The mortality is excessive, but, even then, they die
far too lingering deaths.

Here, then, we have the construction of the
Abyss and the shambles. Throughout the whole
industrial fabric a constant elimination is going on.
The inefficient are weeded out and flung downward.
Various things constitute inefficiency. The engi
neer who is irregular or irresponsible will sink down
until he finds his place, say as a casual laborer, an
occupation irregular in its very nature and in which
there is little or no responsibility. Those who are
slow and clumsy, who suffer from weakness of body
or mind, or who lack nervous, mental, and physical
stamina, must sink down, sometimes rapidly, some
times step by step, to the bottom. Accident, by
disabling an efficient worker, will make him ineffi
cient, and down he must go. And the worker who
becomes aged, with failing energy and numbing
brain, must begin the frightful descent which knows
no stopping-place short of the bottom and death.

In this last instance, the statistics of London tell
a terrible tale. The population of London is one-
seventh of the total population of the United King
dom, and in London, year in and year out, one adult
in every four dies on public charity, either in the
workhouse, the "hospital, or the asylum. When the
fact that the well-to-do do not end thus is taken
into consideration, it becomes manifest that it is the

[[198]]

p197 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p198w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p199

v?