Art. 7.-WHAT THE POOR WANT.

1. The Condition of England. By C. F. G. Masterman. London: Methuen, 1909.

2. The Queen's Poor: Life as they find it in Town and Country. The Next Street But One. From Their Point of View. An Englishman's Castle. Four vols. By M. Loane. London: Arnold, 1905-9.

3. At the Works: a Study of a Manufacturing Town. By Lady Bell (Mrs Hugh Bell). London: Arnold, 1907. 4. The Bettesworth Book: Talks with a Surrey Peasant. By George Bourne. London: Lamley, 1900. Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer: a Record of the Last Days of Frederick Bettesworth. By the same author. (First published, 1907.) London: Duckworth, 1909.

5. The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp. By W. H. Davies. With a Preface by Bernard Shaw. London: Fifield, 1908.

6. Reminiscences of a Stonemason. By a Working Man. London: Murray, 1908.

7. Speaking rather Seriously. By W. Pett Ridge. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1908.

8. First and Last Things: a Confession of Faith and Rule of Life. By H. G. Wells. London: Constable, 1908. WHATEVER the value of socialism as a theory or an ideal or a political system, there stands this much to its credit; it has had by far the greatest share in awakening our present-day consciousness that a nation is an indivisible body, every part of which must ultimately suffer if any one part becomes or remains diseased. In that awakening it was but natural that the fully articulate classes, among whom discussion is fast and fairly free, should concentrate their attention chiefly upon the very apparent diseases of the less articulate classes, which can only speak up for themselves, at best, through the comparatively clumsy machinery of elections and trade unions. Social reform has come very largely to mean reform of those inarticulate classes. They are different in their habits and customs; therefore it seems they are probably wrong. Materially they are unsuccessful, else they would have risen in life; and therefore they must be wrong; or at least, in an age which judges success

in living by material prosperity, they are fit objects of pity. On that basis, the public interest in them has grown apace. In times past the poor, oppressed beyond endurance, have forced their grievances with violence upon those in authority; and in general their action has been ratified by history. To-day the country is exceedingly well policed. But it is safe to say that never before has so much voluntary interest been taken in the welfare and the shortcomings of the poor, and in what the articulate classes feel ought to be their grievances, whether they are or not. The country so swarms with organisations for improving the lot of the poor, or the poor themselves, that big organisations to organise little organisations have been found necessary, and so on ad infinitum. Free and compulsory education is always going to do great things. Unemployment has ceased to be regarded as a misfortune that cannot be helped, a call to charity and nothing more. By both the great political parties it is treated as an evil that must be ended, or at any rate mended, if possible. No Royal Commission has ever excited so much interest as the one which recently issued Majority and Minority Reports upon the Poor Laws and relief of distress. Books dealing with the poor increase. They need not now be lurid to find readers, though it is still an advantage if they are humorous. It is significant that in 'The Condition of England'-a peculiarly sensitive impression which its author, one of our youngest and sincerest politicians in high office, will use presumably as a starting-point for his future legislative work-Mr C. F. G. Masterman treats the poor, not as the débris of our civilisation, but as an integral part of it, as the most hopeful part indeed.

'England, for the nation or foreign observer, is the tone and temper which the ideals and determinations of the middle class have stamped upon the vision of an astonished Europe. It is the middle class which stands for England in most modern analyses..

...

'But below this large kingdom, which for more than half a century has stood for "England," stretches a huge and unexplored region which seems destined in the next halfcentury to progress towards articulate voice, and to demand an increasing power. It is the class of which Matthew Arnold, with the agreeable insolence of his habitual attitude,

declared himself to be the discoverer, and to which he gave the name of the "Populace"..

"The Multitude is the People of England.'

Mr Masterman quotes with approval a saying of Renan's, to the effect that the heart of the common people is the great reservoir of the self-devotion and resignation by which alone the world can be saved.' And there precisely, in that question of heart, lies one of the greatest obstacles to an understanding between the classes and the masses. Investigate the common people's outward conditions of life, but how investigate that heart of theirs, which they do not wear upon their sleeve for those whom they consider daws to peck at? Appeal to their heart and head, but how be sure that they will not reject the appeal with scorn because its proportion of heart to head is not the proportion they hold good? For among the poor the heart takes a very decided precedence of the head. The most open-minded interest in them is called exploration by those interested. By the poor themselves it is more often called curiosity, an impertinence such an impertinence as would be condemned by everybody if a doctor, without being called, went to a well-to-do household and said oracularly: 'Consumption is a curse. I wish to know how many inches each member of this household keeps his or her window open at night, and what you each have for meals, and how it is cooked, and how many baths each person has a week; for the skin is an important organ. Also I wish to know, for completeness' sake, how many thousands a year the head of the household earns, and what the daughters have for pin-money. By-the-by, burn your Turkey carpets and plush curtains; they harbour microbes. It is nothing to medical science that those dust-collecting ornaments were gifts. Efficiency has no room for sentiment. I shall continue coming until each person satisfies me on all those points, and for my visits you will have to pay, if not directly in fees, then indirectly, through the rates and taxes.' Is not the income-tax-the most frequently evaded of all taxes-still denounced as inquisitorial by those fortunate enough to have taxable incomes? To read the books whose names head this article is to see how intensely the poor hate being questioned. To have much to do with them is to know it. I can't

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bear for people to be inquisitive,' says Bettesworth, the Surrey labourer. 'What's the use o' talking to they question-asking fellers?' I often hear. They asks 'ee questions wi'out end, an' so long as you wags your an' tells 'em what they wants to hear, they goes on wasting their time, an' yours too. But so soon as you begins to tell 'em the truth, what you thinks, an' they don't like it, an' p'raps you can't explain yourself proper, then "Good day!" they says, an' walks away. An' all o' it don't make things no better. You'm down; they'm up. They got you down, an' down they means to keep 'ee. An' all you tells 'em only gives 'em the advantage to do so. 'Tisn't no use their talking. What they gives 'ee one way, they makes 'ee pay for another, aye! an' pay dear. They don't mean no harm, p'raps, but they does it. They can't help o' it. 'Tis their way. Some things they makes better, others worse. 'Tis all the same in the long run. If you want help, help yourself, always was an' always will be; an' that sort o' help don't make 'ee feel dubious 'bout it nuther.' Such an outburst may seem unreasonable, suspicious, and ill-natured. At all events, it is typical, the outcome of hard experience, and it has to be reckoned with like any other set of class opinions. And whether unreasonable or not, one needs only imaginative sympathy or, better still, a similar experience to feel much the same, whatever opinion one may form about it afterwards. 'Put yourself in his place,' Miss Loane and Lady Bell repeat. Furthermore, Miss Loane complains that it is exceedingly difficult to get from the poor any truthful information about themselves. But why should they give it-speaking always from their point of view? One of their nicknames for an inspector is the bogey-man.' After three or four years of life in a working-man's home as one of the family--not from necessity exactly, nor yet as an investigator, but from choice-I confess frankly that I should not hesitate to hoodwink an inspector, not simply for the sheer joy of balking him, but as revenge for his intrusion into our home. Certainly investigation must precede effective aid (though it is still doubtful whether simple generosity does not oftener hit the mark), and for understanding knowledge is needful. But that form of interest in the poor which relies overmuch upon

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inspection and investigation may so easily take wrong lines, may so easily defeat itself.

'The history of a few working-class families observed for a long period,' declares Miss Loane, whose experience as a Queen's Nurse is unrivalled, 'affords more valuable data than any number of isolated facts.' Those who go to a few of the poor with sympathy and affection for them as individuals, as fellow men and women, are likely to learn more-of good, chiefly-than ever they thought there was to be learnt; but those who descend thither as impartial investigators, or with a merely idealistic sympathy and affection for the mass, will gain next to nothing. It is the spirit that quickeneth, as much in social reform as in religion, as much among the poor as among their so-called betters.

Aloof interest, however acute, scientific and statistical investigation, however thorough, cannot lay hold of spirit. A simply idealistic love for the poor can do no more than see darkly its trend and force. Only a personal love and friendship, a genuine intimacy, can hope to follow the workings of their spirit and to fathom the complex motives for their actions. A change of method is needed in approaching them. Miss Loane's vigorous paragraph on short cuts to sociological knowledge cannot be taken too deeply to heart:

'It is exceeding difficult for the upper classes to gain any fair idea of the ordinary domestic relations among the poor, and when they seek for information they too often forget to make allowance for the fact that the chosen teachers are all more or less blinded by their profession. Is it reasonable to ask the club doctor and the district nurse if the lower classes are healthy, to ask the coroner if they are sober and know how to feed their children, the police magistrate if they are honest and truthful, the relieving officer if they are thrifty, the labour master if they are industrious, the highly orthodox clergyman if they are religious, and then call the replies received, KNOWLEDGE OF THE POOR.'

Yet that, of course, has been the usual procedure !

That a more reasonable, a more human interest in the poor is at last coming into being, is evidenced by the above-mentioned books; by the bare fact that publishers, readers, and a measure of success, have been found for this dozen volumes, all of them, with the partial excep