the world. On any one day, over 1,000,000 people
are in receipt of poor-law relief in the United King
dom. One in eleven of the whole working-class
receive poor-law relief in the course of the year;
37,500,000 people receive less than $60 per month,
per family; and a constant army of 8,000,000 lives
on the border of starvation.

A committee of the London Country school board
makes this declaration: " At times, when there is no
special distress, 55,000 children in a state of hunger,
which makes it useless to attempt to teach them, are
in the schools of London alone." The italics are
mine. " When there is no special distress " means
good times in England; for the people of England
have come to look upon starvation and suffering,
which they call " distress," as part of the social
order. Chronic starvation is looked upon as a mat
ter of course. It is only when acute starvation
makes its appearance on a large scale that they think
something is unusual.

I shall never forget the bitter wail of a blind man
in a little East End shop at the close of a murky
day. He had been the eldest of five children, with
a mother and no father. Being the eldest, he had
starved and worked as a child to put bread into the
mouths of his little brothers and sisters. Not once
in three months did he ever taste meat. He never
knew what it was to have his hunger thoroughly

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v?