LIFE AND LABOUR.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 410, 12 October 1889, Page 4

LIFE AND LABOUR.

If the great problem of poverty is not soon solved it will nob ba from any lack of intelligent enthusiasts coming forward, each prepared with a caretully-conceived scheme, which if adopted, ho imagines would supply the Kiuch-desired remedy. One of the latest contributors to the ever, growing literature on this subject is Mr Charles Booth. The writer is spoken of in the English press as "a singularly able and accomplished Man " and that the woi k he has written is " a mine of statitical wealth carefully arranged on a subject that has been too long neglected " and that it gives " wider conceptions of a subject which is becoming of more pressing importance as our civilisation advances," and also that this work is "amongst the most remarkable as it is amongst the first of the class of literature on the subject with which it deals." This is very powerful testimony to the value of the work in question, and which is entitled "Life and Labour." Mr Booth determined on closely investigating the social condition of a section of the London community, and he chose ior the baseof his opeiations part of East London and Hackney, a portion ot the metropolis containing a large proportion of the lowest class of the inhabitants. The district contained about 900,000 people, and he cla&sified them into eight divisions according to the occupation and condition of life of the heads of families. The lowest class (A) is estimated to number 11,000, and consists of occasional labourers, streetsellers, loafers, criminals and semi-crimi-nals of all ages and both sexes. The second class (B) comprises day-to-day labourers, very poor, the head of the family averaging only three days' work a week. (C) stands a little higher in the scale, but is also amongst the poor having iiregular earnings. Class (D) has small regular earnings, but is still classed amongst the poor. The (E) class, the largest, and numbering 377,000, have regular standard earnings and are above the line of poverty.' (F), (C 4) and (H) are the comfortable classes. The causes of poverty Mr Booth says, are : (1) Questions of employment, lack of work (including incapacity) or low pay ; (2) questions of habit, idleness, drunkenness or thriftlessness ; (3) questions of circumstances, sickness or large families. He says : "To throw some light on the proportion these troubles bear to each other I have attempted to analyse 4,000 cises of the poor and very poor known to selected School Board visitors in each district." He then gives several tables showing the lesults at which he had arrived. In classes A and B he found there were only 60 actual loafers, or 4 per cent, of the whole ; in irregular work, casual work and I low pay there were 878, or 55 per cent. Under drink, where the husband or both husband and wife were drunkards, 152, or 9 per cent. ; and where the wife only was a drunkard, 79, or 5 per cent.; illness or infirmity, 170, or 10 per cent.; large family, 124, or 8 per cent.; and illness or large family combined with irregular work, 147, or 9 per cent. In classes C and D there i were no loafers and the drink trouble ' caused poverty in 167 cases, or 7 per cent. Those in receipt of low but regular earnings numbered 1,668, or 68 per cent. Mr Booth then proceeds to criticise the various panaceas hitherto suggested, the most popular being the one to provide the labourer with land. This, however, he points out, would only actually benefit the genuine out-of-work cases in class G, which are a minority, whereas the real problem is centred in the class below them. !B, that sediment composed of many different elements which falls to the bottom of our civilisation. This class hangs like a dead weight on the real workers ; at critical moments it flows in and nullifies their efforts, and at the same time it consumes or wastes, or has expended upon it more wealth than it creates. Class A, Mr Booth thinks might be eliminated by the pressure of civilised life and efficient police supervision. But Class B is where the real difficulty lies, and his suggestion is that they should be placed under the care of the State, which should organise their industry, and by making it impossible to exist without working .to separate the various elements contained in it, the fit being compelled to work and the unfit supported by the rates. He argues that under this system the children would undoubtedly be saved and the whole standard of life raised. He also points out that the great difficulty in dealing with this class is not the expense of the experiment, for one way and another they are very costly at present, bub the difficulty lies in the matter of tampering with all that we are accustomed to regard as the right of individuals. The good results he hopes from his scheme are thatclass A would be harried out of existence, Class B would be cared for and its children given fair chance", Classes C and "D would be gradually pushed upward into self-supporting habits, C would have more work and D more pay, and Trades Unions and Co-operative Societies would be able to build from the bottom instead of floating as now on the top of their world. Mr Booth is congratulated by the English press for taking a new departure in his scheme for remedying poverty ; that he has gone to the bottom of the evil, whereas, others have aimed higher up. — " Auckland Star " October 8.