in Europe for the advance and enlightenment of the workers. The old doctrine of laissez-faire has been forced to compromise with decency. We have entirely abolished the horrible exploitation of cheap child-labour which was common early in the nineteenth century. Our Francis Places and Robert Owens have won for the worker the right to form Trade Unions, and others the free education of his children. We no longer permit the employer to fix the conditions and hours of labour as he wills. The cotton-worker of Manchester, labouring twelve or fourteen hours a day, and living in a squalid cellar, one hundred years ago, would be amazed if he could visit the factories and homes and places of amusement of his grandchildren. Even the poorer workers are no longer left to God and the clergy; while the bulk of the workers have numbers of cheap luxuries which would have seemed an apocalyptic dream to the worker of Napoleon’s day.
But let us not imagine that we have got our axe into the roots of poverty and are in a fair way to abolish it. This is one of the most dangerous fallacies of our age; and against that comfortable assurance I, knowing well all that has been done, plead that not one of our reforms makes for the abolition or the material restriction of poverty. We pension the very aged worker and the still more aged widow: on the pauper scale. We build substantial, if rather cheerless, homes for the destitute, and we put warm, if ignominious, clothing
