xx A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION 371 



missions innumerable and General Booth's slum-lasses, 

 serve to indicate a few of the many ways in which this 

 great movement is now making itself felt. 



And it has begun none too soon if society is to be saved 

 from a great catastrophe. Nearly sixty years ago Thomas 

 Hood caused a spasmodic excitement among the well-to-do 

 by the pictures of hopeless misery he set before them in his 

 Song of the Shirt and Bridge of Sighs. Nearly half a 

 century passed away ; England's wealth had increased to 

 an unprecedented extent, when society was again startled 

 by the Bitter Cry of Outcast London, showing that the utter 

 and hopeless misery of the earlier period was still with us, 

 but increased and multiplied in quantity, just as the great 

 city which produced it had increased and multiplied in 

 size and riches. Then came official inquiries ; and the 

 " Commissions " on the Housing of the Poor and on the 

 Sweating System, revealed horrors so terrible that it is 

 simply impossible for men and women to live in a lower 

 condition of want and misery and continue to exist. And 

 during all this period there has been an ever-increasing 

 growth of charitable institutions, trying in vain to cope with 

 the ever-renewed crop of human misery; yet, notwith- 

 standing all this effort, in each recurring winter the only 

 difference of opinion seems to be whether the distress is 

 worse than ever or only as great as it has been for years 

 past. How bad it is may be inferred from the constant 

 records in the daily press of suicide from hopeless misery, 

 and death from want of food, fire, and clothing. 



On the other hand, a change is now taking place in the 

 attitude of the sufferers. They are no longer like the dumb 

 beasts which perish uncomplainingly. They ask for work 

 in order to live, and will no longer silently submit to be 

 driven back to their cellars and slums by the police. They 

 march by thousands into the churches, and listen to the 

 platitudes of the preacher with murmurs of dissent. Many 

 of them are now educated, and are quite as well able as 

 their social superiors to reason on their condition. They 

 begin to ask why it is that multitudes are enabled to live 

 their whole lives idly and in luxury, while they themselves 

 cannot obtain the poor privilege of constant work in order 



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