POVERTY 289 



generally, poverty is the outcome of poverty 

 the result of a lack of advantages in possessions, 

 birth or character which may enable a man to 

 bargain advantageously with other men. His 

 helplessness is woefully increased should he be 

 constitutionally idle, should he be lacking, that 

 is to say, in the impulse to industry, or should he 

 be oppressed by the tyranny of other impulses, 

 such as the passion for drink or for gambling, 

 which fatally affect the impulse to industry. 

 The misery of helplessness reaches its climax in 

 unemployment : this (as will be seen in the 

 following chapter) may plausibly be ascribed to 

 a slacking, or interruption, in the current of ex- 

 change of the changing of goods for goods or 

 goods for services which, like a stream of 

 electricity, turns the wheels of modern economic 

 life. Such remedies as may be found for it must 

 have the effect of stimulating this current. 

 Poverty that is deepened by defects of impulse 

 demands remedies of greater complexity. 



The enquiries of Booth and Rowntree have 

 shown that about one per cent, of the population 

 is composed of wastrels persons to whom work is 

 constitutionally repugnant. This is perhaps, not a 

 large proportion of infiuctuous buds on the tree of 

 life, and these degenerates, it may be remarked, 

 are born in all classes of society. How many sons 

 of the rich might we not find idling through their 

 summers in the London parks were they not 

 maintained by the charity of their relations ! 

 Men of this disposition will only work under 

 strict compulsion : so they may acquire habits of 

 industry, but these will rarely become so strong 

 as to survive in conditions of freedom. Far more 

 numerous are those who lack the comforts and 

 decencies of life because their impulse to industry 

 is clogged by the passions for drink or gambling. 



