No one can pretend that it was an idle fear of death by starvation which drove this poor fellow to steal.Deaths from actual hunger an more common than is generally supposed.Last year,a man,whose name was never known,was walking through St.James's Park,when three of our Shelter men saw him suddenly stumble and fall.They thought he was drunk,but found he had fainted.They carried him to the bridge and gave him to the police.They took him to St George's Hospital,where he died.It appeared that he had,according to his own tale,walked up from Liverpool,and had been without food for five days.The doctor,however,said he had gone longer than that.The jury returned a verdict of "Death from Starvation."Without food for five days or longer!Who that has experienced the sinking sensation that is felt when even a single meal has been sacrificed may form some idea of what kind of slow torture killed that man!
In 1888the average daily number of unemployed in London was estimated by the Mansion House Committee at 20,000.This vast reservoir of unemployed labour is the bane of all efforts to raise the scale of living,to improve the condition of labour.Men hungering to death for lack of opportunity to earn a crust are the materials from which "blacklegs"are made,by whose aid the labourer is constantly defeated in his attempts to improve his condition.
This is the problem that underlies all questions of Trades Unionism and all Schemes for the Improvement of the Condition of the Industrial Army.
To rear any stable edifice that will not perish when the first storm rises and the first hurricane blows,it must be built not upon sand,but upon a rock.And the worst of all existing Schemes for social betterment by organisation of the skilled workers and the like is that they are founded,not upon "rock,"nor even upon "sand,"but upon the bottomless bog of the stratum of the Workless.It is here where we must begin.The regimentation of industrial workers who have got regular work is not so very difficult.That can be done,and is being done,by themselves.The problem that we have to face is the regimentation,the organisation,of those who have not got work,or who have only irregular work,and who from sheer pressure of absolute starvation are driven irresistibly into cut-throat competition with their better employed brothers and sisters.Skin for skin,all that a man hath,will he give for his life;much more,then,will those who experimentally know not God give all that they might hope hereafter to have--in this world or in the world to come.