Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/34

 30 rising. When the family income is not that of the "breadwinner" alone, it is a very flimsy foundation to give to progress. But even on such a foundation, strengthened as much as possible by generous estimates and by inadmissible statistical methods, Mr. Mallock has to admit that 350,000 families, containing 1,750,000 persons, have a total family income of £30 per annum—a sum which works out at a fraction over 2s. 3d. per head er week from which everything must be paid. There are in addition 1,200,000 with an average family income of £94 per annum, In this figure Mr. Mallock includes the incomes of the members of these families who are living out as domestic servants! Without them, the income is £71 or about 6s. per head per week, an altogether unsatisfactory figure and a somewhat miserable one even if it were earned by a single breadwinner. It is quite inadequate for bringing up a family. It gives no margin for sickness and unemployment, and from it can hardly be taken a rent sufficient to keep a comfortable house over the heads of the group. It certainly is insufficient to bear the cost of that innocent recreation and luxury which go to improve the quality of life. Mr. Mallock is an apologist, and his estimates must be accepted with appropriate care, but he has signally failed to disprove the assertions that a substantial percentage of our people have incomes inadequate to enable them to attend to their animal wants satisfactorily, and that a great part of our poverty