454 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap, xxiv 



good mothers, sweet singers, brave soldiers, clever artists, inventors 

 and thinkers, are swallowed up every year in that ocean of crime 

 and sorrow which is known to the official mind as ' the high death- 

 rate of the wage earning classes.' Alas I the pity of it." 



And again, from the same writer : 



" A short time ago a certain writer, much estemed for his graceful 

 style of saying silly things, informed us that the poor remained 

 poor because they show no efficient desire to be anything else. Is 

 that true ? Are only the idle poor ? Come with me, and 1 will show 

 you where men and women work from morning till night, from week 

 to week, from year to year, at the full stretch of their powers, in 

 dim and fetid dens, and yet are poor, ay, destitute — have for their 

 wages a crust of bread and rags. I will show you where men work 

 in dirt and heat, using the strength of brutes, for a dozen hours a 

 day, and sleep at night in styes, until brain and muscle are ex- 

 hausted ; and fresh slaves are yoked to the golden car of commerce, 

 and the broken drudges filter through the union or the prison, to a 

 felon's or a pauper's grave ! And I will show you how men and women 

 thus work and suffer, and faint and die, generation after generation, 

 and I will show you how the longer and harder these wretches toil, the 

 worse their lot becomes ; and I will show you the graves and find 

 witnesses to the histories of brave and noble industrious poor men, 

 whose lives were lives of toil and poverty, and whose deaths were 

 tragedies. And all these things are due to siny but it is to the sin of 

 the smug hypocrites who grow rich upon the robbery and the ruin 

 of their fellow-creatures." 



These extracts are from a small but weighty book called 

 Merrie England, by Nunquam. In the form of a series of 

 letters on Socialism to a working man, it contains more 

 important facts, more acute reasoning, more conclusive 

 argument, and more good writing, than are to be found in 

 any English work on the subject I am acquainted with. 

 When such men — and there are many of them — are 

 returned to Parliament, and are able to influence the 

 government of the country, the dawn of a new era, bright 

 with hope for the long-suffering workers, will be at hand. 



