XX LAND REFORM 



wealth, and an indulgence in luxury of every form, 

 which are demoralizing to themselves and to those who 

 come in contact with them. The pace is thus set, 

 and those with smaller means, through a spirit of 

 imitation and rivalry, strive to keep up with it, and so 

 the old simplicity of our national life is disappearing 

 before the attractions and temptations of a hollow and 

 an artificial society. 



But outside this circle what are the undisputed 

 facts ? We have a large section of the people strug- 

 gling for a bare subsistence, another large section 

 living in a hand-to-mouth way, while probably a 

 fourth of the whole population are either on the 

 poverty line or below it — on the " verge of hunger " 

 or in actual want.^ 



The labour statistics of the Board of Trade are 

 being continually referred to, and too often accepted, 

 as an indication of the state of the labour market in 

 this country. No doubt, on paper, the standard of 

 weekly wages of skilled workmen is satisfactory. But 

 it is not known how many of them are working full 

 time and getting a full week's wage, because the term 

 " unemployed " in these statistics means a man who is 

 without any work in his own trade. If he is employed 

 only two or three days a week he would not be in- 

 cluded among the number of " unemployed." Further, 

 no information is or can be given of the number of 

 skilled workmen who, through want of work and other 

 causes, leave their unions and take to employment of 



^ " In their own land vast wealth and hideous squalor, shameful 

 luxury and gaunt hunger, lived side by side, and presented a problem 

 of which the wisdom of man could not at present see the solution." 

 (Bishop of Liverpool, Commemoration Sermon at Oxford, 19 June, 1904.) 



