In the first place, it is very difficult to ascertain to what extent drink, vice, idleness, and other personal defects are actually responsible for poverty in individual cases.  There is, however, reason to believe that the bulk of cases of extreme poverty and destitution cannot be traced to these personal vices, but, on the other hand, that they are attributable to industrial causes for which the sufferer is not responsible.  The following is the result of a careful analysis of 4000 cases of “very poor” undertaken by Mr. Charles Booth.  These are grouped as follows according to the apparent causes of distress—­

4 per cent, are “loafers.”
14  "   "    are attributed to drink and thriftlessness.
27  "   "    are due to illness, large families, or other misfortunes.
55  "   "    are assigned to “questions of employment.”

Here, in the lowest class of city poor, moral defects are the direct cause of distress in only 18 per cent. of the cases, though doubtless they may have acted as contributory or indirect causes in a larger number.

In the classes just above the “very poor,” 68 per cent. of poverty is attributed to “questions of employment,” and only 13 per cent. to drink and thriftlessness.  In the lowest parts of Whitechapel drink figures very slightly, affecting only 4 per cent. of the very poor, and 1 per cent. of the poor, according to Mr. Booth.  Even applied to a higher grade of labour, a close investigation of facts discloses a grossly exaggerated notion of the sums spent in drink by city workers in receipt of good wages.  A careful inquiry into the expenditure of a body of three hundred Amalgamated Engineers during a period of two years, yielded an average of 1s. 9d. per week spent on drink.

So, too, in the cases brought to the notice of the Lords’ Committee, drink and personal vices do not play the most important part.  The Rev. S. A. Barnett, who knows East London so well, does not find the origin of poverty in the vices of the poor.  Terrible as are the results of drunkenness, impurity, unthrift, idleness, disregard of sanitary rules, it is not possible, looking fairly at the facts, to regard these as the main sources of poverty.  If we are not carried away by the spirit of some special fanaticism, we shall look upon these evils as the natural and necessary accessories of the struggle for a livelihood, carried on under the industrial conditions of our age and country.  Even supposing it were demonstrable that a much larger proportion of the cases of poverty and misery were the direct consequence of these moral and sanitary vices of the poor, we should not be justified in concluding that moral influence and education were the most effectual cures, capable of direct application.  It is indeed highly probable that the “unemployed” worker is on the average morally and industrially inferior to the “employed,” and from the individual point of view this inferiority is often responsible for his non-employment.  But this only means that