28 BRITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



It is an evil which is ever <j;rowing; a curse vi^hich has 

 fallen on the people as a deadly blight, and the evil is not to 

 be uprooted and cast out, or the curse removed, by the adoption 

 of ordinary methods. 



We must battle with poverty as with a mortal foe, but we 

 must realise and frankly admit that the old methods of warfare 

 have failed, that our weapons are obsolete, our tactics faulty 

 to a degree, and that unless we draw up a new^ and altogether 

 different plan of campaign, and arm ourselves with modern 

 and more effective weapons, we shall never carry the war to 

 a successful issue. 



But before we take the field against the foe let us ask why 

 he is there, why Poverty exists at all, and if Poverty is really 

 a necessary result of human life. 



There is always a good reason to be found for the existence 

 of a thing if we look deep enough ; if we seek for Cause rather 

 than for Effect. Poverty exists as an Effect, and it is because 

 we have hitherto attempted to deal witli effects, instead of 

 seeking out and uprooting the cause, that we have signally and 

 persistently failed. 



Millions spent on Poverty 



Who, for example, knowing that sixteen millions of the 

 public funds are spent by the State annually in the relief of 

 only the most acute form of pauperism, and that still vaster 

 suras are given every year by philanthropists and the charitably 

 disposed (embracing all classes of the community), can say 

 that we are right in dealing with Effects instead of Causes, 

 when it is seen that the people still siffer from Poverty, and the 

 results of poverty, more acutely than ever they did? 



If, then, we regard poverty as a result of something else, 

 and then regard that something else as a thing to be sought 

 out and fought with, we shall, at all events, have got on the 

 right track at last. 



We may take it for granted that, as a rule, a man does not 

 become poor because he likes it ; on the contrary, he struggles 

 against poverty with all the strenuousness he is capable of, 

 and generally makes a good fight of it till he is fairly beaten. 

 His most persistent foe, in nearly all cases, is want of work, 

 and this lack of employment, he finds to his cost, is pretty 

 general, for the supply of labour is always greater than the 

 demarul. 



But why is the supply of labour always greater than the 

 demand ? Why is it that in all professions, trades, and indus- 

 tries, when we advertise for one man we get applications from 



