Page:London - The People of the Abyss.djvu/309

Rh are children, it is probable that one in every three London adults will be driven into one of these refuges to die, and the proportion in the case of the manual labor class must of course be still larger."

These figures serve somewhat to indicate the proximity of the average worker to pauperism. Various things make pauperism. An advertisement, for instance, such as this, appearing in yesterday morning's paper: "Clerk wanted, with knowledge of shorthand, typewriting, and invoicing; wages ten shillings ($2.50) a week. Apply by letter," etc. And in today's paper I read of a clerk, thirty-five years of age and an inmate of a London workhouse, brought before a magistrate for non-performance of task. He claimed that he had done his various tasks since he had been an inmate; but when the master set him to breaking stones, his hands blistered, and he could not finish the task. He had never been used to an implement heavier than a pen, he said. The magistrate sentenced him and his blistered hands to seven days hard labor.

Old age, of course, makes pauperism. And then there is the accident, the thing happening, the death or disablement of the husband, father, and breadwinner. Here is a man, with a wife and three children, living on the ticklish security of twenty shillings ($5.00) per week—and there are hundreds of thousands of such families in London. Perforce,