Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/830

 .[08 THE ECONOMIC JOURN,T, miners respectively. But the averages brought out are those for iron and coal together This is a serious drawback, especially at a time when in' view of legislative proposals, great attention is being directext to the industrial conditions of the cal trade J. E. C. M THE CAUSES OF POVERTY. How far is it true that poverty is due to want of work ? The following table would seem to show that only a small proportion of the 'unemployed'can be fairly described in the terms so often applied to the whole class as ' able and willing to work if they could only get it.' The facts upon which it is based are taken from the records of 159. families, each of which has proved its failure to be self-supporing by applying for charitable assistance, and the classification follows as closely as possible the real causes of distress. A sufficient period of time has been taken to cover both summer and winter months, and the people . drawn indiscriminately from a district containing over 126,000 in- habitants present a wide variety of trade, religion, and even nationality. The one feature common to an is their poverty, and they may thus claim to be very fairly representative of the London poor: indeed, coming as they do from all parts of the country, they are probably representative of the ' unemployed ' as a class. CAUSE OF DISTRESS. III. I. .- , .. ., II. Reckless lmprovl(lence  tjr(llnary raness ...... '28 Decay of Trade ........ Drink ... cal) ................ 1 Emergency .......... Idleness. Old age unprovided for Extraordinary illness.. 2 9 Desertion ............ 5 Ordinary slackness .... 12 Incompetency ........ f21 Bad temper .......... 3 -- 58 57 Such a classification is necessarily more or less imperfect and rough. Sometimes two or three causes have been at work, and then the case could only be assigned to the one which seemed to have been most power- ful; but allowing for such difficulties as this, it may serve to inustrate the real nature of the problem of poverty. A few words of explanation as to each class and the term by which it is described are necessary. The first needs little comment; spendthrifts are common in all ranks of life, and more so in the lower than in the higher; the proportion of them in the table before us is perhaps unusually sman. Drink is a potent cause of poverty, but for one case in which it brings the family within the scope of the present enquiry, there are hundreds in which it precludes all thrift and comfort, Idleness frequently goes hand in hand with drink, but by no means invariably; many excellent workmen spend the whole of their earnings in the public-house, and some idlers