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is a dismal subject, and many people nowadays are apt to be impatient at the very mention of it: they regard it as an abstraction, a bogey to frighten the timid away from the paths of what is known to politicians under the name of "social reform." Those who have read its past history, and still more those who have seen it in the concrete, and have, over a long series of years, watched its devastating influence upon human character, know that it is the chief reason why many schemes which have been suggested and put in practice for the improvement of the condition of the poor have hitherto met with so small a measure of success, or failed altogether. It is for this reason that we must, if we are to make any real progress, face this difficulty from the outset. If we do not face it we must be content to be for ever rolling a stone uphill, as many generations of philanthropists have done in the past, as many philanthropists are doing even now. There is perhaps no question in which natural impulses are so much at variance with the teaching of experience and in which there are so many apparent paradoxes. There is certainly no question in which so much initial patience and humility is required from those who wish to find