If the infliction of pain and misery is, as I believe, the worst form of crime, this retention of war and poverty is the gravest of our social transgressions. But the guilt of our generation in regard to these two crimes is very unequal. The way to abolish war is clear, but the remedy of this other open sore of our social organism, a poverty which stunts and embitters the lives of millions in every large civilisation, is not at all clear. The plain man who, oppressed by the spectacle of this desolating, unchanging poverty, seeks a remedy in social literature, is at once beset by a dozen rival theorists. The Socialist, the Anarchist, the Eugenist, the Malthusian, the Single-Taxer, and other austere thinkers press on him their contradictory formulae and their mutual abuse; these in turn are assailed contemptuously by men who are not less acquainted with economic matters; and the older political parties observe, with a sigh, that poverty seems to be an inherent evil of every industrial order, and we can do no more than mitigate its hardships. To this last position the plain man usually comes.
Let us grant at once that the older political parties have done much toward the alleviation of poverty. No one who is acquainted with the condition of the workers a hundred years ago can hesitate to admit this. Impatience is too rare a virtue, it is true, but this does not dispense us from cultivating wisdom. A great deal has been won, and generally won by the middle class, for the oppressed workers. Between 1830 and 1880, at least, thousands of middle-class men were working in Europe for the advance and enlightenment of the workers. The old doctrine of _laissez-faire_ has been forced to compromise with decency. We have entirely abolished the horrible exploitation of cheap child-labour which was common early in the nineteenth century. Our Francis Places and Robert Owens have won for the worker the right to form Trade Unions, and others the free education of his children. We no longer permit the employer to fix the conditions and hours of labour as he wills. The cotton-worker of Manchester, labouring twelve or fourteen hours a day, and living in a squalid cellar, one hundred years ago, would be amazed if he could visit the factories and homes and places of amusement of his grandchildren. Even the poorer workers are no longer left to God and the clergy; while the bulk of the workers have numbers of cheap luxuries which would have seemed an apocalyptic dream to the worker of Napoleon's day.