ORGANISATION OF INDUSTRY. 489 



tion spoken of as a curse) is unknown, the nomads of 

 London are but miserable savages." John A. Hobson, 

 M.A., some time Scholar of Lincoln College, Oxford, 

 remarks in his " Problems of Poverty " — " Modern life 

 has no more tragical figure than the hungry labourer 

 wandering about the crowded centres of industry and 

 wealth, begging in vain for permission to share in that 

 industry, and to contribute to that wealth, asking in return, 

 not the comforts and luxuries of civilised life, but the rough 

 food and shelter for himself and family which would be 

 secured to him in the rudest form of savage society." 



To the question raised by these utterances, the answer 

 must be that civiHsation has not yet secured the means of 

 supplying to numbers who throng every large circle of 

 civilisation the wants which civilisation renders necessities 

 of life. To the question whether the growth of civilisation is 

 unfriendly to the great masses of humanity, whether they 

 are worse off than they were, or would be, without the pro- 

 gress of science and knowledge, and of the thought which 

 discovers new forces to aid humanity, whether there is less 

 employment, the answer must be. No. Is the labourer in 

 India, living on rice and pulse, costing one shilling per week 

 for his subsistence, better off than the European? Do 

 masses of Chinese living in large numbers in apartments 

 smaller than Europeans ever dreamed of, sleeping on shelves 

 fixed along the wall, lead a higher condition of life ? Was 

 the English labourer better off in the thirteenth century ? 

 His condition then was very much that of the Hindoo 

 labourer now. Would the world sustain lai'ger numbers — 

 would there be more employment if there were no steam 

 power, no machinery, no railways, no chemistry, no science, 

 which have increased so vastly the productions which feed 

 and clothe the human race? The term poverty, or that 

 which we understand by it, is so far the result of civilisation 

 and development that the wants which civilisation brings are 

 not supplied to large numbers in civilised lands. These 

 wants do not exist in the lower stages of development ; they 

 are unknown and unfelt in the heart of the savage, who rests 

 in the shade of the fruit-laden tree. Can any say — 



" There, methinks, would be enjoyment, more than in this 

 march of mind, 

 In the steamships, in the railways, in the thoughts 

 that shake mankind ? " 



Although such may be the reflections of the most abject 



