Poverty in England

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8189, 15 May 1906, Page 3

Poverty in England

(To the Editor). Sin,—ln your leader of to-day's issue you quote a .statement made by Sir Henry Campbell Bannorman as to the number of people on the verge of starvation'in England. As that state ment is likely to be misleading to your readers, may I remind you of its origin and retraetioc, by the following paragraph taken from " Life," page 306, April issue :—" It is rather cruel to set the rhetoric and the statistics of an election conflict in the cold light of after d&ysl This is like testing the emotions of a man twentyfive years married by the temperature of his early love letters. Sir Henry Camp bell-Bannerman has been called upon to justify the statement in one of his election speeches that in England there are " 12,000,000 people living on the verge of starvation." His explanation is that in Mr Booth's well known book it was shown that in some parts of London and of York poverty almost on this scale existed; and Sir H. C-B assumed that this ratio of want extended over the whole of Great Britain, and so he got his " 12,000,000 people living on the verge of starvation. The east of London (and I may add some parts of the west) and some parts of York resemble ulcers on the body social, and the Prime Minister reached his dreadful arithmetic by assuming that the whole body was one ulcer." In conclusion I may add that the explanation as quoted above was given in tine House of Commons in reply to questions, and if I am not mistaken you had a cabled report of the same in your issue at the time. —I am, etc., John H. P. Allex. Welsbourne : street, May It. [The cabled information regarding Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's statement is more in the nature of justification than a retraction. Ivcplying. to a correspondent, the Premier said "he relied on Mr Charles Booth's figures for London, and Mr Eountree's respecting York, supposing that they applied to the whole country." Even if the figures are exaggerated, as alleged, our correspondent is well aware that poverty and starvation are rampant to an enormous extent m England, and that, compared with conditions there, want is practically unknown in Kew Zealand. —Ed. M.E.S.]