There is hardly any more pathetic figure than that of the strong able worker crying plaintively in the midst of our palaces and churches not for charity,but for work,asking only to be allowed the privilege of perpetual hard labour,that thereby he may earn wherewith to fill his empty belly and silence the cry of his children for food.Crying for it and not getting it,seeking for labour as lost treasure and finding it not,until at last,all spirit and vigour worn out in the weary quest,the once willing worker becomes a broken-down drudge,sodden with wretchedness and despairing of all help in this world or in that which is to come.Our organisation of industry certainly leaves much to be desired.A problem which even slave owners have solved ought not to be abandoned as insoluble by the Christian civilisation of the Nineteenth Century.
I have already given a few life stories taken down from the lip:of those who were found homeless on the Embankment which suggest somewhat of the hardships and the misery of the fruitless search for work.
But what a volume of dull,squalid horror--a horror of great darkness gradually obscuring all the light of day from the life of the sufferer might be written from the simple prosaic experiences of the ragged fellows whom you meet every day in the street.These men,whose labour is their only capital,are allowed,nay compelled to waste day after day by the want of any means of employment,and then when they have seen days and weeks roll by during which their capital has been wasted by pounds and pounds,they are lectured for not saving the pence.
When a rich man cannot employ his capital he puts it out at interest,but the bank for the labour capital of the poor man has yet to be invented.Yet it might be worth while inventing one.A man's labour is not only his capital but his life.When it passes it returns never more.To utilise it,to prevent its wasteful squandering,to enable the poor man to bank it up for use hereafter,this surely is one of the most urgent tasks before civilisation.