330 BKITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



they find, despite the pretty optimism of Free- trade writers in 

 respect to the greater comfort enjoyed by the Britisli people, 

 the better food, housing, clothes, and the higher standard of 

 living and the rest of it, that in some respects the advantages 

 are the other way about. Who, for instance, knowing most of the 

 Capitals of Europe and many of the foreign manufacturing towns, 

 can say that the people are better housed in the foul, festering, 

 two-storied dens which compose many of the streets of Lambeth, 

 Whitechapel, and a score of other poverty-stricken purlieus of 

 London, than those who occupy the spacious buildings erected 

 for the accommodation of M'orkers in Paris, Berlin, Home, and 

 other Capitals 1 Then, who would be bold enough to say, 

 having been to both places, that the mean squalid homes of our 

 workers at Oldham and AVigan are superior to those splendidly 

 built, spacious, and wholesome workpeople's homes at Frankfort 

 and Cologne ? 



This fabulous belief in the superior advantages of British 

 workers, in this respect at least, is dead — killed by its own 

 falseness. 



In conservancy many foreign nations are ahead of us, while 

 in respect to lighting there is haidly a town in this country that 

 can compare with practically any town in Europe ; the electric 

 light is everywhere, while in some places even the town clocks 

 are electric. Theatres, Opera-houses and Concert-halls, are a 

 feature in most Continental towns, while excellent music is 

 cheap and has the merit of being run for the iKoplc. 



The prosperity of foreign countries has enormously increased, 

 and that this prosperity is general is evidenced by the vast 

 accumulations of the money of the people in the National Savings 

 Banks of most foreign States. 



Savings of Eoeeign Workers Greater than our Own 



The Eeport of the Gainsborough Commission, copiously 

 referred to in other chapters of this book, conclusively shows 

 that, so far as Germany is concerned, her trade and manu- 

 factures have enormously increased, her people are well off, well 

 clothed, housed and fed. There is neither general poverty nor a 

 mass of pauperism as with us, demanding immense State aid 

 and stupendous private charity ; there is no constant and grow- 

 ing unemployment among her workers ; while the £598,000,000 

 lying to the credit of German workers in German Savings 

 Banks, against our £209,000,000, offers evidence of a nature 

 that may not be assailed by Free-trade economists — that the 

 phenomenal commercial and industrial prosperity of the German 

 Empire since the Franco -Prussian war of 1870-1, when she 



