Britain for the British. Robert Blatchford

weakly, and the old.

      What are the chief diseases almost wholly due to the surroundings of poverty? They are consumption, bronchitis, rheumatism, epilepsy, fevers, smallpox, and cancer. Add to those the evil influences with which some trades are cursed, such as rupture, lead and phosphorous poisoning, and irritation of the lungs by dust, and you have a whole arsenal of deadly weapons aimed at the lives of the laborious poor.

      The average death-rate amongst the well-to-do classes is less than 10 in the thousand. Amongst the poorer workers it is often as high as 70 and seldom as low as 20.

      Put the average at 25 in the thousand amongst the poor: put the numbers of the poor at 10,000,000. We shall find that the difference between the death-rates of the poor and the well-to-do, is 15 to the thousand or 15,000 to the million.

      We may say, then, that the 10,000,000 of poor workers lose every year 150,000 lives from accidents and diseases due to poverty and to labour.

      Taking the entire population of the British Islands, I dare assert that the excess death-rate over the normal death-rate, will show that every year 300,000 lives are sacrificed to the ignorance and the injustice of the inhuman chaos which we call British civilisation.

      Some have cynically said that these lives are not worth saving, that the death-rate shows the defeat of the unfit, and that if all survived there would not be enough for them to live on.

      But except in the worst cases—where sots and criminals have bred human weeds—no man is wise enough to select the "fit" from the "unfit" amongst the children. The thin, pale child killed by cold, by hunger, by smallpox, or by fever, may be a seedling Stephenson, or Herschel, or Wesley; and I take it that in the West End the parents would not be consoled for the sacrifice of their most delicate child by the brutal suggestion that it was one of the "unfit." The "fit" may be a hooligan, a sweater, a fraudulent millionaire, a dissolute peer, or a fool.

      But there are two sides to this question of physical fitness. To excuse the evils of society on the ground that they weed out the unfit, is as foolish as to excuse bad drainage on the same plea. In a low-lying district where the soil is marshy the population will be weeded swiftly; but who would offer that as a reason why the land should not be drained? This heartless, fatuous talk about the survival of the fittest is only another example of the insults to which the poor are subjected. It fills one with despair to think that working men—fathers and husbands—will read or hear such things said of their own class, and not resent them. It is the duty of every working man to fight against such pitiless savagery, and to make every effort to win for his class and his family, respect and human conditions of life.

      Moreover, the shoddy science which talks so glibly about the "weeding out" of little helpless children is too blear-eyed to perceive that the same conditions of inhuman life which destroy the "weeds," breed the weeds. Children born of healthy parents in healthy surroundings are not weeds. But to-day the British race is deteriorating, and the nation is in danger because of the greed of money-seekers and the folly of rulers and of those who claim to teach. The nation that gives itself up to the worship of luxury, wealth, and ease, is doomed. Nothing can save the British race but an awakening of the workers to the dangerous pass to which they have been brought by those who affect to guide and to govern them.

      But the workers, besides being underpaid, over-taxed, badly housed, and exposed to all manner of hardship, poverty, danger, and anxiety of mind, are also, by those who live upon them, denied respect.

      Do you doubt this? Do not the "better classes," as they call themselves, allude to the workers as "the lower orders," and "the great unwashed"? Does not the employer commonly speak of the workers as "hands"? Does the fine gentleman, who raises his hat and airs his nicest manners for a "lady," extend his chivalry and politeness to a "woman"? Do not the silk hats and the black coats and the white collars treat the caps and the overalls and the smocks as inferiors? Do not the men of the "better class" address each other as "sir"? And when did you last hear a "gentleman" say "sir" to a train-guard, to a railway porter, or to the "man" who has come to mend the drawing-room stove?

      Man cannot live by bread alone; neither can woman or child. And how much honour, culture, pleasure, rest, or love falls to the lot of the wives and children of the poor?

      Do not think I wish to breed class hatred. I do not. Doubtless the "better class" are graceful, amiable, honourable, and well-meaning folks. Doubtless they honestly believe they have a just claim to all their wealth and privileges. Doubtless they are no more selfish, no more arrogant, no more covetous nor idle than any working man would be in their place.

      What of that? It is nothing at all to you. They may be the finest people in the world. But does their fineness help you to pay your rent, or your wife to mend the clothes? or does it give you more wages, or her more rest? or does it in any way help to educate, and feed, and make happy your children?

      It does not. Nor do all the graces and superiorities of the West End make the lot of the East less bitter, less anxious, or more human.

      If self-interest be the ruling motive of mankind, why do not the working men transfer their honour and their service from the fine ladies and fine gentlemen to their own wives and children?

      These need every atom of love and respect the men can give them. Why should the many be poor, be ignorant, despised? Why should the rich monopolise the knowledge and the culture, the graces and elegancies of life, as well as the wealth?

      Ignorance is a curse: it is a deadlier curse than poverty. Indeed, but for ignorance, poverty and wealth could not continue to exist side by side; for only ignorance permits the rich to uphold and the poor to endure the injustices and the criminal follies of British society, as now to our shame and grief they environ us, like some loathly vision beheld with horror under nightmare.

      Is it needful to tell you more, Mr. Smith, you who are yourself a worker? Have you not witnessed, perhaps suffered, many of these evils?

      Yes; perhaps you yourself have smarted under "the insolence of office, and the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes"; perhaps you have borne the tortures of long suspense as one of the unemployed; perhaps on some weary tramp after work you have learned what it is to be a stranger in your own land; perhaps you have seen some old veteran worker, long known to you, now broken in health and stricken in years, compelled to seek the shameful shelter of a workhouse; perhaps you have had comrades of your own or other trades, who have been laid low by sickness, sickness caused by exposure or overstrain, and have died what coroners' juries call "natural deaths," or, in plain English, have been killed by overwork; perhaps you have known widows and little children, left behind by those unfortunate men, and can remember how much succour and compassion they received in this Christian country; perhaps as you think of the grim prophecy that one worker in four must die in a workhouse, you may yourself, despite your strength and your skill, glance anxiously towards the future, as a bold sailor glances towards a stormy horizon.

      Well, Mr. Smith, will you look through a book of mine called Dismal England, and there read how men and women and children of your class are treated in the workhouse, in the workhouse school, in the police court, in the chain works, on the canals, in the chemical hells, and in the poor and gloomy districts known as slums? I would quote some passages from Dismal England now, but space forbids.

      Or, maybe, you would prefer the evidence of men of wealth and eminence who are not Socialists. If so, please read the testimony given in the next section.

      Section C: Reliable Evidence

      The Salvation Army see a great deal of the poor. Here is the evidence of General Booth—

      444 persons are reported by the police to have attempted to commit suicide in London last year, and probably as many more succeeded in doing so. 200 persons died from starvation in the same period. We have in this one city about 100,000 paupers, 30,000 prostitutes, 33,000 homeless adults, and 35,000 wandering children of the slums. There is a standing army of out-of-works numbering 80,000, which is often increased in special periods of commercial depression or trade disputes to 100,000. 12,000 criminals are always inside Her Majesty's prisons, and about 15,000 are outside. 70,000 charges for petty