488 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 



and wealth in consequence increases, not merely in the 

 aggregate, but in proportion to population, so does poverty 

 take a darker aspect. Some get an infinitely better and 

 easier living, but others find it hard to get a hving at all. 

 The tramp comes with the locomotive ; almshouses and 

 prisons are as surely the marks of material progress as are 

 costly dwellings, rich warehouses, and magnificent churches. 

 Upon streets lighted with gas and patrolled by uniformed 

 policemen, beggars wait for the passer-by, and in the shadow 

 of college, and library, and museum are gathered the more 

 hideous Huns, and fiercer Vandals, of whom Macaulay 

 prophesied." 



What are the true causes producing the results so fully 

 and graphically described by Henry George ? Is the deepest 

 poverty, the sharpest struggle for existence, and the most 

 enforced idleness for lai-ge numbers the result of civilisation ? 

 Is it the case, as stated in the words of a recent writer, " that 

 there is sometliing in the law of growth in human society 

 unfriendly to its masses, and unduly favourable to the 

 advanced classes of wealtli and condition ? " It must have 

 occurred to many thousands who have given thought to the 

 great problems of life, how slow is the material progress of 

 the masses, — how tardy is reform. There must be some 

 amelioration as time creeps on, but poverty and destitution, 

 the same grievous struggle for existence, among vast numbers 

 in a community, continue. The evils seem to increase with 

 a country's growth, until they appear to be too great to 

 grapple with. To quote again from Henry George — "The 

 association of poverty with progress is the greatest enigma of 

 our times. From it come the clouds which overhang the 

 future of the most progressive and self-reliant nations. It is 

 the riddle which the Sphinx of Fate puts to our civilisation, 

 and which not to answer is to be destroyed." There are 

 hundreds of thousands living on the continents of Europe 

 and America in the most degraded conditions of life, with 

 whom hope is dead, to whom joyfulness is unknown, toiling 

 incessantly for the barest means of sustaining what is to 

 them the burthen of life. Arnold White, writing of London, 

 says — " Night by night and day by day rises through the 

 canopy of smoke tlie lamentations of those who rue the day 

 they were born. I have seen men praying for death to end 

 the hapless misery, — the want of food and want of work." 

 " Compared with the nomadic tribes of tropical countries 

 where the curse of civilisation (it is strange to hear civilisa- 



