to drink
and thriftlessness. In the lowest parts of Whitechapel drink figures
very slightly, affecting only 4 per cent. of the very poor, and 1 per
cent. of the poor, according to Mr. Booth. Even applied to a higher
grade of labour, a close investigation of facts discloses a grossly
exaggerated notion of the sums spent in drink by city workers in receipt
of good wages. A careful inquiry into the expenditure of a body of three
hundred Amalgamated Engineers during a period of two years, yielded an
average of 1s. 9d. per week spent on drink.
So, too, in the cases brought to the notice of the Lords' Committee,
drink and personal vices do not play the most important part. The Rev.
S. A. Barnett, who knows East London so well, does not find the origin
of poverty in the vices of the poor. Terrible as are the results of
drunkenness, impurity, unthrift, idleness, disregard of sanitary rules,
it is not possible, looking fairly at the facts, to regard these as the
main sources of poverty. If we are not carried away by the spirit of
some special fanaticism, we shall look upon these evils as the natural
and necessary accessories of the struggle for a livelihood, carried on
under the industrial conditions of our age and country. Even supposing
it were demonstrable that a much larger proportion of the cases of
poverty and misery were the direct consequence of these moral and
sanitary vices of the poor, we should not be justified in concluding
that moral influence and education were the most effectual cures,
capable of direct application.
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