THE CONTINENTAL POOR.
WE fear that the long and costly telegrams which the Times is just now publishing about German in- dustrial establishments rather daunt the mass of its readers, but we confess for ourselves to a keen interest in them. They reveal the method by which one of the ablest peoples in the world hopes to meet its grand social difficulty, the pressure of a rapidly increasing population upon the means of subsistence. The leading men of our " Friendly Societies " are travelling in Germany to inspect her in- stitutions founded for the benefit of workmen ; and as. the managers of those institutions are flattered by the visit, the visitors are shown everything with a frankness not always displayed towards the inquisitive amateur. They are taken over the sanatoria for consumptives at Beehtz ; they are instructed in the whole method of the Imperial Central Workmen's Insurance Office; and they will be made to understand completely the working of the old- age pension scheme, besides seeing in actual operation the Berlin bureau for the unemployed. All these institu- tions and many more are managed with true German efficiency ; and we do not doubt that the members of the deputation will return full of information, and especially of information as to details, which they may turn to ex- cellent account. The Germans call in the aid of scientific men to organise their establishments much more freely than we do, and their work is facilitated in all departments by the habit of obedience, and the methodical regularity which the workmen have acquired in their two years of barracks. The savans and officials who explain things to them are models of patience as well as deep wells of detailed know- ledge, and we cannot doubt that the visit will be most beneficial to the Friendly Societies. Our only fear, in fact, is lest they should admire too cordially, and so help to convince the Germans, and through them all Continentals, that the method pursued is the right one for the solution of the problem.
For we cannot but think that our own method is the better one, and that the Germans are trusting to palliatives which will not yield them all the results they hope for. They are not curing poverty, or even abating the discontent which poverty creates, but only relieving some of its more accidental results. They cure, for instance, some of the victims of tuberculosis ; but they do not prevent, or attempt to prevent, the insufficient diet, the habit of exposure to weather, the underground lodgings, the horrible over- crowding, from which tuberculosis springs. They com- pensate men for accidents in the great industrial war as we compensate soldiers wounded on the field ; but they do not cure. they rather increase, the per- sonal recklessness to which a large proportion of such accidents is due. They help the unemployed with infor- mation ; but they do not take off, they rather increase, those crushing taxes on food which make life for the un- employed so bitter, and sometimes so impossible. Above all; though all the attempts they make are philanthropic and excellent, they do not remove that cloud of fear which all over the Continent rests always upon the poor, and specially upon all half-skilled artisaus,—the fear that if times are bad, or they are thrown for long periods out of e ork, they and their families may actually starve. It is this fear, never entirely absent, which produces the Socialism that Continental Governments dread, and the hatred between class and class which every now and then betrays itself so clearly, and requires force for its repression. Now our system, unscientific as it may be, at all events re- moves that fear. No man in England need be actually hungry or without a lodging. There arc many defects in the Poor Law, but it sweeps away that most biting of all fears, and by giving the unfortunate, or even the shiftless, a right to relief, does at least give him a chance of surviving a bad time. It operates in every village as well as every great city, and it is so elastic that, as we saw during the Lancashire cotton famine, it can be used to meet even great pauses in the productiveness of industry. There is no reason 'why it should not be improved by additions such as the Germans suggest—and we could ourselves support one or two on a larger scale than theirs—and still less reason why the powerful weapon of insurance should not be much more extensively employed ; but without the sweeping provisions of the Poor Law all we can do would, as the Germans will one day discover, be com- paratively futile. It is this protection which the poor of the Continent require, and this protection from which the Governments, and to a large extent popular opinion also, instinctively shrink back. All who possess anything, even the peasantry, reject the universal Poor Law, because, as they believe, if it is conceded there will be no limit to its application. It is Socialistic, they affirm, and can have no logical issues except a statutory minimum for wages such as French artisans are now demanding of the Chambers, and a right for every man to be provided with work at his own trade at the expense of his neighbours. We do not deny the danger, though it has never become formidable in this country, where individualism still governs sentiment; but until it is faced neither the Germans, nor the French, nor the Austrians, nor the Italians will have any real relief from their social problem, any efeetive guarantee that the bread riot may not expand into a' social war. It is part of the order of Providence, probably as a stimulus to human energy, that men should dread hunger more than disease or accident or war, and till that fear is removed there will be no social peace. Much more than that is wanted before the almost ferocious thirst for comfort which marks our generation in Europe —curiously enough, it has never spread to the East—can be even partially assuaged, but that is the first inexorable necessity of lasting pacification. The man who possesses nothing and 'for any reason cannot labour has on the Continent no legal right to continue existing, and until he has it he will be a potential soldier in the war against the present distribution of wealth.
It is difficult as one reads of all the devices for preventing or lessening the evils of poverty, many of them so wise and all of them prompted by such good feeling, not to wonder whether what Charles Kingsley called " a dead heave of wages " everywhere is absolutely impossible. It would be such a perfect solution of the problem, for education in the crafts, rehousing, reasonable diet, even the attainment of moderate leisure—without which, we entirely agree with Trade-Unionists, though civilisation may be possible, happy civilisation will not be—would all be comparatively easy of attainment. The strong temptation to save comes when there is a small surplus over necessities, and not before. Decent rooms in sufficient quantity would be provided fast enough if their occupiers could only pay decent rents for them. The workmen of the future could be taught their trades if only children's wages were not so important, instead of scrambling into them. Even the passion for drink has poverty for its most active genera- ting cause. Above all, insurance could be, and would be, employed, as it ought to be, as a protection against sick- ness, accident, and the powerlessness which comes of old age, and fear of which deprives half the population of the Western world of the possibility of calm. We suppose it is impossible. Indeed, we have a lurking dread that as Asia, which does not seek comfort, advances in the indus- trial arts, Europe may be exposed to a competition which it cannot sustain without a reduction of wages that it horrifies one to think of. A Chinaman or an Indian, as clever and industrious as a Berliner, is content with 12s. a month, which for the Berliner would not be bread. The Americans seem to think they can deal with the problem, and that recent rise of wages by 10 per cent. just voluntarily granted by twelve great railways is a most noteworthy sign of the times ; but in Europe, if there is hope—and there is in many trades—it is the hope of au improvement so slow that men grow sick with waiting. Nevertheless, of all improvements in the condition of the majority this would be the best, and the one which would most conduce, to the social security which all the Govern- ments and employers of the Continent now so anxiously seek. They maintain it for the present mainly by the help of the peasantry, who, having land and being willing to work it, are exempt in their poverty from most of the evils, especially the evils of apprehension, which in every country but this beset the landless poor.
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