Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/32

22 are not open to anything like reasonable doubt or suspicion; and also that the pessimistic views which many entertain as to the future of humanity are often directly due to the exposure of bad social conditions which have been made in course of these investigations with the purpose of amending them.

During the last quarter of a century the problem of poverty has, however, been complicated by a new factor; namely, the displacement of common labor by machinery, which has been greater than ever before in one generation or in one country. To what extent the numbers of the helpless poor have been increased from this cause is not definitely known; but the popular idea is doubtless a greatly exaggerated one. In fact, considering the number and extent of the agencies that have been operative, it is a matter of wonderment that the influences in this direction have not been greater. In the United States little or no evidence has yet been presented that there has been any increase in poverty from this cause. In London, where the cry of distress is at present especially loud and deep, it is "noteworthy that no measures have yet been taken to ascertain whether that distress is normal or abnormal, and whether it is increasing or decreasing." But even here the opinion, based on what is claimed to be an exhaustive inquiry, has been expressed that, "although the number of those who are both capable and willing to give fair work for fair pay and are at the same time destitute, is in the aggregate considerable, they yet form but a very small proportion of the unemployed"; and "that probably not over two per cent of the destitute are persons of good character as well as of average ability in their trades." The following additional facts, of a more general nature, are