346 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. 



CHAP. XX. 



the first place, the most recent estimates of Giffen, Mul- 

 hall, and Leoni Levi, gave an average annual income of 

 77, or almost exactly 30s. a week, for each adult male 

 of the working classes. But great numbers of these, in- 

 cluding all the skilled mechanics, miners, etc., get con- 

 siderably more than this, so that the remainder must get 

 less. Now, Mr. Charles Booth puts the " margin of 

 poverty " in London at a guinea a week per family, the 

 test being that less than this sum does not afford suffi- 

 cient of the absolute necessaries of life food, clothing, 

 a sanitary dwelling, and ample firing to keep up health 

 and strength ; and he estimates that there are in London 

 about 1,300,000 persons who live below this margin; 

 and if we add to these the inmates of workhouses, 

 prisons, hospitals, and asylums, we arrive at the fact that 

 about one-third of the total population of London are 

 living miserable, poverty-stricken lives, the bulk of them 

 with grinding, hopeless toil, only modified by the still 

 worse condition of want of employment, with its accom- 

 paniments of harassing anxiety and partial starvation. 

 And this is a true picture of what exists in all our great 

 cities, and to a somewhat less degree of intensity over 

 the whole country. There is surely very little indica- 

 tion here of any improvement in the condition of the 

 people. Can it be maintained has it ever been sug- 

 gested that in the early part of the century more than 

 one-third of the inhabitants of London did not have 

 sufficient of the bare necessaries of life? In order that 

 there may have been any considerable improvement, an 

 improvement in any degree commensurate with the vast 

 increase of wealth, a full half of the entire population 

 of London must then have lived in this condition of want 



