230 NO STRUGGLE NO SELECTION 



they enjoy life to the full as much as any other class 

 of the community. In the sunny lands of Southern 

 Europe, where indulgence in the dolce far niente is 

 much more than in this country the effect of climate 

 and temperament, the mendicants bear a much greater 

 proportion to the population. They exist in such 

 numbers not because they could not find a place in the 

 labour market, but because they refused to enter the 

 labour market. Accordingly, the labour market is 

 constrained to find supply as if they did not exist, 

 seeing that virtually they do not exist for its purposes. 

 They do not exist as a class by reason of the labour 

 market being overstocked, but because they elect to 

 live outside the labour market, and to depend for their 

 subsistence upon the charity of the public. 



In a similar category we may place the great 

 army of thieves, criminals, and prostitutes known to 

 the police, who are to a large extent the product of 

 the evil conditions of slum life and of their own vicious 

 propensions. But few of this army of evil-doers have 

 been driven to their present occupations from their 

 having been unable to find posts of employment in 

 the labour market. Why then, it may be asked, are 

 they found existing in the midst of a community 

 so wealthy, and in the heart of a civilisation so highly 

 developed as is that of the United Kingdom ? 



Man is differentiated from the lower creation by the 

 fact of his depending for his development upon his 

 own efforts to better his condition, and attain to the 

 full possession of the powers and faculties with which 



