After the sneer, the Times proceeded to attribute the strikes to a natural desire for idleness during the hot weather.  Seldom has so base an accusation been brought against our country, even by her worst enemies.  The country consists almost entirely of working people, the other classes being a nearly negligible fraction in point of numbers.  The restlessness and discontent were felt far and wide among nearly all the working people, and to suggest that hundreds of thousands contemplated all the risks and miseries of stopping work because they wanted to be idle in the shade displayed the ignorance our educated classes often display in speaking of the poor.  For I suppose the thing was too cruel for a joke.

Hardly less pitiable than such ignorance was the nonchalant excuse of those who pleaded:  “We have our grievances too.  We all want something that we haven’t got.  We should all like our incomes raised.  But we don’t go about striking and rioting.”  It reminds one of Lord Rosebery’s contention, some fifteen years ago, that in point of pleasure all men are fairly equal, and the rich no happier than the poor.  It sounds very pretty and philosophic, but those who know what poverty is know it to be absolutely untrue.  If Lord Rosebery had ever tried poverty, he would have known it was untrue.  All the working people know it, and they know that the grievances in which one can talk about income are never to be compared with the grievances which hang on the turn of a penny, or the chance of a shilling more or a shilling less per week.

To a man receiving L20 a week the difference of L2 one way or other is important, but it is not vital.  If his income drops to L18 a week he and his family have just as much to eat and drink and wear; probably they live in the same house as before; the only change is a different place for the summer holiday, and, perhaps, the dress-circle instead of the stalls at a theatre.  To a man with L200 a week the loss of L20 a week hardly makes any difference at all.  He may grumble; he may drop a motor, or a yacht, but in his ordinary daily life he feels no change.  To a docker making twenty shillings a week the difference of two shillings is not merely important, it is vital.  The addition of it may mean three rooms for the family instead of two; it may mean nine shillings a week instead of seven to feed five mouths; it may mean meat twice a week, or half as much more bread and margarine than before, or a saving for second-hand clothes, and perhaps threepenn’orth of pleasure.  In full work a docker at the old 7d. an hour would make more than twenty shillings a week; but the full weeks are rare, and about eighteen shillings would be all he could get on an average.  The extra penny an hour for three days’ work might bring him in about half a crown.  To him and to his wife and children the difference was not merely important, it was vital.