VIRTUE AND CRIME 177 



wages. I lent the results of a careful analysis of the dis- 

 tribution of wealth in Australia, estimated on twenty years' 

 statistics, extending from 1893, when the banks all went 

 smash, to 1913, the height of modern prosperity, to a Judge 

 of one of the Arbitration Courts of Australia, who wrote me 

 as follows commenting on these figures : 



" I have looked over the figures you lent me with much 

 " interest. One of the lessons which they seem to teach 

 " requires enforcing in these times ; that is, that the existence 

 " of a rich class is a thing which is of great value to the 

 " community, because the rich class is the saving class. 

 " Without Britain's accumulated wealth, where should we 

 " have been during this war, and who are those who have 

 " accumulated it? I think investigation would show it was 

 " the rich who have accumulated it, not the wage-ear ners." 



These are very potent words when spoken by so high an 

 authority. I must here also cite one of my own experiences. 

 For some years I was directing a building society which 

 erected cottages for poor men so as to enable them to purchase 

 on exceptionally easy terms of weekly rent. One of the most 

 impressive results was that although its operations were con- 

 fined to one town and its suburbs, and it declined to undertake 

 work outside the suburban area, nine out of every ten clients 

 were men born and reared in the country districts who had 

 acquired habits of thrift through past generations of thrifty 

 agriculturists ; for thrift, like skill in manufacture, is an here- 

 ditary quality, not a spontaneous variation like genius. Now, 

 there were ten persons to one in the town engaged in various 

 trades who were town bred and reared. Most of them were in 

 receipt of higher wages than the country reared citizen ; yet 

 so much is the extra inclination to extravagance, love of en- 

 joyment and pleasure engendered by town life as compared 

 with country life, that in a few generations these qualities of 

 thrift and extravagance become hereditary in such a marked 

 degree as to reverse these percentages by one hundred per cent., 

 that is to say, entirely reverse them. We should therefore make 

 our principle aim that of securing the best work, and all means 

 of attaining the greatest efficiency of work, and thereby decrease 

 the possibility of unemployment. For all attempts to fix 



M 



