396 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



supply of unoccupied and fertile land in America, on which 

 all who desired to work could easily support themselves ; 

 and that, all surplus labour being thus continually drawn 

 off, wages were necessarily high, as the only means of 

 inducing men to work for others instead of for themselves. 

 When the accessible land was all occupied, it was 

 anticipated that America would reproduce the phenomena 

 of poverty in the midst of wealth which are prevalent 

 throughout Europe. 



It is needless to point out that these anticipations have 

 been realized far sooner and far more completely than were 

 ever thought possible. The periodical literature of America 

 teems with facts which show that the workers of almost 

 every class are now very little, if any, better off than those 

 of the corresponding classes in England. For though their 

 wages are nominally higher, the working hours are longer ; 

 many necessaries, especially clothing, tools, and house rent, 

 are dearer ; while employment is, on the whole, less con- 

 tinuous. The identity of conditions as regards the poverty 

 and misery of the lower grades of workers is well shown by 

 the condition of the great cities on both sides of the Atlantic. 

 The description of the dwellers in the tenement houses of 

 New York, Boston, and Chicago exactly parallels that of the 

 poorer London workers, as revealed in the " Bitter Cry of 

 Outcast London," in the " Report of the Sweating Commis- 

 sion," and in cases of misery and starvation recorded almost 

 daily in the newspapers. In both we find the same horrible 

 and almost incredible destitution, the same murderous 

 hours of labour, the same starvation wages ; and the official 

 statistical outcome of this misery is almost the same also. 

 The English registrar-general records that considerably over 

 one tenth of all the deaths in London occur in the work- 

 houses, while nearly the same proportions receive pauper 

 burial in New York. 1 



Henry George, in his great work Progress and Poverty, 

 declares in his title page that there is, in modern 

 civilization, " increase of want with increase of wealth ; " 

 and in Book V., Chapter II., he traces out the causes 

 of " the persistence of poverty amid advancing wealth." 

 1 See James B. Weaver's Call to Action, p. 369. 



