Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 60.djvu/230

222, loafers and some others, who are in number at the rate of 1 per cent, in all London—that is 100 per 10,000, or nearly three times as many as the v class: they therefore include the whole of v and spread upwards into the u. His class B consists of very poor persons who subsist on casual earnings, many of whom are inevitably poor from shiftlessness, idleness or drink. The numbers in this and the A class combined closely correspond with those in t and all below t.

Class C are supported by intermittent earnings; they are a hardworking people, but have a very bad character for improvidence and shiftlessness. In Class D the earnings are regular, but at the low rate of twenty-one shillings or less a week, so none of them rise above poverty, though none are very poor. D and C together correspond to the whole of s combined with the lower fifth of r. The next class, E, is the largest of any, and comprises all those with regular standard earnings of twenty-two to thirty shillings a week. This class is the recognized field for all forms of cooperation and combination; in short for trades unions. It corresponds to the upper four fifths of r and the lower four-fifths of E. It is therefore essentially the mediocre class, standing as far below the highest in civic worth as it stands above the lowest class with its criminals and semi-criminals. Next above this large mass of mediocrity comes the honorable class F, which consists of better paid artisans and foremen. These are able to provide adequately for old age, and their sons become clerks and so forth. G is the lower middle class of shop-keepers, small employers, clerks and subordinate professional men, who as a rule are hard-working, energetic and sober. F and G combined correspond to the upper fifth of R and the whole of S, and are, therefore, a counterpart to D and C. All above G are put together by Mr. Booth into one class H, which corresponds to our T, U, V and above, and is the counterpart of his two lowermost classes, A and B. So far, then, as these figures go, civic worth is distributed in fair approximation to the normal law of frequency. We also see that the classes t, u, v and below are undesirables.

The brains of the nation lie in the higher of our classes. If such people as would be classed W or X could be distinguishable as children and procurable by money in order to be reared as Englishmen, it would be a cheap bargain for the nation to buy them at the rate of many hundred or some thousands of pounds per head. Dr. Farr, the eminent statistician, endeavored to estimate the money worth of an average baby born to the wife of an Essex laborer and thenceforward living during the usual time and in the ordinary way of his class. Dr. Farr, with accomplished actuarial skill, capitalized the value at the child's birth of two classes of events, the one the cost of maintenance while a