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 An Address 
 
 DELIVERED TO 
 
 .1.. . \ J J, 
 
 \ 
 
 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 L 
 
 THE CONFERENCE OF COMBINED CITY CHARITIES 
 
 OF TORONTO 
 
 May 20th, 7889 
 
 BY GOLDWIN SMITH 
 
 President o/the Oonference. 
 
 TORONTO : 
 
 C. Blacke^tt Robinson 
 
 1889. 
 
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 SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 An Address 
 
 DELIVERED TO 
 
 THE CONFERENCE OF COMBINED CITY CHARITIES 
 
 OF TORONTO 
 
 Maj> 20 //K /S80 
 
 BY GOLDWIN SMITH 
 
 President of the Conference. 
 
 TORONTO : 
 
 C. Blackett Robikson 
 
 1889. 
 
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! 
 
 SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 
 
 UR formal report, ladies and gentlemen, of the Conference 
 of Associated City Charities, is necessarily succinct and 
 dry. dealing with nothing about which there can be any dif- 
 ference of opinion. I hope, as your President, I shall not be 
 doing what is unacceptable at the close of our session if, in a 
 less formal way, I recall to your minds some of the (piestions 
 arisintr out of our work or connected with it, which have 
 engaged your attention in the course of our meetings. 
 
 NK0E5SITY OF .V PUBLIC IlKLIK?^ OFFICER. 
 
 In the department of charity, as in all other depirtments of 
 municipal life and administration, (questions are raised by the 
 marvellous growth of Toronto. Whatsutticed for a population 
 of twenty, or even of fifty, thousand will not suffice for a popu- 
 lation of one hundred and eighty thousand, with a prospect of 
 further increase. These cities of the New World have traversed 
 in half a century the distance in the race of progress which it 
 has taken the cities of the Old World ten centuries to traverse ; 
 young in years they are old in magnitude, and the liabilities 
 and cares of maturity have already fully come upon them. 
 When I first settled in Toronto, a little more than twenty years 
 ago, cows wandered in the streets of my quarter, where land is 
 now selling at a high price per foot. The need of a more 
 re<mlar and skilled administration is felt in the department of 
 
liealtli and in that of en,L>:ineerin,L,' : the time can hardly he far 
 distant when it will he felt in rei^'ard to the relief of destitution, 
 of which a certain portion unhci[)pily has its seat even amidst 
 the pleasant and stately homes of the fairest, proudest and 
 mo>t jirosperous city. We nust all sympathize with the 
 unwillin^'ness to introduce a poor law, thou<^h it is a great 
 mistake to suppose that pul)lic charity rej^ularly and justly 
 administered demoralizes or dej^rades more than private charity, 
 which, through ignorance and want of time for the examina- 
 tion of cases, must often be dispensed with a lavish and 
 capricious hand. We must all prize voluntary effort, which is 
 twice blessed, blessing the giver of the relief as well as the 
 receiver. On voluntary effort, in the main, we may still rely. 
 That Toronto receives a full measure of it from workers of 
 both sexes, who give not only money, but what is more precious 
 and meritorious, their time and energy to the cause, must be 
 well known to any one who occupies this chair. Notably to a 
 body of ladies whose charitable feet are always on the path 
 which leads to the house of suffering, and who carry with them 
 the Italm of comfort and good counsel as well as bread, the city 
 owes a large meed of gratitude. To voluntary effort, and 
 especially to that of the churches, we must look for the relief 
 of the indigence which shrinks f ron^ sight and would never ask 
 for pul>lic relief, yet is often accompanied by the keenest 
 suffering. But though you may rely mainly on these agencies, 
 you cannot, in such a city as this, rely entirely upon them. 
 Responsibility in the last resort must rest somewhere, and it 
 can scarcelv be thrown even on the most devoted volunteers. 
 Volunteers cannot give all their time, be ahvays ready at a 
 moment's notice, or be always in the city. Cases of emergency 
 may occur, particularly in the depth of winter, and if no one 
 is responsible for their relief the community may one day be 
 awakened to the necessity of a change by something that would 
 shock its humanity. The treatment of tramps and vagrants m 
 
in some measure a matter of police, and i)oli('e authority is 
 necessary to maintain the proper rules and discipline in a 
 casual ward. Cases of wayfarers in need of passes to lielp 
 them to their destination often occur, and the Mayor of such a 
 <;ity of Toronto has not leisure to attend to them : indeed the 
 Mayor already finds it necessary to have special assistance in 
 this part of his work, and it may he said that the principle of 
 a re<juiar relief officer has been adopted. There are also cases 
 with which volunteers or private associations, from want of 
 authority, are unable to deal. What is to be done, for example, 
 where chronic destitution is the consequence of mental disease 
 or infirmity, and where a private individual or charity can 
 have no right to interfere V Besides, a centre of guidance, 
 information and observation is needed, and this nothing l)ut a 
 public office can supply. 
 
 One use of a centre of information would be the prevention 
 of imposture, against which, in the absence of the means 
 which such a record office affords of ascertaining the identity 
 and verifying the stories of applicants, it is very hard, at least 
 for those whose hearts are not fenced with the steel of experi- 
 ence, to guard. Several times have I been saved from imposi- 
 tion through information obtained from the Secretary of this 
 Conference, Mr. Pell, who in this and other respects has really 
 discharged in no small measure the functions of a relieving 
 officer for many 3^ears past, but who has now reached the 
 evening of a life dedicated to charitable work and to the study 
 ■of the questions connected with it. It would perhaps be out of 
 place to go into any personal details, and their pul)lication 
 might possibly bar a return to the right path. Otherwise I 
 could narrate two or three remarkable cases of successful 
 imposture which have come under my own notice. Tn each 
 case an amount of ingenuity, tact, presence of mind and per- 
 suasiveness must have been exhibited which would have gone 
 far towards making the man's fortune in an honest walk of 
 
 /'■ 
 
6 
 
 life. Someone should <,'ive us a history of impostors, from 
 Perkin VVnrlieck (lo\vn\vai'(ls. Ft is vvoiulerful. iiml the in- 
 stances to vvhicli I liave referred as fallini^ undei" my own notice 
 were amont>- the proofs of it. how in these diMnocratic^'::. nmiini- 
 ties of ours we are (^auufht hy the name of n lord. 
 
 IMMKJUATIOX. 
 
 Of the destitution and sufferin*^ with which the charities 
 have had to deal in i)ast years not a little has arisen from 
 unsuitable immigration. The subject of emiufration seems to 
 have enteredon a new phase in rei^ard to this whole continent. 
 The people of the United States, whose ])oast it has hitherto 
 been that tliey o[)ened a home to all who needed one. have 
 become alarmed at the intlux, both on economical antl political 
 grounds, and have begun to think of closing the door. So far 
 as Canada is concerned, most of us, I believe, would say that 
 there is nothing to fear so long as emigration is left to itself. 
 A man is not likely of his own accord to leave his native 
 country and pay his passage across the Atlantic without goo»l 
 reason for believing that he will find employment on the other 
 side. It is when emigration is subsidized Iw (Tovernment or 
 solicited by steamship agents that the danger of mistakes and 
 suffering begins. No assistance, 1 understand, is now being 
 given to immigration, either by the Dominion (jrovernment ov by 
 the (tovernment of this Province, though the Provincial 
 (fovernment helps the immigrants on the" " arrival to find work. 
 The result is, I learn at headquarters, a marked improvement 
 in the description of immigrants, hardly any of whom of late 
 hnve been cast upon charity on their arrival. The demands 
 upon the St. George's Society and other national societies of 
 late have also been somewhat lighter. An alarm is still some- 
 times raised about the action of boards of poor law guardians 
 in England, who are suspected of harbouring designs of dump- 
 ing their pauperism on Canada ; but no facts of that sort have 
 
V 
 
 i 
 
 recently come before us, and by this time the [)e(»[)le in the Old 
 (/Ountry must be pretty well disabused of their not unnatural 
 belief that population of whatever kind cannot fail to be 
 welcome to a colony. The Conference addressed some timeatfo 
 a word of caution throu<,di the de})artment at Ottawa to the 
 steamship comiianies. The managers of those companies 
 seemed to think that our fears were unfounded and injurious : 
 l)ut if they were, emigrants whose necessities we were called 
 upon to relieve must have told us unaccountable falsehoods. 
 Some distinction must be nir V^ in relation to this as to other 
 (questions between the different sections of our Jiow vvi<lely 
 extended and diversitied Dominion. The case of the North - 
 West, which needs al)Ove all thiuj^ - population, is not the same 
 as that of Eastern Canada, where i/early all the good land has 
 been taken up and the suppl of 'nechani.s is already large. 
 Por farm labourers, however, the lera.ind in Ontario is still 
 active, and emignuits of that c]a>.^, if they are healthy, tem- 
 perate and saving, seem pretty sure to do well. The ([uestion 
 whether there is a demand for mecimnics is one to which it is 
 not easy to get a satisfactory answer. Tho.se \vho are in pos- 
 session of the labour market naturally desire to deter an intlux 
 of new comers, which might have <i tendency to reduce wages : 
 they desire, as perhaps they would say, pi'otection for labour as 
 well as for the manufacturer : and their interest can hardly 
 fail to colour their perception of the facts. 80 fav as I can 
 learn, mechanics outside the building trade h ive still not much 
 difficulty in tinding work. The most important industry at 
 Toronto of late has been the building trade. Should the growth 
 of our city find a limit the employment of a good hiauy 
 mechanics would cease. That the growth of our city may tind 
 a limit seems possible when we consider that its apparent 
 source is not so much the development of commerce on the spot 
 as the passion for city life which seems to have taken posses- 
 sion of all the popuL'h'onof this continent and in some measure 
 
8 
 
 of that of Europe also, and which has brought here a rush of 
 emigrants from the smaller towns, while some of the smaller 
 towns are threatened with depopulation and decay. 
 
 For good domestics who have had some training, and mean 
 to be really helpful and obliging, there is still plenty of room, 
 if we may trust the testimony of ladies who are keeping house 
 and whose wails arise on all sides. The main root of the. 
 trouble probably is the democratic idea, which at present is in 
 a crude and unsettled state. There is a fancy that service is 
 degrading to the free citizeness, as though any employment 
 under others^ whether in a Cxovernment office, a factory, a bank 
 or any other establishment were not service as well as employ- 
 ment in a household. Is not even a merchant practically in 
 the service of his customers, and does he not sometimes find 
 that service pretty hard '? So it is, however, that employment 
 in a factory, with harder work and far less comfort— anything, 
 in short, which bears the name of independence — is preferred 
 by the democratic girl to employment in a household. She 
 feels that the day's work done she is entirely her own mistress. 
 Perhaps the source of the trouble is not altogether on one side. 
 On the side of the employer there may be sometimes want of 
 judgment and not uncommonly want of experience. We talk 
 of the old English household. The old English household, 
 owing to the unsettled and restless habits of society in these 
 days, is fast becoming a thing of the past. Ikit in it the 
 relation between master and servant was not merely commer- 
 cial, and it was carefully cultivated on the side of the employer. 
 The servants were made to feel themselves members of the 
 family, and were assured that faithful service would l)e repaid 
 with gratitude, that they would not l>e neglected in their old 
 age or forgotten in the will. We can hardly expect that par- 
 ticular state of things to return. English girls have been 
 imported into Canada, but it seems with indifferent success. 
 They soon catch the prevailing ideas. Indeed, they are apt to 
 
 t'l 
 
bring with them the notion that they are coming to a paradise 
 of high pay and little work, and to conduct themselves accord- 
 ingly. However, for good, or even tolerable, domestics my lady 
 friends tell me that there is plenty of room. The class of emi- 
 grants for which there is certainly no room is what may be 
 called the genteel class, those who seek clerkships, situations in 
 (lovernment offices, teacherships, or any employment of the less 
 manual and more intellectual sort. For these the market is 
 almost as glutted here as it is in England. English emigrants 
 of this kind cannot possibly come to a worse place than Canada. 
 They will find not only that the market is full, but that they 
 are regarded with a certain degree of prejudice as interlopers. 
 It might be thought that such cases did not come within the 
 purview of the City Charities, but unfortunately they do. If a 
 man, however educated and of whatever social grade, comes 
 without resources to a country where there is no use for him, 
 there is nothing to save him from destitution. 
 
 Child emigration, such as is carried on by Miss Ilye and Dr. 
 Barnardo, is a subject about which there is some difference of 
 opinion, though there can be none as to the benevolence of those 
 who devote themselves to the work, or as to the advantage to 
 the Mother Country of being provided with homas for children 
 who would otherwise grow up neglected or be trained to evil. 
 The opinion of those most competent to decide seems to be that, 
 of the boys at any rate, the vast majority do well. It is not to 
 be expected that in all cases the child should, even when placed 
 under the kindest influences in after-life, entirely work off the 
 moral taint contracted in a bad home. 
 
 TUKATMKXT OF TliAMPS. 
 
 We have to thank the management of the House of Indus- 
 tr3% and at the same time the City Council, which has liberally 
 and wisely furnished the means, for an immense improvement 
 
 Cleanliness, decencv 
 
 in the arrangements of the Casual Ward 
 
 A 
 
■ipi 
 
 10 
 
 and sufficient comfort now reign where they did not reign 
 before. The decent though destitute wayfarer in need of a 
 night's shelter is no longer disgusted and degraded by the treat- 
 ment which he receives. While we discourage indolent mendi- 
 cancy and imposture, let us never forget that there is in the 
 world plenty of genuine misfortune and of destitution to which 
 unmixed pity is due. The management also does its best to 
 apply the Labour Test. But I find myself not unsupported in 
 the belief that this department would be better separated from 
 the almshouse and placed under the police. The extent of the 
 city, too, is now such that it may soon be necessary to have two 
 casual wards instead of one. 
 
 
 THE PRISOX QUESTION. 
 
 Between destitution and crime the connection is close ; each 
 is in some measure productive of the other. The special object 
 of one of the charities of our city is to receive the discharged 
 prisoner at the prison gate and save him from the want which 
 would drive him back into crime. The city gaol is being 
 enlarged to meet the re(|uirements of a population which by 
 growth or annexation has been trebled, or nearly so, within 
 twenty years, though happily there has not been a proportionate 
 increase of crime. It is to be hoped that in the enlarged build- 
 ing full facilities for separation and classification will be 
 afforded, and that contaminating intercourse will cease. The 
 excellent Governor of our City Gaol has been doing all that was 
 in his power to separate the classes of prisoners and prevent 
 contamination, but the means have been wanting to him. It 
 is said, and apparently with reason, that for minor offences the 
 term of imprisonment cannot be too short. Long terms must 
 break up the prisoner's industry, deprive wives and children of 
 support, perliaps throw them on charity ; and even in the 
 absence of bad companionship can hardly be morally improving. 
 In the opinion of those who are well qualified to judge, a few 
 
 i 
 
 h4 
 
f # 
 
 11 
 
 days of solitary confinement on bread and water would be a 
 penalty in minor cases sufficiently severe and deterrent. In the 
 
 I case of graver offences and long terms of imprisonment, we find 
 
 the best authorities agreeing in the conviction that if a prison 
 I is to be reformatory, or anything but a nursery of crime, labour 
 
 i is indispensable. Might it not be well that the labour, though 
 
 ' compulsory, should be in some way recompensed ? The convict 
 
 is a man who has left the path of honest labour for that of 
 crime, and the object must be to win him back to the path of 
 honest lal^our. To make labour hateful to him, as the tread- 
 mill or anything of that kind does, is apparently to defeat the 
 object. If he is idle, evil is sure to breed in his vacant mind. 
 Long periods of solitary confinement are cruel and crushing. 
 Prison missions are no doubt excellent things, if it were only 
 that they show sympathy with the prisoner and assure him that 
 though an offender, and necessarily condemned to pay the 
 penalty of his offence, he is not cut off from humanity. But it 
 is by action that character is formed ; and mere impressions, 
 upon which the man cannot act, however strong at the moment, 
 can hardly be relied upon for the improvement of his character 
 when he is restored to practical life. Efforts are being made at 
 the City gaol to give the prisoners work, but there is difficulty 
 in providing it. Outside work close to a city makes heavy 
 demands on the prison staff for guards. There is also the fear 
 of awakening popular jealousy of prison competition. This is 
 ^ most excited by indoor trades, the products of which come into 
 
 i the market, such as shoe making, which I saw being carried on, 
 
 « and I understood with good results, in penitentiaries in the 
 
 United States. I am told, however, that it would be excited 
 ^ even by setting the prisoners of the City gaol to work at the 
 
 Don, and that the seat of a member for East Toronto who did 
 not oppose such a measure would be in jeopardy. We must 
 heartily sympathize with the feelings of the honest working- 
 man who thinks that the trade by which he makes his bread and 
 
12 
 
 the bread of his wife and children is in danger of being exposed 
 to unjust competition. But we must ask him to remember, in 
 the first place, that the pi'isoners, if they were not in gaol? 
 would be competing with him in the labour market, so that 
 there is no increase in the amount of competition ; and in the 
 second place, that this is a question not merely of prison 
 economy, but of moral right. A prisoner. l)y his offence, has 
 forfeited for the time his civil privileges ; but he has not for- 
 feited his moral rights: no moral being can. If labour is indis- 
 pensable to his moral health and reformation, to labour he still 
 has a right, and to deprive him of it is to become responsible 
 for his continuance in criminal courses. The opinion best 
 worth hearing on all these questions would be that of experi- 
 enced governors of our gaols, and it is a pity that it should not 
 be heard. Perhaps the whole subject of penal imprisonment 
 may some day come up for review. Society is apt to run on 
 without reflecting in a groove in which it was perhaps at first 
 set running by accident. A prison, 1 take it, was originally a 
 place for safe-keeping, and hideous places for safe-keeping 
 some of them were : in ancient Rome the prisoner was let down 
 into the cell through a hole in the roof. Imprisonment as a 
 punishment probably was an afterthought, and still more so 
 was imprisonment as the means of reformation. The question 
 may be some day raised whether the best reformatory is what 
 the thieves expressively call "the stone jug."' The idea of a 
 prison camp for labour on public works has been suggested, 
 and the plan, I am told, has been tried with success in one of 
 the Southern States. A camp sounds more healthy than stone 
 walls ; it suggests greater possibilities of discipline ; being at 
 a greater distance from cities it could be more easily guarded, 
 and it would hardly excite popular jealousy on the score of 
 competition. However, as [ have already said, we should like 
 to hear from experienced governors of gaols. 
 
 There is such a thing, it is to be feared, as a hopelessly 
 
 * 
 
1 
 
 I 
 
 r 
 
 iH 
 
 13 
 
 criminal character. At a place which I sometimes visit in the 
 United States they had a case apparently of this kind. He was 
 a man, not only of considerable intellectual power but of literary 
 tastes, and while he was running a career of the most fearful 
 crime, murdering among other people his own wife and child, 
 he was inventing a universal language. The shape of his head 
 was remarkable, and seemed to indicate something monstrous. 
 The frontal development was highly intellectual, but the rest 
 of the head, which was enormously broad between the ears, 
 seemed to bespeak the intensity of animal and brutal ^.assions. 
 The man spent a term in a penitentiary of high repute, but 
 without any good result. He came out only to recommence his 
 murderous career. He was hanged at last after two attempts 
 had been made to save him, one on the usual plea of lunacy, 
 the other on the plea that his execution would extinguish a light 
 of learning and science. In such a case the only thing appar- 
 ently to be done is to cage the wild beast and prevent him from 
 tearing other people. But in ordinary cases it is probably as 
 much circumstance as natural character that has made the 
 criminal, so that reformation is possible, at all events in the 
 ■early stages of his career. These tramps, about whom we are 
 so much alarmed, and whose habits verge so closely on those of 
 the criminal, may, after all, be men out of whom nomadism, 
 the habit of primitive man, has not been thoroughly worked, 
 and who, though disinclined to sedentary or settled labour, 
 might, under discipline, make good soldiers perhaps, not o-ly 
 in an army of war, but in an army of industry. 
 
 We are sorry to hear that there are still some lunatics in 
 the City gaol. This is unjust, not only to the lunatics them- 
 selves but to the other inmates, who, though they have been 
 condemned to imprisonment, have not been condemned to the 
 society of the insane. The arrangement, however, is only pro- 
 visional, pending the enlargement of the accommodations for 
 lunacy, which appears to be on the increase, though fro)n what 
 
 J 
 
 ^BBPwwieww^ywra 
 
14 
 
 cause is not clearly explained : probably from a complication of 
 causes, including the enhanced strain and excitement of modern 
 life. The practice of using the gaol as a poorhouse for 
 broken-down labourers, committed to it on a nominal charge of 
 vagrancy, we are happy to know is at an end. These men are 
 the disabled veterans of industry, and as much entitled to relief 
 v/ithout degradation as the veterans of war. It is strange, with 
 all our democracy and enlightenment, how extraordinary a pre- 
 ference is still given by popular sentiment to service in war. 
 Policemen and firemen often do things fully as heroic as were 
 ever done bv the soldier. Yet we do not think of crowning 
 them with laurel. 
 
 r 
 
 THE AN'Tr-POVERTY MOVEMENT. 
 
 To vary the ordinarv business of our meetings we had the 
 pleasure of receiving a deputation from the Anti- Poverty 
 Society of this city, the excellence of whose object cannot be 
 questioned. It may be with doubtful feelings that a lawyer or 
 a physician would receive a plan for putting an end at once to 
 litigation or disease. But this association would receive with 
 unmixed pleasure a plan that would terminate its functions by 
 putting an end to poverty. Not that it is with poverty, properly 
 speaking, that we are concerned : we are concerned with desti- 
 tution, which arises from a multiplicity of causes, certainly 
 beyond the reach of any economical reform, such as individual 
 misfortune, infirmity, age, accident, idleness, improvidence, and 
 vice. But we may admit that if there were no longer any 
 poverty the need for charitable institutions would probably 
 cease. Political economy has been called "the dismal science.'" 
 It is not easy to see why the study of the laws which regulate 
 the production and distribution of wealth should be moi-e 
 dismal than the study of any other set of natural laws. No- 
 thing, it seems to me, can be more beautiful than the arrange- 
 ments by which workers all over the world are brought into 
 
 
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 f 
 
 15 
 
 co-operation with each other and the price of the smallest manu- 
 factured article, thouj^h it he but a single cent, is divided 
 amoncr all who in different parts of the World have contrilmted 
 to its production. Nothintr can be more beautiful than the 
 machinery of credit, by which gold is economized and capital 
 supplied for trade. Nothing can be more interesting than the 
 investigation of the fiscal policies and other causes which 
 increase or diminish the wealth of nations. With more justice, 
 perhaps, might political economy i)e called '"the science of false 
 hopes."" [t continues at least in a strange way to be the field 
 of Utopian speculation. Tn other departments of science people 
 have given up looking for the philosopher's stone, the elixir 
 vitu% pei'petual motion, and universal cures. Hut in political 
 economy we have still men of great talent as well as ardent in 
 their philanthropy, who believe that they have discovered uni- 
 versal cures for poverty. Some propose to stamp a number of 
 pieces of paper with the names of gold or silver coins, and to per- 
 suade or force the community to accept them as coins, believing 
 that they will thereby fiood the world with wealth. They are 
 not moved by the proof which repeated experience furnishes 
 that the community cannot be persuaded or forced to take a 
 shower of bad promissory notes for money, and that the only con- 
 sequence of tampering with the currency is the fatal derange- 
 ment of commerce and industry. Others propose to effect a 
 magical change in the general condition by abolishing private 
 ownership of land, and turning all the land over to an entity, 
 which they call the State, and suppose it to be something apart 
 from and above the members of the community, with a wisdom, 
 a beneficence, and also apparently a purse of its own; as though 
 the State were anything but the members of the community 
 collectively or their representatives the politicians, whom re- 
 formers seldom describe as endowed with superior wisdom and 
 beneficence. The benevolent extirpators of poverty, if they 
 propose to transfer all ownership of la)id from the present 
 
16 
 
 proprietors to the State, either directly or by the use of the 
 taxing power, will have to begin by reducing the landowners 
 as a class to the very condition which they propose to extirpate; 
 or rather they will have to begin by fighting the farmers, who 
 will certainly defend their farms, and the opening of the mil- 
 lennium will be an agrarian war, in which it seems by no 
 means certain that the victory would remain with the philan- 
 thropist. The world began with common ownership of land of 
 which in barbarous or half- barbarous countries vestiges still 
 remain ; and the almost universal change to private ownership 
 is the verdict of almost universal experience. What the com- 
 munity wants is that the land shall produce as much bread 
 for us all as possible, and how can we expect the highest rate 
 of production without the stimulus of private ownership ? 
 Have not the land reformers in their crusade against land- 
 lordism been alwavs telling us that the land could never vield 
 its fruits in due measure while the tillers were mere tenants 
 at will ? Systems of taxation may always be capable of 
 improvement, aiid it is highly probable that in cities real pro- 
 perty is the best and the fairest basis of taxation ; but how the 
 world as a whoie can be made much richer by merely shifting 
 the burden of taxation from one shoulder to the other seems 
 difficult to conceive. It appears to be assumed that in the social 
 and economical sphere perfection is the law of nature, and that 
 imperfection is the consequence of bad legislative arrangements 
 which might at once be set right if labour reformers and 
 poverty-destroyers could only get power into their hands. 
 Unhappily everythino- which meets our eyes pro -iaims that not 
 perfection but imperfection is the law, the law of the social as 
 well as of the physical organism, of the body politic as well as of 
 the individual body ; of man's dwelling-place and life : of the 
 solar system itself, which seems to be full of gaps and wrecks ; 
 of the stellar system, if it be true that astronomy has witnessed 
 the destruction of a star. The only optimism countenanced by 
 
17 
 
 facts is that which, trustinjr the counsels of the universe, hioks 
 forward through all this imperfection to the attainment of per- 
 fection as a distant ((oal. If the Lfifts of fortune or the faculties 
 l)y which wealth is produced and saved are not fairly distributed 
 amonf( men. neither are the gifts of i)hysical strength and 
 beauty, brain power, or the blessings of health, offspring, and 
 long life. Reputation itself, which ought, to be proportioned to 
 deserts, how little is it often enjoyed in accordance with real 
 worth I Evils, often great evils, attend the institution of pro- 
 perty. We have bloated fortunes, with all the dangers which 
 they involve to society and morality, on one side ; on the other, 
 we have often insufficient remuneration for lal)our not only in 
 the case of the mechanic, but in the case of the merchant, who 
 doing his l^est, fails to get custom, and of the professional man 
 who. doing his best, fails to get employment. We liave, besides, 
 all the vices which attend the making and the spending of 
 wealth. c(n'etousness, avarice and fraud, the selfishness which 
 the intense pursuit of gain engenders, the habit of gambling 
 speculation produced by the passion, so rife in these commercial 
 communities, for becoming suddenlv rich. But the desire of 
 property is our only known motive power, and if property 
 ceased to be secure, production, at least any production but that 
 necessary to allay the immediate cravings of hunger, would 
 cease: there would be an end of the accumulation of wealth 
 and at the same time of human progress. Socialists have 
 pointed to military honour as an instance of a motive power 
 different from the desire of wealth; but it has been well replied 
 that military honour is not left to its spontaneous action but is 
 sustained l)y a code of law exceptionally severe. T would not 
 for a moment connect the philanthropists of the Anti- Poverty 
 Society with certain Labour Reformers who make it their aim 
 to set class against class, labour against capital, the toilers — to 
 use their favourite phrase — against the spoilers, and to sow the 
 seeds of industrial war. Once at least in history the theories of 
 

 18 
 
 tliese men and the passions to which they appeal have had full 
 play, ['nder the ascendancy of the Jacobins tlie spoilers were 
 plundered, guillotined or l)anished by thousands : capital was 
 either destroyed or driven into hidin(jf-places, and the result, 
 Ijesides an avalanche of crimes and horrors, was the total wi-eck 
 of commerce and industry, followed by a national famine in 
 which it is computed, that more than a million of persons 
 l)erished. It is possible, by violent measures, to lacerate the 
 social and industrial frame ; it is not possible to transform it. 
 That gradual improvement is going on we have every reason 
 to feel assured. Conclusive statistics seem to show not only 
 that there has of late been a great increase of the sum of wealth 
 in commercial and industrial communities, but that there has 
 been a gradual redistribution in favour of the workingman; in 
 other words, that a larger share of the increase has gone to 
 wages than to profits, while, huge as some of the great fortunes 
 are, the aggregate of small fortunes has increased in far larger 
 proportion. Among the proofs are the returns of the savings 
 banks in this country as well as in England. For this im])rove- 
 ment we are chiefly indebted to the natural operation of econo- 
 mical laws. Legislation has done something and legislation 
 may do more : nobody would wish to discourage legislative 
 effort : but the name of the Anti-Poverty Society promises, it 
 is to be feared, more than can be performed. The suffering 
 caused by the pressure of population on the means of subsist- 
 ence in overcrowded countries is what no kings or laws can 
 cure, any more than they can prevent the occurrence of the 
 accidental distress with which it is mainly the business of the 
 charities to deal. 
 
 On the other hand, let not those who have the larger share 
 of fortune's goods forget that the inequality, however inevita- 
 ble, is an imperfection in the social frame, not a perfection; or 
 at least a perfection only so far as it may be conducive to 
 human progress and civilization. If nobody has comparative 
 
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 19 
 
 I ' 
 
 wealth or leisure, not only literature, art. refinement of all 
 kinds, and the various trades and employments wliirh depend 
 upon them, would cease to exist, but science and invention, so 
 far as we can see, would come to a stand. Nay, the very ideal 
 and the standard of livint^ which ai-e necessary to ^ive birth to 
 upward effort could hardly survive. But a man is not pro- 
 motinc; progress or civilization who lives in idle luxury, and if 
 to idle luxury he adds that ostentation of wealth which exc'hes 
 envy and bitterness in the hearts of the poor, he may consider 
 himself a member of the most dangerous class. The dyna- 
 miter's best allv is the Haunting luxurv of the millionaire. 
 These are troublous times. The social and industrial world 
 heaves with the action of sul)terranean fires, which have already 
 burst into erui)tion on a terrible scale at Carthagena and Paris, 
 and on a smaller scale at many other places, some of them on 
 this continent, as at Pittsburg and Chicago. In the imperfect 
 and twilight state of i)0pular education, social chimeras have 
 power, especially when hunger and envy second the delusion. 
 It is an age of general disintegration and peri)lexity. From the 
 minds of a large number of workingmen, especially artisans, 
 the old belief in the existing frame of society as an ordinance 
 of Providence, to which man must submit, has departed. 80 
 has the old belief in the compensation of a future state of exist- 
 ence for those whose lot is hard, but who do their duty here. 
 That the working class will no longer allow their claims to be 
 put off to another world, but will claim their full share of 
 enjoyment here, is a sentiment frequently expressed, which no 
 doubt is a serious factor in the present social situation. Care 
 for their own safety, then, as well as higher considerations, 
 counsels the natural leaders of society to be at the post of duty. 
 "We have good reason to be grateful to our captains of industry 
 for the services rendered by them, not only in the way of indus- 
 trial and commercial organization, but of social leadership. It 
 is lucky for us indeed that we are practically governed in part 
 
20 
 
 by them, not, wholly hy the politicians. Ihit in new communi- 
 ties like ours, where the atoms of society are very shiftin*^, 
 where there are no stronL' family or local ties, or even old com- 
 inei'cial Hrms, men havin;/ made their pile, as the phrase is, are 
 naturally tempted to ^o and enjoy it where it can be best 
 enjoyed, [un'haps in European cities where society is most bril- 
 liant an<^ all the services are most perfect, without much con- 
 sideration where or l)y what hands it was made. There is a 
 continual rush of wealthy Americans to the pleasure cities of 
 Europe, which must leave serious social jj^aps, besides takinjT 
 away a ^n-eat deal of wealth. Often these people are muniticent 
 in their <cifts to charitalde institutions, but j^ifts to charitable 
 institutions will not make up for the absence of the natural 
 leaders of society from the i)Ost of duty. 
 
 Of this, at all events, we may be pretty sure : in ()ctober, 
 when the meeting's of the Conference will commence, the saying 
 that the poor we have always with us will not be much less true 
 than it is now. The world is not likely to l)e re-made in the 
 interval by a wave of any leifislator's magic vvand. Amidst all 
 the noise and smoke of political, social, and economical war, 
 Charity pursues her c^uiet course, appealing to the feelings that 
 unite, not to the passion^ that divide us, and satistied with the 
 comparatively humble task of providing shelter for heads which 
 must be sheltered, and food for mouths which must be fed. 
 
 
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