is in authority and command to support and maintain such a system? Put on one side tyranny, rapacity, greed, and covetousness, which are vices that no one wants to defend. What is at the back of this thirst for huge profits and high dividends, this capture of the land, this amassing of great possessions, this passion for pleasure, this love of power and patronage, this respect for wealth, this subservience to riches?

Lurking in the spring head, far away from the broad river, we shall find the poison that is polluting the waters—our devouring, indestructible, overpowering belief in money.